God Rest You Well, Carol!



Carol was a friend our our family's for decades; I think from the early '80s.  After the death of her husband, she ate most of the holiday meals with us:  Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter.  (I don't know why, possibly her children lived rather far away.)  She became a part of our famiy.  She was also one of the first among my parents' circle of friends to move to Greenspring, the retirement community to which my parents eventually came.  She gave us a little tour of it, together with a discussion of its pros and cons (mainly, that although Greenspring is a wonderful and downright luxurious place, it is still, as Carol put it, "institutional living, and you have to accept that if you come here.")

She was blind in one eye; we never knew why, but have heard it was due to that eye having been cancerous, or something.  I remember when she had a cataract removed from the good eye, and how nerve-wracking that was. 

She went on a trip to China with my mother in 1989 and on a cruise with Mom on the QEII, during which the ship's engines conked out and the vessel was adrift at sea for I forget how long.  A day?  Three days?  Mom?  So they shared many adventures.

Mom and I went to her memorial service Friday.  May her memory be eternal.

I Did Promise to Avoid Political Commentary, and I Shall...

...but from time to time, I still plan to point out items I consider important.

If you live in Europe or America and you value your country, here's the future planned for you, presented by the German Foreign Minister addressing the Brookings Institute on January 20.

To give examples of why this is important for you to know, below are a few excerpts from the speech, together with the minute and seconds where you can find them on this recording.  Beware euphemism.



14:04 First we have to fix the flaws in the Eurozone’s construction. When setting it up shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we were not able to go all the way and create a political union side-by-side with the economic and monetary union. It took awhile for the consequences of this failure to become apparent, because we enjoyed a decade of low interest rates and strong economic growth, especially in southern Eurozone lenders.

31:25 It would be wrong to deny that there are different visions of what Europe should be. There are those who do not want an open, tolerant, and integrated Europe; there are those who stress the differences by their ethnics of religious rather than what unites us. [Yes, this is what Minister said, word for word.]  They are advocating a fortress Europe. This is a vision that we need to oppose forcibly. The re-nationalization in a time of globalization is a dangerous concept; and this is a message to whom it may concern.

32:55 Our European model of shared sovereignty can be an inspiration in a globalized world in need of order.

35:16 We stand firmly together in confronting Iran’s increasingly dangerous course, and for us, like for many of you, the security of Israel is raison d'être. The European Union will put into place a new and very substantial round of sanctions this coming Monday to forcefully make the point that Iran’s behavior in the nuclear issue is unacceptable and a danger to world peace. 35:50

37:00 Possibly the most important common task of all will be to restore the legitimacy and viability of our economic model. The proper regulation of the global financial system is still unfinished business. We have to continue to work on it together and in the G-20 framework. This includes making sure that the IMF has what it takes to play its crucial role in the global system.

Update on our Friend, John

Thanks again and yet again to all of you who sent John your supportive messages.  They have meant more to him than they would even to most people, I think.  He has been deeply moved by your well-wishes and prayers. 

Last night, we found John eating his supper, and he ate well, considering he wasn't hungry and it was hospital food, after all.  (I did still have to cut up his pork chop for him, and open the little plastic tub of diced peaches and pears.) 

He has been moved off the ward where he had been, since he no longer needs the telemetry available there.  He is also no longer connected to an IV, we noticed.  No extra fluids, no IV medications.

He reported having walked 85 steps yesterday, with a walker but otherwise unsupported.  He sits up in a chair two or three times a day for half an hour at a time. He even cracked a joke or two. 

He was to have been transferred to a rehab facility by today, but that isn't going to happen for a while.  John is pretty closed-mouthed about his condition, so we don't know why or what this apparent set-back is. It still seems to us that every day is an improvement over the day before.

Thanks again for your support, which has unquestionably been a MAJOR factor in his recovery.

And a Little Child Shall Lead Them

Yesterday in church we sat next to a girl about two and a half years old, we think, who looked at us with enormous, searching, soulful, serious eyes.  After a few moments, she began talking to Demetrios, who was next to her, but as it was all babytalk he understood very little.  Her mother said the child was asking Demetrios his name.  So he told her and she continued the conversation.  All he could do was beam at her.  And somehow, the age gap melted away; this old man and this toddler were meeting beautiful soul-to- beautiful soul, as equals, in a communion that transcended all such matters as age or gender or nationality or language or anything else. 

And no, it was not a distraction from the worship; it was part of it. 

After church, I commented that it had been so beautiful it had actually brought tears to my eyes, and Demetrios said that was exactly how he had felt, like crying.  And he wondered if that's how paradise will be.

Of course it will be - and is, for the Christian life is a large measure of paradise already!

Reviews: A Restaurant and a Movie

Texas Roadhouse

We ate, with two other couples, at the Texas Roadhouse for the first time Saturday night.  So if you've never been there, you may like to know our unanimous opinion:  we don't ever plan to go back. 

The Texas Roadhouse has the best steak I've eaten for at least 20 years (with the possible exception of David Bate's steak).  That's important, of course, especially if you are a steak lover.  And the prices are reasonable, too.  But for us, the whole experience was a severe mismatch.

The first problem was that the restaurant has a highly misleading "call ahead" policy; you call an hour before you plan to arrive and tell them you're coming.  It's not a reservation, but we did suppose it was worth something.  Wrong.  We waited more than another full hour before we were seated, and even then, only after we let our displeasure be known and said wwe were leaving if we weren't seated within 5 more minutes.

The second problem was the noise.  If you are in the twenty-something crowd, the music might have been just right for you; maybe even if you are thirty-something.  As the manager put it, lots of energy going on in there.  But if you're a senior citizens it's just noise, and far too loud at that.  Because everybody has difficulty conversing with that stuff blaring, everyone has to shout to be heard, so the noise level from all the talking alone was terrible, unless you like that sort of thing.

The wait staff stops everything once per hour and stands in a line and  performs some sort of silly little line dance for you.  They seem to be encouraging everybody else to do the same, but nobody does.  For one thing, there is no space wide enough.  Meanwhile, of course, nobody's order is being taken, nobody is being served. 

And then the servers have a nasty little habit of asking, for example, whether you'd like onions and jack cheese on your steak without telling you it costs extra, or whether you'd like your baked potato with anything more than butter, also without telling you sour cream, chives, and bacon bits are extra. 

If it's your birthday you get to sit on a saddle atop a sawhorse, and the staff lifts that up and rocks you around a bit while singing something awful.  Your small children may enjoy that.

But for us, the whole evening was an ordeal and we were glad to depart as soon as we had finished eating.

Iron Lady

We have long been Margaret Thatcher fans, so we looked forward eagerly to this film about her.

The movie consists of a series of episodes from Mrs. Thatcher's career as remembered through the dementia of her old age.  I would rather have had the story presented through the eyes of someone not demented.   It lacked coherence.  I also would rather have had more details about her career than the gloss-overs this movie provided.   So as a story or as a documentary (take your pick) I rate the film a "C", as did the others with whom we watched it.

But my first reaction was, "That was SOME great piece of acting!"  Meryl Streep's performance is simply superb.   It's definitely Academy Award calibre.  And that makes this film worth watching and worth the price of the ticket. 

"God Loves you, Period" - Isn't That Only Half the Story?

No, it's the whole, entire, complete story.  There is nothing else in God's attitude toward you but love.  His love does not come alongside anything else that might dilute or alter or temper it, or overrule it or modify it in any way.  Or even "balance" it or form some sort of polarity with it.   There is no tension, so to speak, between God's love and anything else.  There is no dark side whatsoever in God's attitude toward you.  It's pure love, infinite love, unconditional love. 

But isn't He going to cast the wicked into hell, someone may ask?  And come on, do not even try to tell me that is love.

Indeed, that would not be love.  It would conflict with love.  It would form a boundary upon the boundless, a condition upon the unconditional, a limit to the infinite.  It would mean that at some point, God had turned on you. 

God doesn't cast anyone into hell.  God continues to love every single person completely, forever.  Hell is what happens when He places you squarely in the immediate presence of that love and you can't stand it.

What?  Not be able to stand God's love, are you serious?

It's true.  Not everyone may want God's love.  There can be serveral reasons for this, and they all have to do with the condition of the human heart, not with God's heart. 

One reason is that God's Love is inseparable from God's Truth.  It's clear not everybody wants to be confronted with the truth about himself.  While seeing our shocking ugliness now, while there's time to change it, is appalling enough, seeing it when we've become too hardened to change is infinitely worse.  It's hell.

Another reason we may not like to stand in the sunshine of God's love is jealousy, as illustrated by the elder brother of the Prodigal Son.  A person may not mind if God loves him infinitely, but he does not want to stand around and watch (much less participate in) any love-fest involving God and that terrible other person.  It would seem so wrong if, for example, that terrible other person were Stalin.   Such gross injustice, even if he did repent at the last moment!  Of course, there isn't really any question of injustice; as Jesus pointed out, God has every right to do whatever He chooses with what is His own.  (And this would apply regardless of how Stalin had come to be saved.)  It's an unloving heart that resents it, and the resentment prevents a person from joining the celebration.  That's hell.

Another example:  if I did not take my well-deserved revenge upon so-and-so, it was because I fully expected God to do it for me, and now I find Him rejoicing in and with that miserable wretch?  An unloving heart cannot bear this.  It might be even worse for me if I did take my revenge and felt well-satisfied, to find myself now confronted with that person, standing before me in his glory, shining, and basking in God's love - my own burning astonishment, plus the satisfaction in the revenge I took,  meanwhile keeping me out of the loop.  

Then again, there may be some who are so heavily invested in "the flesh" that they have become blind to spiritual joys.  While the saints rejoice in one another, in forgiveness, in praising God, in living His Life with Him, in creativity, in peace, we may speculate that others may miss bridge games or hot showers or pizza too much to care about the rest, and would be bored stiff if it weren't for resenting the absence of their physical pleasures. 

Hell does not mean God sends someone to any separate place.  Hell does not mean God tortures us, or has the devil do it for Him.  Hell is something each person does to himself.  As the saying goes, the gates of hell are locked on the inside.   It's our reaction to God's love that becomes our hell.  There can be all sorts of reasons God's very Love becomes hell for us.    But God Himself harbors nothing for us but eternal, undiluted, steadfast, unchanging, infinite Love.  Period.

About Prayer Chains and Prayer Requests

What's all this, someone recently asked me, about prayer and prayer requests?  Will God be more inclined to heal a sick child if someone prays for him than if nobody does?  Or isn't God going to do His will in any case, with or without prayer?  And what's this thing we so often hear said to someone in trouble:  "Hundreds of people are praying for you?"  What's the whole idea behind prayer chains; is it a massive lobbying effort, like getting as many signatures as possible on a petition?  And how is it that even when hundreds or thousands of people are devoutly praying for the health of some small child, the kid dies anyway?  Is that God's will, that we had all been praying must be done?  The whole thing seems to make very little sense.

I don't have many answers and will welcome input from anyone who can add a new perspective to these issues.  But I think I do have some items to offer as contributions toward the answer(s).

The first thing, perhaps, is, we do not know God's will.  It seems to us it would be better if a sick child lived, but perhaps, in ways we cannot see, it is not the best, even for the child himself.  Maybe being taken straight into the armns of God will be better for him than living a life of horrible  suffering, or - what is so hard to imagine when beholding an infant - a life of horrible sin that would grieve us all.   Perhaps your brother's death was better for him and his whole family than the wrenching, searing, years-long divorce battle and custody fight God knew would have happened in another few years, had he lived.  Or maybe your aunt's dropping dead of a heart attack was better than dying of the cancer she had been about to develop.  We simply do not know even what is best for anybody, and we need to be humble enough to acknowledge this; that is why the bottom line, in all our prayers, is "Thy will be done."

Yes, God is going to do His will in any case.  But such is His love for us, that He wants us to participate in the doing of it.  He wants to glorify all of us by allowing us to share in His Life, in all His doings,  and to have that as the center of communion with one another.  Prayer requests and prayer chains are about Christian communion, and especially about solidarity with the suffering among us.  They are not about lobbying God, but about union with God and with one another.

So if God is going to do His will in any case, does that mean some innocent baby's misery and grotesque suffering was God's will?  No, that was the work of the devil.  That's evil at work, and not our all-loving God.

But God is still allowing this horror, isn't He?  Why?

Yes, He is.   And has been letting terrible things happen since the fall of Adam and Eve.  And we don't know why.  We do not know why.  Period.  We can speculate as to whether it involves chastisement to bring us to repentance or challenges to help us grow, or lessons in courage or faith or perseverance or practice in charity or resisting temptation or whatever.  Sometimes a wise spiritual father or mother can discern these things for us in our own lives.  But bottom line is, we either have faith or we don't.  Faith in this context means trust that whatever the reason(s) may be, they are, despite all appearances, kind, compassionate reasons of the good God Who loves us better than we love ourselves and is infinitely wiser.  In this warped world, "God writes straight with crooked lines." 

And the basis for our hope, ultimately, is the death and resurrection of God-in-the Flesh.  What could have been more immoral, more unjust, more obscene, than an innocent Man murdered by crucifixion?  What greater victory could the devil ever have claimed than deicide?  And this, despite every prayer from the disciples and from His mother?  And in fact, despite His own, "If possible, let this cup pass from me!"

But God did let the catastrophe happen.  And in and through it He did many wonderful things for us (type "Why Did Jesus Die?" in the search box, top right of this blog).  Not that He needed this monstrous sin for the doing of His workl He never requires there to be evil for the sake of the greater good.  But He saw fit to work through this crime, for whatever reason, perhaps because WE needed it to be that way.

And then He brought victory out of it.  He didn't do away entirely with the devil and all his mignons, not yet, and we do not know why not yet.  But the promise that He shall destroy them entirely, in His own good time, whenever He knows is best, that promise is in what He did do in His resurrection:  He took away satan's main weapon against us.  He took away death and the fear of death.  He showed Himself stronger than death and suffering and wickedness.  That's what assures us that ultimately, He will consummate His victory and shall "wipe away the tears from every cheek," and reveal that all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all things, in a hidden sense, always were well.  We were always in His care, and we shall be able to see that everything that ever happened to us was for our good, and shall be able to give thanks in all things.

We either have faith in God, trust Him, or we don't.  If we do, then we pray.

Blog Note

I'm discontinuing political posts here.  I may draw your attention to some news items from time to time that I find important, but I am going to refrain from adding any commentary.

Do I feel intimidated, you ask?  Ummmm, well, not really.  Has my husband put the quash on it?  No, although I am following his advice here.  What, then?  This just wasn't supposed to be that kind of blog.  If I decide I ought to do any political commenting, I would then consider starting another blog.  But that seems highly unlikely.

Just please pay attention to what our politicans actually DO, not just what they say.  Pay ttention to that, too, but only in the context of what they DO.

What a Horror

A woman who lives a few short miles from me was in her home last night when an intruder came in and robbed her.  That would be horrifying enough in itself, but that's just the beginning.  The intruder beat the woman.  And that in itself would also be horrifying, but it goes on.  He then abducted her, took her to an ATM machine and eventually left her beside the highway.  But it doesn't even stop there.  He also set fire to her house.

There's a news story with video here.

Her brother, who recently so kindly sent a wonderful message to my friend John, now asks you, and I join him in asking, for prayers for this woman, who is his sister, Mary.

Thank you so very much. 

Another Observation on the Latest Presidential Debate

Did you catch what Newt Gingrich said?  That he agrees with Ron Paul except on Iran (and presumably Israel, which I'm guessing he forgot to mention)?  Agrees with Ron Paul!  Yes, he said so.

Of course he was merely pandering to Paul supporters, but his statement cuts two ways:  either people who think Ron Paul's stances are wacky ought not to vote for Gingrich, either; or else, if you think Gingrich isn't wacky, then apparently neither is Ron Paul.

????

Presidential Debate

I used to suppose Rick Santorum was perhaps more honest than, say, Gingrich or Romney.  Until two nights ago when I heard him say, during the debate, that the economic downturn was caused by a spike in oil prices in 2008.

He went on from there to tell two more lies in rapid succession, but I was so stunned by the first that I can't now tell you what those latter lies were.

Gingrich lied about having been a lobbyist and Romney lied by omission about his company.  Bain Capital would acquire a company, borrowing the money to do it, and then take that money out of the bought corporation in order to repay the loan.  On top of that money,Bain also sucked out of its acquired company as much profit for its investors as possible; whether the company thus treated survived or prospered was of no concern; the Bain people got unheard-of profit either way.  That's called unscrupulous.

It seems such a bizarre thing, when people have right in front of their eyes someone everybody agrees is honest, yet they think they ought to see which of the others, the liars and crooks, is more suitable to be President of the United States.  They will make better decisions, we are told.  No way.  Dishonest men never make the best decisions because every decision is colored by their dishonesty. 

And every word out of their mouths, as Rick Santorum so vividly demonstrated.

God Loves You - Period

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect. – Matthew 5: 43-48

Outside of Orthodox Christianity, one often hears of a god whose attitude toward sinner changes once they repent. But such a heterodox idea flies straight n the face of everything Jesus said and did and taught. God's attitude toward each and every person (yes, even Saddam Hussein) is ever unchanging. How can the All-Good One, the All-Holy, love us who are so, well, so the opposite, so vile and so sick and so warped? He can and He does because that's the very meaning of Goodness and of Holiness: Love. That's what, rightly understood, the Law and the Prophets are all about: Love. That's the basis of morality: Love.

Even the tax-collectors (read, "worst sinners you can imagine"), says Jesus, greet those who greet them, and love their brethren. We should be better than that. Do we really want to suppose God isn't? But the very reason we ought to be better than that, says Jesus, is that God is, and we also ought to be, precisely so we can be like Him, as true children.

God in heaven is perfect, meanng His love is perfect. There is absolutely nobody God loves more than He loves you and me, because there is no "more" nor "less" in God's immeasurable love. That means He loves you as much as He loves, say, the Virgin Mary, and He loves such a villain as Osama Bin Laden as much as He loves you. (Sorry about that!, and sorry, dear government monitors, to be wasting your time here.)  God loves you no matter what.  No matter what!

God's relationship with each person is different, because each person is different.  And of course any relationship is reciprocal, a two-way street.  How He acts and interacts with each of us differs.  God has a different relationship with St. Mark than with St. Luke, and with St. Luke than with you, and with you than with me.   (The difference is possible because it isn't His unchanging Essence dealing with us, it's His Uncreated Powers.)  But no matter what that relationship is, it always proceeds, from God's end, from perfect love.  God's love is absolute, not relative.  Absolute, not contingent.  Perfect, not conditional.  He makes the blessing of His rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike and His sun to shine on the evil and the good alike. 

Yes, He is "angry" at the injustice in this world and the sin and suffering and sickness and death and every sort of evil, but that's precisely because He loves you and doesn't want you to be harmed by any of those things.  He recognizes that every time you sin, you are not just a perpetrator, you are also, and more fundamentally, a victim of satan's.  In the account of the first sin, Eve is deceived by the serpent.  And we have been deceived ever since.  And the idea that God's love toward us ever fluctuates or is tempered or diluted or spoiled by anything else is one of those deceptions. 

God's love is infinite.  Unchanging.  Universal.  Unconditional.  Absolute.  Indestructible.  Stronger than death, more ferocious than hell, more tender than a mother's embrace.

Ponder well another saying of our Lord's:

But you, love your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and you shall be the children of the Highest: for He is kind to the unthankful and [to] the evil. – Luke 6:35

Update and Thanks

Thanks from the bottom of my heart to each of you who sent get well wishes to my friend John. It meant much more to him than you might suppose.  As I said, he is alone and unused to people (other than his daughter) showing care.  When I had read him all the messages, he murmured, "Beautiful." And then he added, "You've all brought some life into my life." (Ponder well what that means and how very important it is!)  That was about the first  full sentence he has spoken during this long and miserable convalescence.  

He's on solid foods as of yesterday, finger foods because his hands, stiff from one of his medications, don't work well enough to handle a spoon or fork.  He still cannot sit up without support, and has developed clots in his legs which cause considerable pain.  He's on meds to dissolve them.

He is aware now of the call button and keeps track of where it is.  (This is the first time he has ever been in a hospital.)

His face is less stiff today; it has expression again, so he can frown and smile.  He smiled the whole time I was reading your messages.

He will be in the hospital another week, so I'm hoping to get messages from still more people, anyone and everyone who reads this. Don't be shy because you don't know John; that very fact makes it all the more touching for him.

Thanks again!

Persons, Nature, and Free Will

Check out David Garner's musings on the subject.  They're clear, easy to understand, and succinct thoughts.  See why the Orthodox insistence on the necessity of doing good works has nothing to do with "works salvation".

Of Your Charity...

...please pray for John.  He has had to have major surgery a few days ago.  He was already very depressed beforehand, and addicted to his medications as well, and those factors and others are complicating and slowing his recovery.  Withdrawal on top of all the rest is not easy!  He's an atheist and he is in a lot of pain, no family except a grown daughter, and I've finally identified that pathetic look I keep seeing in his eyes that tears at my heart:  it's fear. 

Also, if you would be so kind, may I ask you to leave him your greetings and well-wishes, either in the comments or at my e-mail address:  anastasiatheo001 AT verizon DOT net or at  anastasiatheo001 AT gmail DOT com.  Either will work.  John isn't used to having people care for him, and it occurs to me that if I could bring him a whole sheaf of such notes, that would probably do him very great emotional and spiritual good. 

Thank you, and God reward your kindness!