One Thought

I meant to post this a couple of weeks ago but with all the turmoil here, forgot.

On "Enemies"

Many years ago, I met a wonderful woman from Beirut, Lebanon, named Houda, who has since (I am told) become an abbess. Back then, she told me over lunch, she was the catechist for her parish, what we would probably call the director of Christian education. So, as the civil war in the Lebanon was then raging, I asked her, somewhat sardonically, "So when people's homes are bombed and their daughters raped, do you teach them to love their enemies?" (I can't remember why I felt I should take such an attitude about it.)

"No," she said.

"NO?"

"No. I teach them that the Christian has no enemies."

I gasped in amazement as she went on: "It's all about love, isn't it? That's the whole thing, love. How can we regard anyone as an enemy?"

Well, yes... But -

"I tell the children to be brave and not to worry, because somewhere, someone is praying for us."

By this time my soup was being salted by my tears; this was one of those defining moments in my life, at a time when I had only recently resolved to become Orthodox. The words that came out of my mouth amazed us both: "I want to come to Beirut with you and share in your work there!"

She stared at me long and hard and finally said, "Your destiny awaits you back in Washington." Which was true, my destiny being Demetrios, to whom I was not yet married, nor even engaged.

I've been praying for Houda and her people ever since, and hoping to have the huge blessing of meeting this saint again before I die.

And yes, hers most definitely is the Christian attitude toward "enemies": To love all, and in equal measure. More precisely, to love without measure, for true love has no measure.

However, this remains: it is stupid and dangerous to fail to recognize when people are moving against you. And pointing it out is a good thing; never mind it may not be politically correct. You can't know how to proceed, other than keeping on loving, if you are blissfully unaware where danger lies. Jesus exhorted us not simply to be "harmless as doves", but also "wise as serpents".   And all this applies even if the one setting himself against you is the pope, as in approving the bombing of Kosovo, or certain Muslims, as in killing Christian priests.

Authority and Communion

In Orthodox Christianity, the Holy Spirit is imparted to each Christian in Holy Chrismation, thenceforth to dwell in the very core of each of us. And the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, is our Ultimate Authority. In the faithful living of the Orthodox Christian life, He reveals to us, as promised, the Truth; that is, the very same Truth He also revealed to the Apostles and to the writers of Holy Scripture and to the Church ever since. And He does this directly, personally, as described by St. John (I John 2:27): “But the anointing which you have received of Him [that’s Chrismation] lives in you, and you do not need any man to teach you: but as the same anointing teaches you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and just as it has taught you, you shall live in Him.”

Two further important characteristics of this Authority are (1) that it is internal, not external, therefore carrying the weight of our own, inner convictions, far more weight, I mean, than any external authority could ever hope to bring to bear, for we can hardly disbelieve what springs forth from the within depths of ourselves; and (2) this Authority is not imposed upon us, but leaves us entirely free.

This is the ultimate legacy of the Holy Apostles: not so much a set of doctrines and practices but most of all, a sharing in the Life of Christ, that is, in His own life. “That which we have seen and heard we declare we to you,” says St. John, “that you also may have communion with us: and truly our communion [is] with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.” (I John 1:3) (The doctrines and practices which are part of the apostolic legacy are also important, for each of them safeguards, in one way or another, that Life.)

Now the goal of this life in Christ, the destiny we are meant to fulfill, is to become “conformed to the image of the Son.” (Romans 8:29) The whole of the Christian life consists a striving to allow God to do this work in us, until we reach full union with Him, more and more fully sharing in the very Life of the Holy Trinity, which life is heaven. (But if we suppose this means unity with God’s Essence, we commit blasphemy; we become pantheists.)

Now Christ is absolutely free, now and forever, so conformity to Him means we must also be free, and become ever more free if we are to become ever more like Him, and more than merely like Him, but incorporated into Him, all of His followers together filling up His Being. (Ephesians 1:23) We are bound together by the bonds of love, and love means free, sacrificial, unconditional giving our ourselves, without asking anything in return. Freedom is essential to the entire enterprise, and this is why a hierarchical authority dictating what we are to believe quickly ruins it all. In fact, in Orthodox circles, we simply scoff at any cleric who tries this. And we keep our distance from him.

I do not mean that we don’t need teachers. We do, and we have and heed them. But when and if we believe them, it is not merely because an authority said so. It is because the Holy Spirit wings the words and quickens our hearts so that they leap at the Truth like St. John the Baptist in his mother’s womb. We spontaneously recognize Truth; He resonates with the Spirit in ourselves, bearing witness. We believe because what we hear explains something we have encountered in our Christian life, because it fits with everything else we know and have lived in the Church, is consistent with what He has revealed in all the ages past, but most of all, because the teacher himself (or herself) is so filled with Christ that Christ’s other lovers long to to follow this teacher, who can mentor us, along the pathway. (Not that we can make ourselves like Christ; only the Holy Spirit can do that; yet mysteriously, although the work is all His, it requires our own effort as well. This, by definition. Christ said, “My Father works and I work.” Therefore, if we would share His Life, we, too, must try to work.)

I hope you can see that all of this is undercut, supplanted, if a pope comes along and says, “Believe it upon my authority, because I tell you it is so” -- with the implicit (sometimes explicit) threat of hell. If we believe on that basis, then the pope displaces (but can never, ever replace) the Holy Spirit. And then, unsurprisingly, we get people like the priest who once said to me, “We Catholics believe in the Holy Spirit, too, but we just don’t know what to DO with Him.”

The above applies equally, by the way, when someone comes along and says, “Believe it because the Bible [as I/we read it] says so.” That’s another external authority seeking to displace the Inner Voice; that’s an imposed authority, binding a person instead of leaving him free.

One cannot have an external authority, making moot the Holy Spirit in us, or an imposed authority, compromising our freedom, and still have the same kind of communion Orthodox Christians share. Just not possible.

None of this means there are no dogmas or no definitions. The Church formulates these reluctantly, and only in the face of heresies that require the Church to draw the dividing line between herself and the errors. But the reason we, the faithful, believe these dogmas is not this, not because hierarchs have decreed them or councils have defined them. We believe as the Holy Spirit teaches us, even when bishops or patriarchs are in error. In fact, even a so-called Ecumenical Council has no authority unless the people also accept it; witness the council that tried to outlaw icons, or the Council of Florence. We rejected them as “robber councils“. (No, this is not a neat or efficient process, coming to consensus; it sometimes takes centuries to settle an issue such as Arianism or Iconclasm.) We know the Shepherd’s voice and we do not follow anyone whose voice has a different sound.

Concerning excommunication and anathemas. These are not done (formally) simply for false belief, but for causing distress to the Church on that account. Arius was not cast out simply for believing the wrong things, but for publicly teaching error, and persistently, after several admonitions. And for failure even to live a Christian life, because a Christian life means we all, still in perfect freedom, submit to one another as a matter of humility, all of us, whether we be children or patriarchs. In other words, Arius should have said to himself that it was unlikely he was right and so many of the holy fathers wrong. He ought to have stopped insisting upon his own teaching and at least to have said, “Perhaps you are right; let me think and pray about this some more and meanwhile I will stop publicly teaching my doctrine.” But instead, his arrogance was such as to provoke even so holy a man as St. Nicholas to smack him across the face. The spirit in him was an alien one. He was already out of communion; the anathema but made it official.

And yes, even anathema is supposed to be an act of love. St. Paul writes, “In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” So it is for the person’s own good. Excommunication does not mean go to hell if you don’t toe the line.

Excommunication is also for the good of the Church; St. Paul continues: “Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump…” (I Corinthians 5: 4-7)

Such acts are not meant as threats or as ways of imposing doctrine, but of protecting the integrity of the Church. We believe not on pain of excommunication, but because the Holy Spirit in our hearts illumines us.

And the Holy Spirit, by the way, teaches the same things consistently, day after day, century after century, millennium after millennium.  That's why the Church is fundamentally the same, yesterday, today, and forever - because Christ is.

OSAS?

Sermon to Self on “Once Saved, Always Saved?”

People who believe you can never lose your salvation always point to a series of Bible verses about how God WILL save you. But I don’t know what they do with that whole other series of verses (and whole parables) warning that we can indeed fall from grace.

The Parable of the Sower, for example, speaks of those who “received the Word with joy” (emphasis mine) but then withered away. The Parable of the Talents says, at the end, that if a person does not profit from the great gift, then “even what he has will be taken away.” (Matthew 25:29, Luke 19:26)

St. Paul writes, “…though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.” (I Corinthians 13:2). Nothing. Not a child of God.

In Matthew 10:22 and Revelation 2:10 we learn that if we are faithful unto death, we shall receive the crown of life.

There is the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, who was forgiven much, yet failed to forgive his fellow servant a trifling amount.

Probably the clearest verse of all on this subject is John 15:2: “Every branch in Me that bears not fruit He takes away.” And further on in the same chapter (v. 6): “If a man abides not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast [them] into the fire, and they are burned.” This passage clearly refutes the idea that if a person falls away, he must not have been a real Christian in the first place. You can! You can be a true Christian and then then turn your back on Christ, even learn to despise Him. And then what? You’ll never find heaven even inside the Pearly Gates.

You’ll be there, alright. That’s not the question. The question is, will you like being there? Or will you hate it, because it is full of Truth but Truth tortures your guilty conscience? Because it is full of love, and love only makes you jealous? Because it is full of Christ, and you despise Christ?

A guilty conscience, lovelessness, jealousy, despising truth, these are the torments of hell, worse than fire. It is a flat contradiction to say you are saved unless you are – well, saved! Saved from all these.

So take heed. There is more for the Christian to do than simply celebrate. Let us take up our crosses and deny ourselves and follow Him.

Know Thyself

David Dickens reminds us that humility is not grovelling.

Humility is also not pretending (even to ourselves) that we are worse than we are.

Humility is just seeing, really seeing, the truth about ourselves. Humility is facing up to the horrifying insight when it gobsmacks us right between the eyes. Humility is remembering what we saw, after we've lost sight of it again.

True self-understanding means we don't have to pretend anything. We discover we are already much sicker, more deformed and disfigured, uglier, than we had ever supposed.

Humility is being willing to see ourselves as we really are, even though the sight is hideous. Greater humility is even longing to see our sickness, that we may repent of it and be made well. But if we really want to root it out, we'll have to become stronger within, to be able to bear seeing beyond the tip of the iceberg. This means we must fast and pray and go to church and pray and help the poor and pray and go to confession and pray and study and pray. Because God, in His love, only lets us see as much of that reality as we are able to bear - and with it, to a more than commensurate degree, discloses His fathomless Love to enable us to take courage, to repent, to wage war upon the grotesqueness within, not to despair but to rejoice and give thanks with tears.

Unwillingness to "know thyself" is probably that darkness of which Christ spoke when He said "Men preferred the darkness to the Light, because their deeds were evil." That's the terminal illness that dooms a person to die even sicker (far sicker) than when he was born.

Create in me a clean heart, O God.

Which Character Are You?

The replies to my previous post by s-p and David have inspired me to write more on the subject of parables and the difficulties one has in applying them.

Take the Parable of the Prodigal Son, for example. I always used to identify with the Elder Brother, until some Orthodox person told me he represents the devil, created before Adam was, who is jealous of humankind, his younger "siblings". Well, I still do tend to identify with him. I mean, I think he has a point. Why is the only party his father ever gives in honor of the wicked son? What about the good one? Is this fair?

Or take the Good Samaritan. I always thought the point was, don't be like those uncaring people who passed by the beat-up man and didn't even stop to help him. Be kind and charitable instead, like the Good Samaritan. That was before another Orthodox person explained to me that I'm the one in need of the charity. I'm not a passerby; I'm the beat-up guy lying in the gutter! And the Good Samaritan is none other than Christ, who comes to my rescue.

It's hopeless, you see. You can never figure these things out. Well, you can, but to do it, you have to stop trying. Chuck all the rest, forget it,
and
just
repent.

Repent! Repent? But, but, but- okay.

Paradoxical Parable

It's the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican I'm talking about, and I'll tell you my problem with it.

You know the story. Here's a Publican and he's a traitor and an extortioner. He collects taxes for the Roman occupier and he gets rich by extorting from the populace a lot more money than they actually owe for taxes. He's a pariah. So when he comes into God's Temple, he barely dares lift his eyes to heaven to say, "Lord, be merciful me a sinner."

And here's the Pharisee, an upright and very religious guy, who "prayed with himself", saying, "I thank you, God, that I am not like that publican."

The Parable is obviously aimed at you and me, right? Which means we are supposed to view ourselves as the Pharisee. Otherwise it isn't aimed at us, after all.

But the thing is, the more you identify as the self-righteous Pharisee, the more you repent and become like the Publican.

Of course, you are meant to become like the Publican, right? I mean, "Be like this Publican" is the whole point of the story. But if you do say, "Yes, I'll be like the Publican," why, it isn't long before you begin thinking, "...And it's a very good thing, too. Thank God I am not like that Pharisee..." at which point you are!

It reminds me of a standing joke between my friend Kathleen and me. I used to introduce her to others as, "My spiritual guide. She's teaching me humility." Someone would invariably ask, "And how is that project coming?" and I'd say, "Very well, thank you. I'm making wonderful progress!"

Kill Zeus

Sunday night, we had a priest from a Russian Orthodox parish give us a pre-Lenten talk on living a balanced Orthodox life in an unbalanced world.  He made some very good points.

He reminded us that ascetical practice is not, for the Orthodox, a matter of self-loathing or of punishing ourselves.  It's a matter of becoming spiritually fit, same as we exercise to become physically fit.  We need this discipline because the enemy's team is very strong, very disciplined, and very aggressive.  (He meant, of course, spiritual enemies, not other human beings.)

He reminded us that humility is also not a form of self-loathing; it's having our inflated images of ourselves punctured by a healthy dose of reality.  The main reality is that we are utterly dependent upon God for absolutely everything.  But to see reality is no easy thing, precisely because of our pride and other passions.  It takes effort. 

Are our efforts to try to make God love us?  No way!  He already loves us no matter what we do or do not do.  To try to make Him reward us?  No way!  One is only rewarded for service "above and beyond" duty, but no matter how much we may succeed at being good Christians, it's never more than our duty.   Our efforts are to become strong, healthy Christians.

In talking about the God of love, the priest said that in non-Orthodox ways of thinking -which he knows well, having been a Methodist minsiter for 20 years and having his PhD in theology - God is loving, yes, but He can also be like Don Corleone:  "You've offended me!  Now I'm going to have to kill you.  And your family."  (Okay, this is satire, yes, but unless you can say specifically what is unjust about it and why, I submit that it is right on the mark.)

That deity, he said, is not God, it's Zeus.  "And I know Zeus is a Greek guy, but please, get rid of him.  Banish him from your hearts and minds.  He is not our God.  Kill Zeus."

Amen.

Halloween

The Annual Orthodox Blogosphere Halloween Debate is heating up again, and I have no answers for you. Emily’s advice is always the best: ask your spiritual father.

I used to be an avid fan of Halloween, and yes, my house was sometimes one of the scary ones; we turned our carport into a dark, twisty passageway kids had to walk through to get to the door, and in the passageway were various live and non-live spooks and scenes. I threw a costume party most years and decorated with those skull-shaped candles and spiders and such. Oh, yes, we held séances, too, and by a bit of family choreography, made sure the spirits from the other side would manifest themselves. I always wore glow-in-the-dark makeup and performed a couple of magic tricks.

Flashback: I was trying out my makeup a week ahead of the party one year when I heard a terrible crashing sound outside. A 16-year-old boy, driving while intoxicated, had missed a sharp curve, hit the embankment on the right, been sent sailing in the air all the way across to the left, where his car first hit a telephone pole, then landed back on the ground. Then the telephone pole fell on top of his car.

I grabbed my first aid kit and ran to the scene. The boy was sitting there, dazed. His window was open. “Are you alright?” I shouted.

He didn’t answer. He opened the door and ran.

I had forgotten I was wearing glow-in-the-dark makeup.

It took that boy half an hour to return to his wrecked car, by which time, the police were already there. They kept asking him to tell them who to call, and he kept saying, “Nobody.” Finally, he said, “I just rent a room from an old lady.”

“Who is she?” an officer asked.

“Ethel Young. But I’ve only lived there a couple of days and I don’t even know her number.”

Ethel happened, just happened, to be a friend of mine. I knew her number by heart. But I didn’t say any of that. Conscious by now of my glowing face, I just slowly recited the telephone number, and then I went home.

When I became Orthodox, my interest in Halloween dissolved all by itself. I knew it was a pagan feast (see an upcoming post for more details) but that wasn’t the reason. I just didn’t care for it anymore. Especially for the ugliness. Scary faces and blood and gore and spiders… why? What did I want with those?

But I have to confess there are two aspects of Halloween I love. One is costumes. I’ve a passion for them. I once spoiled my chances with a guy I adored when he finally asked me on a date. It was to a Halloween dance. Common sense would’ve told me to go as a princess, but I was determined to win the prize for Best Costume, so I dressed up as an African Witch Doctor, complete with an Afro, blackface and ring in my nose. I won the prize and lost the guy.  Okay, so whether a costume is appropriate for a Christian maybe depends upon what it is.  Some photos I've seen of Mardi Gras in New Orleans show absolutely lewd costumes.  But decent, modest, non-frightening costumes? 

And the other thing I love is carving pumpkins. Okay, so some of them are gross and NOT alright. But have a look at these.  (No, I didn't carve any of them.)

(Now there's a challenge!)

Until last year, it had been many years since I carved a pumpkin, but last year I became aware of a new (to me) pumpkin-carving technique: shading. You can achieve shading by removing the outer skin of the pumpkin and then not necessarily cutting all the way through, but only deep enough to let in whatever amount of light you wish. This technique also eliminates the need for your pattern to be in the form of a stencil.  See examples above.  So last year I carved a portrait of a certain presidential candidate, and many folks thought a pumpkin was where that face belonged, too!

I just think you can carve a pumpkin without endorsing human sacrifice, and you can wear a costume without giving aid and comfort to Wiccans.

But maybe not.  Don’t go by my feelings. Take Emily’s advice and ask your spiritual father. Doing what he advises will always be best for you and for your soul.

And I'll do the same.

It All Matters

Or, In this sense, too, the Orthodox Insist Works are Necessary

Warning: What follows is preachy, even though I'm mostly preaching to myself. Skip it if you're not in the mood.

We are used to realizing, with respect to diet, that what we eat and drink matters. It matters whether we drink whole milk or low-fat. It matters whether we add the jam to my toast or leave it off. To many of us, it matters a great deal whether our morning coffee is decaffeinated or not. It matters how many calories we consume; if you could lose just one pound a week, you’d be 52 pounds slimmer by this time next year or 25 pounds lighter by April!

Most of us are also aware that it matters whether and how much we exercise. Just 10 minutes of brisk walking every day would do each of us worlds of good. Lifting 2 pounds may not seem like much, but do it for a while and very soon, you’ll be up to 10 and more and your body will be acquiring a nice definition.

We all know it matters how much alcohol we consume and whether we smoke that cigarette or not.

What must of us remain willfully unaware of is that every single choice we make throughout our whole lives matters – in a similar way, too.

Usually we tell ourselves that whatever we decide to do with this moment makes no difference, but it does. Everything we do or do not do builds or reinforces or weakens neuron patterns in our brains. Every decision we make either promotes healthy growth or places a tiny block to normal growth. (And we’re all still growing, our whole lives long, not just when we are children. Or to put it another way, we are all still spiritual children.) Everything we do leaves its imprint upon us (and quite literally upon our brains). Everything we do reforms or deforms us; in religious terminology, leads us toward heaven or drags us toward hell. The immediate effect of our decisions and actions is miniscule, but the cumulative effect is unimaginably enormous.

It matters whether I spend the next hour praying or vacuuming or doing puzzles. It matters whether I shall set out to please myself or to live for something higher than myself. It matters whether I watch trash on television, loading up my consciousness with violence, horror, death, and gore, or whether I take St. Paul’s advice: “Whatever is true, whatever is honest, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatsoever is lovely, whatever is of good report; if [there be] any virtue, and if [there be] any praise, think on these things.” (Philippians 4:8)

The Road to God

The other night we were watching a lecture, on television, by a monk talking about modern saints. He told of women saints and men saints, of married saints and monastic saints, saints who were royal and saints who were paupers. In fact, the only thing these people had in common, besides being saints, is that they were modern-day saints, not saints from the Roman Empire or the Middle Ages.

I didn’t understand everything the monk said, by any means, but I was struck by one phrase I did understand: “This is the road to God, if you care to follow it.”

It occurred to me that people imagine the Road to God as something other-worldly, mysterious, glamorous, and exotic – and it isn’t! It just is not any of these. No, the road to God is as ordinary as water, or bread, or wine. The path to deification is as down-to-earth as learning to love, tenderly, as yourself, the total jerk you find yourself next to on the bus or at work or in your neighborhood. It’s identifying and correcting all the obstacles to such love that we find within ourselves. That means praying a lot and recognizing our own unworthiness, else we will have a very hard time forgiving. It means fasting and other ascetic endeavor, because love is sacrificial, and we will not be able to give sacrificially to another person when the time comes, if we have not schooled ourselves in self-denial beforehand.

And there’s the rub. People don’t want to love if love means sacrifice or anything ascetic. As someone once said to a roomful of us, “I am not interested in loving; I just want to BE loved.” It’s not that the road to God is anything incomprehensible, impenetrable, or abstruse; no, it’s just that people would rather not walk along it. They sense that the road to God is somehow the way of the Cross. And so it is; Jesus said, “If anyone would be my disciple, let him take up his cross, and deny himself, and follow Me.”

There’s an old Baptist hymn, “The Way of the Cross Leads Home”.

Sunday of the Cross

We bow down before Your Cross, O Master,and we glorify Your holy Resurrection.

Today the Cross is carried in solemn procession, as Christ draws near to His voluntary death; and we follow Him to our own voluntary death before involuntary death overtakes us. That is, we crucify the selves we were born, to emerge as true members of Christ. We refuse to indulge, and we repudiate, our greed, selfishness, jealousies, lusts, pride, and all our other passions, that we may live a whole new order of Life, both here and in the ages to come. The way of the Cross becomes the way of Life.

No longer does the flaming sword guard the gate of Eden, for a glorious extinction has come upon it, the wood of the Cross. The sting has been drawn from death and the victory from Hades. And Thou, my Saviour, didst come and shout to those in Hades: Enter Paradise again.

"If anyone will be My disciple, let him take up his cross, and deny himself, and follow Me."

If The Shoe Fits

The saying is that you must walk a mile in your brother's shoes before you criticize him. This saying is totally inadequate.

First, you can't just walk a mile and be qualified to judge your brother. It has to be a particular mile: the very same one he walked. And in the same weather, too.

Second, you don't have access to his shoes.

Third, you don't have access to his feet. His shoes may fit you very well, but you don't know how much they may hurt his feet.

You have no idea whether you could walk twenty paces along that route, with those shoes, on those feet.

The Black Cat

In The Story of Webster, by that incomparable humorist, P.G. Wodehouse, a young, bohemian painter inherits a black cat named Webster who sits around looking at him with such disapproval that the artist very nearly has to give up his dissolute lifestyle. Much to the alarm of his friends and fianceé, he starts shaving in the middle of the week, in fact, every morning, and wearing blue serge suits “with creases down the trouser-legs” and reading a book of etiquette. He gives up cigars and is very nearly at the point of having to give up drinking, too, being saved from this disaster only at the last moment when – well, you should read the story yourself. My point is, this young man was projecting his conscience onto Webster the cat. And that’s how we in the West tend to feel about our conscience, too. (Okay, I’m speaking for myself, but I say “we” supposing I’m not all that different from other folks.) We tend to feel as if our conscience were something dark and shadowy, always watching us. We can make it purr if we are very careful to keep doing everything as we ought. Otherwise, most of the time, the conscience is like that black cat, sitting there watching, staring, looking at us – with disapproval. Sometimes one even feels God is rather like that. He’s eyeing you with disapproval and waiting for you to do better.

But no, no, no, a thousand times no! God is neither like some black panther prowling at your elbow nor like some dread reckoning you are eventually going to have to face, but you’d rather put it off as long as possible. That is not Who God is; that is Who our sins paint Him as in our minds, with the devil’s own paintbrush. You don’t have to kick yourself first to get to God. Repentance doesn’t mean feeling rotten about yourself; it means turning to embrace what, or rather, Who, is right there beside you, waiting for you, always open to you; namely, pure Love that holds no grudge, pure Goodness, Kindness, Understanding, Joy. The Christian God, in short, is like the father of the Prodigal Son.

No, you don’t want to put off repentance, because our God is beautiful and is your freedom.

Oh, and the reckoning, and the feeling rotten about yourself? That will come, but by the time it does, you won’t mind – far from it! – because you’ll be doing your weeping from your safe haven within the arms of your all-compassionate God. You’ll weep even as Hope swaddles you with Joy, and the tears will not be bitter, but somehow, miraculously, very sweet.

Linda's Amazing, Magical Purse

Did you forget your pen, and now you need one, and a piece of paper to write somebody a note? Just ask Linda; she carries those in her handbag, along with some tape so you can leave the note on the door.

Has some strong emotion suddenly seized you, and you find yourself weepy and runny-nosed without a Kleenex? Linda will give you one. Or two, or three...

Have you a headache? Linda carries both aspirin and acetomeniphen in her bag.

Have you split your trousers, popped a button, or discovered your hem hanging down? Linda will hand you a small sewing kit, complete with scissors and thimble, needles and thread.

Have you cut your finger, skinned your knee? Linda has bandaids in her purse, and antiseptic cream, too.

Do you need change for a dollar, or for five dollars? Linda comes prepared to supply it to you.

Whether it's a paper clip, measuring tape, rubber band, hand mirror, postage stamp, or safety pin, Linda carries it in her handbag, just for you, in case you may ever need it.

Linda is a unique sort of a saint.

Forgiveness Sunday

Dear Brothers and Sisters, in Christ or not,

Please forgive me all the offenses I have committed in the last year against you, the times I've been too strident, too flippant, too pesky, etc. etc. etc. Please know it was unintentional and I shall strive to be more careful, as well as kinder and more considerate.

Bowing and Kissing

The Orthodox do plenty of bowing in church. There are, I think, three different times during the Divine Liturgy when the priest bows before the people, and the people bow back. We also bow to persons we pass. We bow whenever the priest censes us, as the appropriate posture for receiving God's blessing. We bow before one another when asking forgiveness. We bow before icons to greet the saint depicted, and/or to humble ourselves before the saint or the event depicted.

We do a lot of kissing, too. We kiss one another. We kiss the book of the Gospels, we kiss the cross, we kiss the chalice, we kiss the priest's hand, we kiss icons.

If bowing or kissing meant worshipping, we'd be polytheists for sure, and some very strange gods we'd have, too!

Righteousness

If you look up "righteousness of God" in an online concordance, you'll find some 10 or 12 verses that specifically contrast righteousness to the Law (of Moses) - a thoroughly scandalous idea for Jews! - and link righteousness to faith.

And it was ever thus. Faith is not some substitute for righteousness that God mercifully accepts in lieu of law-keeping because we have failed at that. No, faith is and always was the true righteousness, the "righteousness of God." St. Paul, in Romans 9, tells us specifically that the Jews fell from righteousness precisely by seeking it by following the Law. Because "they sought it not by faith," they failed to attain to "the righteousness of God" -- and failed even to attain to the righteousness of the Law, besides. (Notice, that in telling us this, St. Paul is in effect debunking any theory that the Jewish failure was something mysteriously fore-ordained by the inscrutable will of God! God foreknew it, but never caused it and certainly never willed it.)

So is following the Law not a good thing to do? That's not the point. The Law is good and holy, but Christ has now sent the Holy Spirit. If you have been Chrismated, sealed with the Holy Spirit, and if you are attentive to Him and obey His promptings in your heart (always under the supervision of your spiritual father or mother, of course), you have little or no need for any law. The Holy Spirit will lead your steps aright. He will never lead you into sin. The Law was for following before the Day of Pentecost. But we now follow the Spirit.

Following the Law cannot save you.

Why not? Because you can never keep it perfectly? That too, but the matter goes deeper than that. The problem with the Law as savior is that there is no Life in it. It's only a legal, verbal icon of Life, of Truth, of Righteousness, of Christ. It's an example of typology. This means that even if you could keep the Law perfectly, it is powerless to save you. "If there had been a law given which could have given life, indeed righteousness should have been by the law," says St. Paul. But there is no such law. The Law cannot raise you from the dead. Only Christ can. One must rely upon Him rather than upon law-keeping. In other words, you must have faith.

Faith always was the true righteousness. Abraham believed God, and God counted it to him for righteousness - because it was righteousness.

More on Abortion

The arguments in favor of abortion are so duplicitous. Well, okay, not all of them are. Some of them spring from genuine, if misguided, compassion for the pregnant woman. But the arguments I'm specifically thinking of are the one about a woman's rights, and the one about how the fetus is not really a human being yet, supposedly. Gimma a break!

Abortion isn't just about a woman's body. Yes, the baby is developing within her body, but it isn't her body (usually) being destroyed; it's someone else's! How does anybody have that "right"?

Yes, women have a choice; in fact, they have lots of choices. But those choices are made before the pregnancy begins. There is no right to choose once the baby is conceived.

But is that creature inside the mother really a baby, really a human being? When do we become fully human? The Orthodox answer is that we become fully human when we fully resemble Jesus Christ, for He is our measure of true personhood. That means none of us is fully human yet.

But we still aren't supposed to kill one another.

About Abortion

I had to share this outstanding little speech from a twelve-year-old, which I got from Byzantine Dixie, who in turn got it from Carolina Cannonball. Thank you, ladies. Please take the 5 minutes to watch this. It's so important, and so well said!