Not I!

Another person sharing my same name has come to my attention.

There are at least 4 of us that I know of. One lives in Thessaloniki, of all places, where we also live part of the time! Another is an elderly widow who lives in Charlottesville, Virginia. I discovered her because she goes to one of the same doctors I do, and our medical records became mixed up at one point, which made life interesting for both of us...

Life IS interesting!

(No, my husband is not closely related to any of these. We know that because his family name originally was something like Hatzipapageorgoudis. His great-grandfather wisely changed it to Theodoridis, back when you could change your name simply by, well, by changing it. "Hatzipapageorgoudis" means "son of Father George, the Hadj, a hadj being, for Muslims, someone who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca, but for the Orthodox, someone who has been to Jerusalem. You add the prefix to your name once you arrive back home.)

More Pinkies

(Click to enlarge)
Here are two of Holly's pinkie squirrels, same age as mine. Hers are bruised from falling out of their tree, and wrinkled up from dehydration; mine have smooth skin and no bruises.

But the things to notice here are the white nose and claws on the lefthand boy. Even at this age, claws and noses in squirrels are black.

So we think this is going to be a very unusual white squirrel. His mother is, who was seen just after the nest fell.

We have 13 pinkie squirrels in rehab right now. Holly has 4, Angela has 6, and I have 3.

Pinkies!

This evening, my first three wild babies of the season arrived: three female Gray Squirrels, about 48 hours old, umbilical scabs still attached. They are fat and healthy, had been nursing quite recently, aren't dehydrated. They haven't fallen out of any tree, as have most of the squirrels that come to us; they were found in an attic fan. I suppose these babies were lucky it didn't come on during their brief stay there.

The now full-grown squirrels (2 Gray Squirrels and 4 Flying Squirrels) from last year who wintered over with me are still here, too, to be released hopefully next month.

It feels good to be back to the hand-feeding.

Reflection on What Sin Is

(I Chronicles 28:2-3) Then King David rose to his feet and said, "Hear me, my brethren and my people: I had it in my heart to build a house of rest for the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and for the footstool of our God, and had made preparations to build it. But God said to me, 'You shall not build a house for My name, because you have been a man of war and have shed blood.'”

Here is David, the greatest king Israel ever had, the ancestor of Christ, the protector of Israel who expanded his kingdom into an empire, the mighty warlord, of whom his people used to sing, while they danced, “Saul has killed his thousands, and David his ten thousands”. (1 Samuel 18:7, 21:11, 29:5) Here is a “man after God’s own heart” (cf. I Samuel 13:1 4, Acts 13:22), yet God forbids him to fulfill his yearning to build God a temple.

Why? “Because you have been a man of war and have shed blood.” The shedding of blood disqualified him (as it still to this day disqualifies Orthodox men from service at God’s altar as priests). Never mind it had been the Lord Himself who had delivered all King David’s enemies into his hand; never mind he was a great hero precisely for that reason. It wasn’t that he had transgressed the Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill”. For that, he could find plenty of legal and moral justification. But that still higher ideal to which the Commandment pointed, the ideal of peace, of non-violence, of loving your neighbor, and even your enemy, as yourself, was what David had so publicly and so flagrantly fallen short of, that for him to build God’s temple would not have been appropriate.

And this, for the Christian, is the very meaning of sin: to “fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) – with or without legal justification for it.

I once had three ducklings in a pen in my front yard. That lasted only a couple of days before a Red Tailed Hawk swooped down. I saw him beforehand, high overhead, and rushed the ten feet to the enclosure to protect my ducklings, but was too late. Before I even got there, the hawk was soaring over the treetops with one of the ducklings. I spent the rest of the morning adding a top to the enclosure, and then, when the hawk returned, I dared him to try to get one of my ducklings. He stood outside the wire. The remaining two ducklings said, “Mama!” and rushed toward him. Inserting his talons through the chicken wire, he grabbed one. No, he couldn’t get it out. I had prevented that. He failed and flew away, frustrated. So what? The duckling was still dead! And it’s something like that with falling short of the glory of God. I may be newly forgiven and absolved, my conscience now clear; but I’m still standing far, far from my goal, from my God-appointed destiny of being conformed to the image of the Son. I’m still so short of glory. And falling short of glory, of God's glory, that's what sin is.

UPDATE: The Anonymous God Blogger has an interesting post on what repentance is. It wasn't, of course, intended as a companion piece to this one, but IMO, they go together very well.

The Sure Path to Disunity

Yesterday, I posted an entry about submitting to one another as the path to unity. A commentator, Mike, wrote to wonder why other Christians don’t do the same thing. Here, I'm only going to write about the case of Protestants, because they, especially, are so notoriously divided.

Well, because – as far as I can see – they cannot. Because the question is, submit to what, or to whom? And, within the context of the Reformation, there doesn’t seem to be any practical answer.

Submit to the Truth, as found in Scripture? Ah, but that’s begging the question, isn’t it, the question being, what is Truth? Contrary to one theory, Scripture does not always interpret itself, although it sometimes does. Nor is Holy Scripture always perfectly clear, as the five hundred years of divisions over it since the Reformation abundantly testify, and Scripture also testifies. (2 Peter 3:16)

It isn’t exactly Sola Scriptura itself that is the source of disunity; it’s another doctrine implicit within it, namely individualism. This is because in practice, Sola Scriptura (no matter which of two or three forms it takes) leaves each private individual as his own final judge and interpreter of both Scripture and church. Thus, in case people disagree on what Scripture means — or even what is really in it – there is no arbiter between the disagreeing parties.

Submit to the consensus of some larger Protestant body, then? It stands to reason that such a hypothetical body, composed of the most respected representatives from many denominations, might be less liable to error than might each individual or each denomination. But before Protestants could submit to this, they would have to have a very high level of confidence that the consensus of the body will be the Truth; otherwise, they would be submitting to tyranny at best, falsehood and tyranny, at worst. Integrity, after all, forbids submitting to falsehood, forbids acting or professing against ones conscience. That’s why they threw off the Pope.

Submit to the teachings of pastors or theologians? They have studied in seminary, haven't they? They seem wise and faithful, don't they? But submit to which ones, since they have different beliefs, even within the same denomination?

Submit to what great saints tell us? But usually, Protestants assume even saints are going by their own opinion only, with the possible exception (depending upon the denomination) of the Apostles. And then, with the Apostles, we’re back to how to interpret the Bible.

Submit to Tradition? They either reject it or, to the extent they accept it, they first cherry-pick, sanitize, and adapt it, formulate agreeable interpretations of it, all ostensibly to accord with Holy Scripture, but in practical terms this means according to what suits my doctrine, what appeals to me, what I think best. In the end, Holy Tradition will be only a caricature of itself, reduced, like everything else, to somebody's private opinion.

It's a cunning trap. I have to admire the neatness of it. All it takes to fall in is to suppose each man is his own arbiter of truth, faith, Church, and Scripture – and the door to unity slams shut. Yet to avoid being your own (fallible!) pope, by definition you have to have something to which or someone to whom each person can submit his varying opinions, solitary revelations, conflicting interpretations, questions, disagreements and private judgment. Searching for that within Protestantism, I am stymied. I marvel that these separated denominations can’t seem to see that this individualism, promulgated chiefly via Sola Scriptura, was guaranteed, from the beginning, to cause fractures and to keep causing them endlessly. What a poison pill individualism is!

Is there any way out? I hope so. Can I come up with any recommendations? No. It seems that to get out of the dilemma would require the oft-mentioned "seismic paradigm shift", akin to the earthquake that released St. Paul from prison.


"First of all you must know this, that no prophecy of scripture is of private interpretation." (2 Peter 1:20) [No, that Greek word for "interpretation" does not, alternatively, mean "origin". It means resolution.]

Vada's Afghan

Our dear friend Vada was still a newlywed when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, plunging the United States into World War II and changing her life forever. She and Sloan, her husband of less than a year, were both pre-med students. But after Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Navy and went off to war; he was there to witness the famous flag-planting on Iwo Jima. Vada worked with the military producing propaganda films. Neither of them ever became physicians.

Anyway, it was then, so the story goes, that, to fill the lonely hours, Vada decided to learn crochet. Somebody taught her a few basic stitches. She found a pattern in a magazine, a patchwork of snowflakes on a blue background, and made all the large patches and a couple dozen of the small ones.

But then the baby came, and the unfinished afghan was consigned to the back of a closet.

Eventually the war ended and more babies followed, and the patches and the yarn still stayed in a succession of closets.

The babies grew up and had children and grandchildren of their own. Sloan died in his late eighties.

And about 3 years ago, Vada came upon her unfinished throw. But by then she had long since forgotten whatever she used to know about crochet. So I said I'd finish it for her, and she brought me the 60-year-old squares, the 60-year-old yarn, the 60-year old magazine article with pattern and instructions, even the same crochet hook she had used.

I'm ashamed to say all these have lain in my closet these three years, worked on only sporadically. Crocheting scores more of those small squares is tedious; weaving in all the yarn ends is even more so; and the fact that it's somebody else's work only makes the boredom more acute.

But I'm enormously pleased to announce that, this morning, I at last finished the brand-new yet already-antique afghan. With some of the left-over yarn, I even put a lacy, white border around it, thinking, "How I love crochet! My hook flashes in and out - not as fast as Barbara's used to, but still quickly - and from my hands falls lace!"

Well, that's the story, and it's a pretty good one, I thought, which is why I've shared it with you.

Too bad that when I scanned in the picture for you, a page from the magazine, and clicked on it to enlarge it, I realized that either I had misunderstood, or else Vada has misremembered. The afghan is only 30 years old, not 60.

Oh, well. For Vada, I'm still very glad to have finished it. Now I'm going to go buy a small pillow with which to stuff the matching pillow cover.

The Path to Unity

The Orthodox way of doing things is to submit to one another in the fear of God. (Eph. 5:21). Or, again, "All of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble." (I Peter 5:5) An Orthodox Christian does not assume he can know anything by his own effort alone, or is competent to interpret the Scriptures by himself or worthy to judge anything. He consults his brothers and sisters, especially those in whom the Life of Christ is most manifest, the saints, including (via their writings) those who have gone to their rest.

If an Orthodox Christian has trouble accepting anything, he assumes not that the teaching, but that his sin-clouded reason is at fault. He keeps searching for enlightenment. He knows from experience that God will show him the answer in due course, and the answer will satisfy his whole being, spirit, soul, mind and heart. He knows the answer will bring peace, release, joy, and an infusion of new life. He knows he will come to understand where he had gone wrong, and why. He keeps praying, reading the Scriptures and other writings, and keeps asking those who are holier than himself until this happens.

If he hears God speaking to him in his heart during prayer, he does not assume it is God. He considers that he is unworthy to receive direct revelation from God. Therefore, the "revelation" is more likely to be from the Satan, who can masquerade as an angel of light. Even if it came from God, the Orthodox Christian considers it likely he may have misinterpreted it in his sin-scarred mind. Thus, instead of saying, "Jesus told me…", he runs to his spiritual father, confesses what has happened, and seeks guidance.

In such ways as these, we seek and find consensus not only with our brothers and sisters on earth, but with our departed predecessors in the Faith. This path, the path of humble submission each to the other, has worked for us for two millennia.

Which Way to the Bedroom Bathroom?

or, I Thought I Was Over it, but I'm Not

Do you feel yourself desperate to be
In two different places at once?
Do you feel you'd rather not see
What comes out of your mouth or your bunce?
Do you wish you could take a shower,
For your innards have all turned to mud,
But to stand there you haven't the power?
You, Sir or Madame, have The Crud.

Startling Insight

My husband has several Muslim colleagues at work. One of them, a woman named Shaheen, has been trying for years to convert him (a most amusing idea for anyone who knows Demetrios very well). Another, at lunch yesterday, mentioned how happy everybody had always been whenever they were under Islamic rule. This is the kind of "history" he had been taught - and he is a highly educated man, a physician.

Shocked may be too strong a word, but this man was quite surprised, at least, when Demetrios disabused him of that notion.

We Base Everything Upon Scripture

I must be feeling cranky today, perhaps because I'm just getting over The Crud (that 24-hour digestive bug), but I've gotta say this, because it, too, is bugging me today.

I don't usually cover my head in church and have no idea why so many priests don't require it any more, and I can't think of any valid excuse for myself, either. It's a practice clearly mandated in Scripture, by the great and glorious St. Paul, no less.

It usually doesn't occur to me. But when it invariably does is when someone tries to tell me his or her denomination goes strictly and only by Scripture, period.

And don't even get me started on all the things not mandated or even implied in Scripture that most of us do anyway, like Sunday School, choir robes, flowers on the altar, candles, kneelers, stained glass windows, pews...

Who do you know who goes strictly by his or her interpretation of Scripture? Some of the Friends, perhaps, or the Amish or Mennonites? Anybody else?

Clearing up a Couple of Points

Recently, I wrote a post about how there is no such thing as being "on our own" or "apart from God," although there is indeed such a thing as "apart fom faith".

Now I'd like to point out two similar straw men that come up fairly regularly.

First Straw Man:

It's true the Orthodox do not exercise "private judgment", but this is not because we are required to kow-tow to the corporate judgment of the Church. Instead, it is because, in the Church, there is no such thing as "private judgment". We can, do, must excersise personal judgment, of course, but it is never anything like private. This is because of the nature of the communion the Holy Spirit gives us in Christ, in the saints and in one another, one Body, one Heart, one Mind, one Love, one Life. His Life is Mine is the English title of one of Archimandrite Sophrony's books; but so is your life mine; and my life also is yours, in the Church. Even a convert's becoming Orthodox is never a private decision. It involves the penitent, his spiritual father, his parish, and the whole Church on earth and in heaven. Above all, it involves the Holy Spirit.

We don't "surrender" our personal judgment to the Church, either. We are allowed humbly, prayerfully, to wrestle with issues all we like, until the Holy Spirit gives us to understand for ourselves, until we no longer need to take anybody else's word for it. We are not expected merely to capitulate.

Second Straw Man:

There is such thing as the Church setting up false doctrine or setting up doctrine "on her own" or of her own initiative. A body doing this has ceased beforehand to be the Church, or else never was. The Church, the Body of Christ, is always animated by the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit. Does this mean you will never hear anything false coming from an Orthodox pulpit, or read anything false in an Orthodox publication? I wish! No; it means falsehoods come from certain people or groups within the Church, but they do not accord with Christian teaching. True Christian doctrine is what has been believed from the beginning.

Is a doctrine true because the Church says it, or does the Church say it because under the guidance of the Holy Spirit she has recognized it to be true? The latter, of course, technically. But in practice, in the true Church, these two turn out to be equivalent.

More on Yesterday's Epistle

29 For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. 30 Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified. (Romans 8:29-30)

There are only three ways I can think of to interpret “whom He foreknew”.

1.) It means nothing.

2.) It means God knew some people, but not others. How could that be, if God is all-knowing?

3.) It means God knew ahead of time who, throughout human history, would want / not reject Him, and predestined these to become like Jesus Christ. (Because of course – here comes a tautology – you can’t be one with Him except insofar as you are made like Him; viz., compatible with Him.)

On Yesterday's Epistle

It’s just hard, for someone raised in the West, especially, to understand very clearly, once for all, that God has no dark side. No dark side. None. “God is love, and he who lives in love lives in God, and God in him.” God isn’t love on the one hand but something else on the other. He is not love but also justice; rather, His justice IS His mighty love in action. He is not love but also holiness, for his love precisely is His holiness. It’s His love, not His fastidiousness, that makes Him all good; it is the God Who is love, before Whom we bow and make solemn processions and stand in awe and cry, “Holy, holy, holy!”. God is love through and through, pure, unadulterated love, period.

Many of us converts to Orthodoxy know this in our heads, yet the image of the angry god persists, to some degree, in our imagination and in our feelings, and yes, it has a deleterious effect upon our ability to relate to Him the way we should. Perhaps it is the image of our own parents that lingers in us, who loved us but still threatened us; perhaps it’s just the feelings inculcated into us when we were young, that take years to dissipate (and only when not stimulated).

To be sure, there are in sacred Scriptures many images of God as vengeance and wrath. These the Church has always taken iconically. They are word pictures, verbal icons, of what will happen to us if we hate God. But icons represent spiritual reality. They show divinized souls rather than camera-accurate bodies. They use inverse perspective to show what our eyes cannot see (three sides of a building, for example). They conflate historical events to make a theological point.

The Scriptural passages about God’s vengeance and wrath are like that. They are spot-on portraits of our souls’ condition if we estrange ourselves from all that is true, lovely, bright, pure, loving, meaningful – all, in short, that makes living worthwhile; for that is what we reject if we reject God. If you do not want God, then physical darkness is an icon of the true darkness you will have chosen. Fire and brimstone (sulphur), prison, earthquakes, pestilence, famine, slaughter, the worm that dies not, these are material icons of the (much worse!) ultimate destruction you yourself gradually wreaked upon your personality, your character, your soul, if you despised Him Who is Love, Life, Truth, Beauty. (I'm not saying some of these didn't happen historically; I am speaking of how the Church interprets and applies them.)

Ours is not a god who is out to get you if you don’t watch out! That's demons you're thinking of. The truth is the opposite; He gives Himself totally to you; and when you come to judgment, the criteria used will not be whether you did this or failed to do that. No, the only real issue will be whether, deep down, you truly want God or not. Nobody who genuinely wants God will be turned away. If you will have Him, He will have you. (And I do not mean anybody will be saved apart from Christ or apart from His Church; but that’s another issue for some other post.)

God really is all that is most dear, most delightful, most beautiful. And He is all these eternally, and nothing contrary to these.

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written:

"For Your sake we are killed all day long;
We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter."

37 Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. 38 For I am persuaded that neither death
nor life,
nor angels
nor principalities
nor powers,
nor things present
nor things to come,
39 nor height
nor depth,
nor any other created thing,
shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

(Romans 8:35-39)

Senior Citizens In the Cardiologist's Waiting Room

(A True Incident That Happened Friday)

Receptionist: How are you today, sir?

Patient: Very, very well. I woke up this morning, my feet hit the floor, the rest of me didn't. That's a very good day!

(General laughter)

Another Patient: Yeah, it's a very good day when we wake up in the morning and we can still walk.

Third Patient: It's a very good day when we wake up in the morning and our plumbing still works correctly.

Fourth Patient: It's a very good day when we wake up in the morning.

Baby Ticker

My niece, Grace, is due to be delivered of a son any day now...



(Baby isn't really rotating at this point, of course. I'll bet Grace feels she's rotating around him, though, every time she walks.)