St. Mark's

Last Sunday I was up in Northern Virginia to see my mother, and had the too-infrequent privilege of worshipping at St. Mark's Church, Deb's church, across the river in Maryland. And it seemed so wondrous I thought I should write a whole, long post about it. But when I sat down to put it on paper, it really came down to just a couple of things: peace and joy.

Worship at St. Mark's, unlike worship in some places, is not just an exercise in piety. Nor is it (still worse) something to be got through. I wouldn't want to reduce it to anything as banal as a "celebration," but it was indeed a joyous offering to God from His children. And even though the Divine Liturgy structures this offering in detail, it is somehow the perfect vessel for worship that is joyous, heartfelt,and -yes! - spontaneous. And just natural.

Oh, yes, and it was especially wonderful to see Deb again, and to get at least part-way caught up with one another afterward.

Plans

With some trepidation, we have booked a flight to Manchester, England, leaving here at the end of May. Manchester is about 30 miles from Ormskirk, where our flat is.

Anybody know how to get a volcano to cooperate, other than throwing virgins into the crater? Elizabeth, at The Garden Window, has been keeping us up to date on the ash cloud. Many, many thanks to you, Elizabeth!

We'll go from there to Greece along about the middle of August, my idea being to get there in time for the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos on August 15. However, we didn't buy the tickets; Demetrios wants to, um, wing it. Decide later on exact plans.

Return flight to the USA is mid-November.

Our good neighbors will be looking after our house and collecting our mail.  By the way, Dickie, the one with hepatitis and cirrhosis of the liver, is doing better.  Thanks again for your prayers and for the offers of help.  He still going to have to pay $689 for next month's pills, but after that, Medicare will be covering everything.

From Margaret: Deaconesses or Female Diaconate?

Margaret has a wonderful post today about women deacons v. deaconesses.  (Yes to deaconesses, no to "women deacons.")  As always, her writing is witty and wise, entertaining and educational. 

Here's my favorite passage, to whet your appetite, but do go and read the whole.

...forget lay leadership, we don’t need more leaders, all that does is encourage the people to think that it is someone else’s job. It isn’t. This idea is obviously not shared by Orthodox feminists who worry about women who ‘feel’ they have a ‘calling’, who are ignored by horrid priests, who need other women to tell them how to exercise said calling and have mentoring programmes, etc. I can’t help but think that anyone who needs to be told how to comfort the lonely, feed the hungry and visit the shut-ins is not fit to do it. If someone feels she wants to ‘do something’ she doesn’t need paired up with another woman in another state or country, she needs to walk up to her parish priest and say, “I have time on my hands, what can I do?” Of course the feminists want us to believe that priests being male (and men are the enemy, remember) will scourge her out of the church after which she will crawl home to have a big glass of Chardonnay and call her mentor in California to sob about how her calling has been denied. And that is the second prong of feminism, after stabbing everyone with the idea that men are the enemy, it proceeds to how women are victims and that victims ought to stick together and share their Kleenex. And we’d better stock up on Kleenex because gays, the transgendered, people who think altar rails were for the gentry to tether horses to (the ecclesiastical equivalent of flat-earthers) and nuts channelling Kim Michaels are all victims too.

Love you, Margaret!

Kid Quips

Here are some of the latest cute things my grandchildren have come up with, from the facebook pages of their mothers.

From Katherine:

The boys came home with a "Guess Whose Mom I am " book, filled with answers written by all of the kids in their class. They had to say their mom's age favorite food, etc.. According to Ryan I am 15! Go Ryan! According to Connor, I am 81! On the upside he said that he wouldn't trade me for anything, not even mac-n-cheese!

From Erin:

My 4-year old [Sydney] told me she wanted to be homeless. When asked why, she told me she wanted me to teach her at home. "Oh", I said, "You mean home-schooled!" Yep, that was it!

* * *

We ordered Chinese takeout the other night and of course we got fortune cookies with our order. I explained to Sydney that the little piece of paper inside the cookie is supposed to tell you what is going to happen to you and that it was just for fun. She asked me if she ate the cookie, would it come true? I told her I didn't know, we'd have to see... She opened her cookie and her fortune said something like "You will lead a happy life." Sydney took a bite of the cookie, paused for a moment, and exclaimed, "It worked! It worked!!"

* * *

Sydney was visiting our neighbors Donna and Charlie and another little neighbor girl was there too. The two girls started pretending to sell cookies and asked Donna if she wanted to buy some. Donna said she didn't have any money. Sydney told her, "That's OK. Here you go. It's a credit card application!"

Evolutionary Grumblings

"This is not only the most unscientific stuff I've ever read, it's actually anti-scientific, in claiming that basically everything in nature happens by chance."

"Well, it's against science as you and I have always known it...What I mean is, there are trends in science, and the trend back when was to pre-suppose order in nature. Now the presupposition is that order is only an illusion, super-imposed upon the reality, which is chaos."

"No, that's anti-scientific! That brings science to a halt. If it's all chaos underlying everything, then there's nothing to investigate or learn about. It's also irrational. What could be more irrational than to try to discover and look into the "laws of nature" while denying that there really are any?"

Come to Think of It...

"Saving Faith" is not quite an accurate phrase, is it? I mean, if, for some odd reason, we should wish to be very technically correct, we all know faith doesn't save us. Grace does. Through faith. Just not necessarily through everything that sometimes passes as faith.

"Saving Faith"

No denomination I know of says we are saved by intellectual assent to some clear (or even unclear) statement(s). All the ones I know of think more in terms of trust. It’s usually still trust in some proposition, however, such as: “I repent from the idea that I can save myself. From now on I rely solely upon the grace of God in Christ Jesus to save me.” (I made that up as a kind of generic example.)  This kind of "conversion", by itself, is still a matter of switching concepts. The only practical ramification it has is to relieve us from the burden (and/or arrogance) and the uselessness of trying to earn heaven.

On the car radio today, I heard a preacher speak of trusting Christ “for your eternal salvation.” Even that is still just a concept to be embraced.  I trust  Christ.  That is my concept.

"Saving faith" means trusting God not only regarding my final destination, but with my here and now, my every hour and every day, entrusting to Him my soul and my body, my time, treasure, and talent, sacrificing to Him all my own conveniences, preferences, attitudes and ambitions, for Him to do with me whatsoever He will, however and whenever He will. Faith is to put myself and everything under my control at His disposal. Faith is the trust that He is a good God Who knows best what is good for me, both for me to do and for me to experience, right now and tomorrow and always - even if I don't want to - and that He will never give me more than I can bear, and that when my own strength runs out He will lend me His, and that He loves me (the Cross, the Cross!) even if all appearances are to the contrary. And that He will bring me safely to the other side of death. Faith, in short, is a lifestyle. You can live and move and breathe outside of communion with God, in which case everything you do, even just breathing, is spoilt, broken, and misshapen, or you can live and move and breathe in communion with God (i.e., by faith), and then every breath can be an act of holiness.

There’s nothing mysterious about what makes faith saving. It’s not some inscrutable decree of God’s. Nor is salvation something that follows as a result of faith, or as a reward for it. No, the very phrase, “saving faith” is actually a tautology. It’s redundant. To be faithful is to live in and with Christ His own Life ( = to be holy) and that's also what salvation is. To be faithful is to be saved, and to be saved is to be faithful.

Katherine is Better

Thanks to all of you for your prayers for my dear daughter-in-law. She writes that after 48 hours of sleeping, her spine has been "returned from that of an 80-year-old to that of a 60-year-old." She's still in her thirties, so that's not great, but it is her pre-accident condition. She has returned to what for her is a "normal" level of constant pain, and will continue to need prayers.

P.S. Yesterday, she was spotted shopping at a mall!

On Saving Faith

Fr. Stephen has an outstanding post, here, on saving faith (as distinguished from its counterfeits).

Vada's Funeral

So Demetrios rose to give a eulogy, and just the sight of him brought us all to tears, because you could see his tears, and hear the strain in his voice as he spoke of Vada. "Vada had three sons," said. "But in a way, I was her fourth son." And her (other) three sons and their wives all nodded.

Yes, that about summed it up. He told how he had met Vada and Sloan forty years ago, "When I was alone, without family, without country, without future and without hope," and they took him under wing.

Later, Vada's daughters-in-law told us such things as, "Through Vada, I knew Demetrios long before I actually met him" and, "I used to wonder, 'Who IS this man my husband keeps telling me of?' but I didn't have to wonder for long."

Other people told us Vada had been like a mother to them, too, when they needed it most.

The service was surprisingly religious, given that Vada, although she went to church sometimes, was highly critical of organized religion. There was a minister who read from the Bible, and there were songs for the congregation to sing: Amazing Grace, How Great Thou Art, and - of all things! - my very least favorite, In the Garden. Somebody among her sons or daughters-in-law must be secretly religious. The only one I know of who is, is Claudia, and she's Catholic. Or maybe these were just songs Vada still liked.

Today, for the first time, I understood what people mean when they describe themselves as "not religious, but spiritual." I used to think, oh, give me a break! What does that mean? That's a perfectly meaningless statement. But no, it isn't. What I wrote here last night clicked into place, and I remembered, it is NOT with the cognitive mind one apprehends God. It is with the soul, a.k.a. the nous. Therefore, it is perfectly possible, in fact, normal, to be aware of God in your soul, even if you are unable to accomodate your concept of Him in your cognition. Every concept is an idol anyway.

That was Vada. If she never found God, it wasn't for lack of trying. She had read the Bible, most recently from cover to cover in French, as a refresher in that language; and she had studied Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion assiduously, both as a child and as an adult. (There was nothing else she was allowed to do on Sundays, in her father's household, in between church services.) No, it wasn't from lack of trying. It was because she rejected every religion she knew as narrow, restrictive, oppressive, and illogical.   And dangerous.

She didn't know Holy Orthodoxy and wasn't terribly open to learning about it, assuming it was basically the same as the others.

She did not accept her own concept of God, yet she sought God and prayed to Him.

Her next door neighbors sat next to us at the reception luncheon afterwards; Mr. Banks is the one who found Vada. She had slidden all the way down between the door and the steering wheel, and he firmly believes she was already dead when he found her, and stiff, too, given the enormous difficulty the emergency team had removing her from her car and the way she lay on the guerney.

She had run over one sapling, which had bent down under her car, no doubt slowing it considerably, and had run into another, somewhat larger tree, not very hard. Not hard enough to cause the airbags to deploy, much less hard enough to kill her. Demetrios said the medical examiner probably wrote, "broken neck" just to close out the case and avoid having to do a full autopsy, since there was never really any question of foul play. We all choose to believe she had a heart attack or stroke before the crash and died very quickly. She remained conscious, according to our theory, long enough to undo her seatbelt, but not long enough to remove the keys from the ignition and unlock the locks, which eventually had to be broken to reach her.

I hope she was right when she told me that although she still couldn't find God, she was sure He had at last found her.

More on the Story of the Woman at the Well

There's more I wanted to say about the story of the Samaritan Woman, before events intervened. Now that I have a few moments, I'll at least list them, although there isn't time to discuss them all.

So many striking things about this story: that Jesus should allow Himself to be alone with a woman, and should speak to her!  (Rabbis of His days did NOT do that.)  That He should speak to a Samaritan, a heretic! That He knew all about her! That he stayed in Samaria, of all places, two days, preaching and teaching them! That these heretics, in contrast to so many Jews, believed! It's all amazing, through and through.

There are liberal scholars who tell us Jesus never claimed to be the Son of God. It isn't true; He does make the claim, sometimes implicitly. And here, in this incident, He is at least explicitly claiming to be Messiah. (These same scholars will tell you this hardly counts, as John's Gospel is only a "mytho-poetic" account of the life of Jesus. They don't understand what spiritual is, so all they can come up with is "mytho-poetic.")

But what I wanted to point out especially, in view of recent posts and comments about the nous, is what the townsfolk told the woman: Now we believe not because of what you told us, but because we ourselves have heard Jesus. The Apostles also said this.  What we have seen, heard, handled, is what we proclaim to you.  Orthodox Christians also say this. At first, we believed for assorted reasons, but now, we do not believe upon anybody else's word or authority. We do not believe "for the Bible tells me so." Nor because a pope tells us so, or a patriarch or bishop. No, now we believe because we ourselves, in mystical, spiritual, and very real fashion, have been made first-hand witnesses of Grace and Truth. The revelation is not merely stories or doctrines or confessions or Bible verses passed down to us (although passed down to us they are), but revelation granted, knowledge bestowed, directly by the Holy Spirit in us, in rather the same manner as He gives us to know that we exist and that God exists. That is why we can never be Sola Scripturists; our faith comes not from the Scripture, but from the Source of the Scripture.

Latest News

I've arrived home. We are going out to supper with Vada's family this evening. Demetrios has known her three sons since they were small boys.

Meanwhile, my daughter-in-law, Katherine, is still sleeping virtually all the time, being awakened only long enough to eat and drink. For now, it's a blessing her medications make her so groggy. Erin (my daughter) is taking supper to their family.

I did get to see Katherine and Mark's children yesterday. Their other grandmother, Gail, picked them up from school and brought them to her apartment, where I joined them, and we all got to play for a couple of hours before they had to go home.

Kelly, 8, is going to be in her second-grade play tomorrow night and has a speaking part. I am very sorry to be missing it. Oh, well.

Sydney, 4, watched me knitting my latest blanket and said, "That's VERY BEAUTIFUL, Grandma! Who is it for?"

"Well, I don't know yet."

"Could it be for me?"

"You want it?"

"Yes, I DO!"

"Okay, sweetheart, it will be yours when I finish knitting it."

"I want to help you knit it!"

So into my lap she climbed, and with my hands guiding hers, she knitted about a dozen stitches. This morning she was all eager to knit some more, but there was no time; I had to get on the road. I promised to send her some knitting needles and yarn of her very own. I will buy her some fatter needles than she was using yesterday, and of wood or acrylic, because the metal ones are so slippery, and I'll rummage around my stash for some heavyweight yarn for her.

Another knitter! Prospectively, anyway. I'm so thrilled!

P.S.) Erin asked me, "Do you think that, except for you, I mean, Vada was the person closest to Demetrios?" and I thought about that a moment and realized, yes, she was - among Americans, anyway.

Update

Events have made my course clear.

First, Katherine does not need surgery. She is, in her mother's words, "in the arms of Morpheus," groggy day and night from her pain medication.

Her mother, Gail ("Gigi," to our common grandchildren), who lives 5 minutes from Katherine and Mark, has canceled her trip to Florida, and will stay here to care for Katherine and the little ones. Mark's regular day off is tomorrow, so he will be home all day to give Gail a break, and my daughter, Erin, has offered to help with the children, as well.  (She lives 15 minutes away.)

So I'm going home tomorrow morning. Vada's funeral is Thursday; I don't yet know what time.

It turns out that the early information about her death was incorrect. She did not fall. She lost control of her car while pulling into her driveway and smashed into a neighbor's tree. We do not know whether the crash killed her or whether she died first (from, for example, a heart attack or stroke) and then crashed. Perhaps she put her foot on the accelerator when she meant to put in on the brake; nobody knows. It does appear that her neck was broken, although there was no autopsy to confirm that.

She was pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital.

We will miss her very much.

The Living and the Dead - and the Living

The living: Saturday night at a party, my daughter-in-law suffered a bad accident. Leaving the details and cutting to the chase, Katherine was sitting under a granite shelf when it fell. It came tumbling down, end over end, and the first end struck her hard in the head. She ducked, and the second end struck her hard in the neck.

Now Katherine was already in constant pain, day and night, from her neck. She has degenerative disk disease. She's still in her thirties, and this is an old persons' disease, in which the disks of the spine degenerate. So her already-damaged neck was the last place in the world she needed to be injured.

X-rays have revealed no fractures; that is the main thing. Her muscles, though, are all knotted up and traumatized, and she is in a great deal of pain.

I came down to North Carolina today to help her with the three children.

The dead: Tonight Demetrios called me to report that our dear friend Vada is dead, just a few weeks short of her 93rd birthday. Apparently she took a fall in her back yard yesterday afternoon, and died yesterday evening. It's ironic, because falling was something she always feared, and about which she was always extra careful. Her motto was, "Safety first."

She was definitely not a Christian, but in her own fashion, she did believe in God. She told me not long ago she had always tried to find God, and never had, but now she felt certain He had somehow found her. I think she knew Him in her spirit, although she could never reconcile Him with her cognitive thinking.

She has been a close friend of Demetrios' since the early 1970's. When Demetrios first came to America, it was Vada met him at the airport, drove him to his new home, lent him $200 until his first payday. When we became engaged, Vada and her husband were the very first people we told.

I need to be at my husband's side at her funeral. (I couldn't make her husband's funeral, due to family obligations.) AND I need to be by my daughter-in-law's side...

Advice gladly accepted. Prayers requested, for wisdom in this double emergency.

The Woman at the Well

When I lived in Texarkana, in my mid-twenties, and hung out with the very small, huddled-together, liberal crowd there, I knew a woman with a name very similar to my own, who often entertained us. She belonged to some church that had been formed from a mixture of Presbyterians, I think, and some Missouri Synod Lutherans. They met in some bare room with folding chairs and their minister used to wear a stole with, well, you know, modern art on it. We attended a couple of times. At parties, that minister used to play, "Jesus Met the Woman at the Well" on his guitar (sung above by Peter, Paul, and Mary) and he and the hostess would sing it. We all used to sing some of the old-timey Evangelical hymns, too, mainly, I suppose, from nostalgia but partly, God forgive us, as a sort of mockery.

Well, one bright morning, the town of Texarkana awoke to find that minister gone, leaving behind his wife and small children. And our frequent hostess had gone with him, leaving her husband behind.

So I always associated her with the Woman at the Well.

It wasn't until much later in life I learned to see myself in her.

And every year, it seems, something else strikes me about this story, which was our Gospel lesson today. Last year it was how the woman left her water jug and went back into the city. She left her water jug. In her excitement, in her joy, she had forgotten all about why she had come to the well in the first place.

This year, what struck me is what happened after Jesus told her, "You have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband." That's stripping her naked, spiritually, exposing the full truth about her in a few words. What would you do, in her place? Melt? Fall at His knees in repentance?

What she did was begin a theological conversation! Where ought we to worship? A theological conversation! Changing the subject. Yup. I know all about that...

Of course, she repented, too, joyously, and ran back to tell the whole town. And she went on to become St. Photini, Equal to the Apostles. A woman, Equal to the Apostles! (Not that she's the only female bearer of that title.) A Samaritan woman, yet. Amazing. And her sons were bishops and saints.

There's hope for all of us.

TROPARION Hymn in tone 3
All illuminated by the Holy Spirit, you drank with great and ardent longing of the waters Christ the Savior gave to you; and with the streams of salvation you were refreshed, which you abundantly gave to those athirst. O Great Martyr and true peer of the Apostles, Photini, entreat Christ God to grant mercy to us.