This is brilliant. I thought I caught some traces of Kafka there in the middle, with the dark litany of what all the patriarchs say about each other. Or maybe Monty Python. ("We are the Russian Holy Church!" "No, we are the Holy Church of Russia!") In any event, a new wind must rise if people will believe in Jesus and His Gospel again—for the traditional authorities have not only discredited themselves, a lot of them are also quite clearly apostates who have no living faith in Him: an archonic bureaucracy like the rest. If people think that's Jesus, it's hard to blame them for their aversion.
Well said, Sethu -- and somewhere, I suppose here, since it's where I'm starting off for the day, I want to say: Welcome! It is very good to have you here at Sabbath Empire!
Kafkaesque is exactly what I felt like running through the demented forever-hallways of that passage...
Glad to see you tackling this. I certainly don't want to! Haha
But really, as Americans/Anglo converts we are in this bizarro space-time where East meets West while Christianity is busy both dying and being reborn.
At the end there a few remarks from Metropolitan Jonah popped into my mind which I found quite odd when I first heard them, but have slowly started to make sense.
He said that we should remember that the parish is NOT a consecrated community, like a monastery or a marriage. And went on to say that the parish priest's primary responsibility is to minister to the fathers of the parish.
Interesting! Is this talk of his to be found anywhere?
One of my difficulties trying to fit into the contemporary Orthodox world is that it seems our options are mostly either sane, quiet life as a monastic OR just accept modernity as it is and get some therapy about it on Sunday, maybe Saturday, too, as a member of a normal parish...
I am puzzled by your interpretation of the NT and conversion. It is clear in the Synoptics that almost everyone who responded to Jesus’ call did not begin to understand what he meant or what he did. Mark and John are explicit: one cannot understand Jesus’s relationship with the Father and the meaning of if his ministry until after the resurrection and the coming of the Spirit. Think of the centurion who watches Jesus die and says, “Surely this man WAS the Son of God.” He can’t say, Jesus IS the Son of God until after Jesus is resurrected. Jesus during the Great Commission commands the disciples to baptize everyone in the name of the Trinity and to teach the believers everything he taught. Sadly, I don’t see much evidence for the second part of the commission. Most Christians see the words of Jesus an an impossible ideal, not a plan for a God - centered life. But what if the sermon on the Mount can learned and followed? No, change never happens overnight. But transformation is possible. Surely the Church would look very different and we might find the peace and love Jesus promises.
"They seem like three sides of the same damn coin, the one Yeshua said to render unto Caesar—three different ways to keep the dream of Christian empire alive, when really it should have died a long time ago, and perhaps never been born in the first place"— this is one of the most refreshing, clear, stabilizing things I've read in a long time. Thank you Graham. And for this whole very well-thought and well written essay. x
I was with you until #3. I see the same corrupt yearning, past and present, for Christendom in my church, Roman Catholicism. The deep divisions, arrogance, and lust for power are evident on all sides. But however charming, perhaps miraculous, the recitation of the Jesus Prayer is among those nonbelievers who attended Burning Man, it has almost nothing to do with the community of disciples Jesus wanted to create. Any 'discipline', including the Jesus prayer, fasting, the rosary, the Breviary, alms-giving, studying Scripture, and attending church every week are just the means to the end of loving God with heart, mind and soul, and loving your neighbor as yourself. Committing one's whole life to Jesus the Anointed means to learn to live the way Jesus sets out in places like the Sermon on the Mount. It means to learn what Jesus requires, and to practice His ways until they become second nature, your nature... His nature. #4 comes much closer to a genuine community of Christians, but I want to believe that God has not totally abandoned urban centers - the places where the vast majority of people will live in the future. That's a post for another essay.
Diana, I hear you -- and actually hope to address something like the point you're making here in my next essay, underway (which might run anywhere from satisfying to infuriating, depending!). I wouldn't say the spontaneous recitation of the Jesus Prayer at Burning Man years ago has "almost nothing" to do with the community Jesus wanted to create. "No one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor 12:3) .... to say the Jesus Prayer, not as some spiritual "technique" out of curiosity, but as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings (to hijack Wordsworth, I think it was) is a sign of the life-giving breath of God at work, raising dead people from the dust, making them new....and whatever happened with these people after Burning Man, I have no idea; since the Spirit does whatever he wishes, and is generally pretty good at it, I tend to assume at least some, if not all, of these people have been drawn further and further into the community Jesus has been busy forming for a long time now --- but I don't know. On the other hand, someone who belongs to the church organization that they're "supposed" to, but hasn't yet begun to call Jesus Lord in the depths of their own burning heart, may in reality be far, far, far away from Jesus' community, and not even realize it (may, in fact, be propped up in the illusion of closeness by all the religious stuff they're constantly surrounded by)
As for urban centers....of course, God hasn't abandoned them, nor will he ever -- cf. the Heavenly Jerusalem, etc. But we ourselves have largely abandoned Earth in them, and it's very difficult in them to carry out our original human vocation as gardeners, and therefore also to pray. There is a reason why the Desert Fathers are the Desert Fathers, not the Urban Fathers. We have, and are, bodies; those bodies relate to physical space in the way that they do. God created Earth for a reason; he never said to build cities -- that was our idea.
Your idea of the Spirit may be different than mine. Of course, you are right; the Spirit blows where it wishes, but God's power is purposeful not random. The kind of transformation required by Jesus takes constant seeking and "Burning Man" does not, I think, offer much more than transient enlightenment. (I could be wrong.) The Gospels suggest that knowledge of what is necessary to be a disciple of Jesus takes a long time to acquire and the disciplines practiced by the Desert Fathers do not bring immediate change. That doesn't mean that change is impossible or even has to be difficult. Once your mind, body and soul become aligned with the Trinity, the Christ-centered life is an easy yoke and brings great joy.
I wonder if men and women were meant to always be gardeners, or if whether we have lost some vital character trait that growing plants and raising animals made mandatory. For me, the vital component we have lost is the willingness to understand the difference between busy (Jesus during his ministry was busy) and hurried (Jesus was never hurried and he drove some of his disciples to distraction because he refused to be rushed.) My model for this trait is Fred Rogers, whose unhurried manner and slow television show appealed greatly to children and adults lucky enough to watch him. Perhaps living on a farm is the best way to learn and practice this skill, but it can also be cultivated in our scientific labs and urban classrooms.
"The Gospels suggest that knowledge of what is necessary to be a disciple of Jesus takes a long time to acquire" -- I know what you mean, Diana, and a more sensible person than I am would agree; there is, after all, a reason why the early(ish) church started imposing three year catechumenates on people before they could even be baptized...there is a lot of training, a lot of instruction, that has to happen for "real" conversion to occur....but the NT itself almost always presents conversion as immediate and spontaneous; no one has to deliberate about it; no one has to undergo training before taking the plunge -- it's always an immediate recognition of who Yeshua is, followed by an immediate, logistically unwise "So they left their nets and followed him." I think of the Ethiopian eunuch: No three year trial period as a catechumen, man, just immediate baptism in a ditch beside the road: "Look, here's water! What's to prevent me from being baptized?" Well *then* nothing; now, a lot of things.
As Jacob Needleman writes so deeply and thoroughly in Lost Christianity, first must come the holy desire. And this holy desire can arise anywhere at any time even at Burning Man. And we don't know if this desIre was maintained after the festival. But the fact that it possibly and spontaneously arose in a group is wondrous. Then comes the hard work of which you speak, maintaining the desire and acquiring the "discipline practiced by the Desert Fathers." Rare to arise and much more rare to be cultivated and worked.
This is incredible in its scope and its power. I learned much and have been much challenged. I have a feeling I will need to come back and read this again - and perhaps again - to begin to appreciate the jewels within this essay. Thank you for sharing this.
Yes , I agree with Wendy’s, your posts require much attention of the heart as your writing is very deep , very profound Graham . Keeps me from doing the washing up, which is a good thing. Makes me desire to pray even more. I read your writing and think of it as a parable for this time Elijah came thither unto a cave ( a true dessert father) 1 King 19:11 -12; “And behold the Lord passed by and a great and strong wind rent the mountains and brake it into pieces and the rocks before the Lord but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake: but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire...a still small voice”
Door number three, please. Or door number four, or five? Just let me get out where it’s wild and in natural order. I would be in the Protestant category (on here anyway), but categorized against my will as I find it difficult to swallow any group think. You can imagine just how popular I am in my own Christian circles with remarks like that. These hierarchies and politics exist across all the Christian planes - divisions that have wearied me my whole life. The same face with different names. The religious mountaintops (Rome, Athos, good ole Billy Graham) are too constantly unsettled with ever-deepening cracks. Reading this (excellent) essay, I think I am doomed/free to be a spiritual outlier for good. I mean, I did grow up thinking YHWH was my actual father until age 7. I kind of prefer to be right back there - barefoot, walking with my dog on a dusty path toward the real Valley of Vision. Always hoping to see my friends at the end, or here and there along the way.
Graham, I so love this. This is so profound. You and Martin reach so deep into my heart with your questions, excavations, poetic renderings. I just want to let you know that am with you 1000% percent! No time to write out my thoughts at the moment but I will soon.
Graham! Just received another Liturgy of the Wild from Martin. Keeping up with the two of you is wonderfully overwhelming as your posts demand 3 or 4 or ten readings. You two offer such pungent "mossy" bark encasing my life here on the farm. Lately I don't dig into the earth, pick sweet coffee cherries, sing with the birds, lay flower offerings in the shrines without having fleeting dialogues with you and your essays, evoking words from your liturgies. So you keep me beautiful company. Being a newbie to Orthodoxy in Bali (where my parish up here in the mountains is a Balinese version of Hindu) I had looked into who "governs" Orthodoxy here in Indonesia and started getting into the whole Greek, Russian, ROCOR then Byzantine (now?) thing of which you have written with such depth. I had to just lay face down on the earth and surrender, be simple, forget all that and feel what is important, local, loving. Jesus is here in the temples, on the land. The Balinese have different visions of Who occupies their land and mountain tops, no matter, no difference truly. But they are my Parish, my neighboring farmers and worshipers, and we are one community, growing food together, sharing what we have, caring for one another. No divine liturgy here, but sacred chanting and prayers. I share in the Eucharist with holy water and rice grains. A deep bow and many thanks for your companionship!
Beautiful, Wendyl! "I had to just lay face down on the earth and surrender, be simple, forget all that and feel what is important, local, loving" -- amen, amen, amen -- from across many seas, amen, forever!
Yes , I agree with Wendy’s, your posts require much attention of the heart as your writing is very deep , very profound Graham . Keeps me from doing the washing up, which is a good thing. Makes me desire to pray even more. I read your writing and think of it as a parable for this time Elijah came thither unto a cave ( a true dessert father) 1 King 19:11 -12; “And behold the Lord passed by and a great and strong wind rent the mountains and brake it into pieces and the rocks before the Lord but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake: but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire...a still small voice”
Glory to God, Leonore! A passage near and dear to my heart! Speaking of dishes, and being kept from doing them...my wife has a brilliant criterion for distinguishing between activities that are human and full of life, versus inhumane and depleting: If you can do the Jesus Prayer while doing the activity, it's good; if you can't, it's not. Her patron(ness?) saint is Isidora, whose job was just to wash up a monastery -- she wasn't a proper nun at all, just there to help. And she wore basically a dish towel around her head as a headscarf. And once a visiting monk caught a glimpse of the trees bowing to Isidora, the secret holy one...
Suffice to say Graham...you are one of those wise, still small voices in the wilderness. I strongly believe with all my heart that it’s the quite Christians , people who go about there quite “Hidden Lives” hearts of Faith and Grace, that will, simply and softly, like a child with the Holy Spirit, re - weave our broken Holy Sacramental Tapestry of life. Blessings to you Graham and Blessings to us all!
I love this and I love you, my friend. I wasn't sure what I wanted to be when I grew up before reading this, but an illegal parasynagogue might be in the running now. I am taken with the image of the mother of cain animal-ing out after the roots of Eden. I think the almost Hobbesian fear of this sort of casting-off from hierachy island going too far would be more charming if there was even a faint possibility that the Church often stumbling into such open-hearted chaos was at the root of the centuries of stupidity and murder.
A living way that trues the space between it and others with love and beauty is the only guard for one's particulars. I suspect the anther and pistil of the word of G-d is heavily clustered in the human imagination. As such it seems more likely to flourish in wind and the symbiotic mix of life around it than under the glass at some self-identified center. I have often wondered if the burying of the talents in the Yeshua's parable refers to this guarding of truth. What you bind on earth is bound in heaven and what you loose on earth is loosed in heaven. Just an outsider here, but I think lads (and it has been mostly a phallic project) who cannot bear the thought of a trueing that is more mutable than fixed and more multivocal than monologued have won the day for centuries and the world around them has grown grey with their breath. Why not give standing on the other foot a whirl for a bit of a minute. You can always go back to punching heretics and Jews in Chrysostomesque granduer if cats of your dogmas start sleeping with the dogs of some slinky catechism. G-d is the type of memory for which repetiton without innovation is the gateway to dementia. In the end, I am looking in from outside. Not an intact tablet guy. Not even a broken tablet safe in the box guy. More of a dust of the tablets on the tail fur of a hare tangled in the robes of Klee's Angel as it all blows out from Eden kinda guy.
You know how Walter Benjamin will have an essay and it's only a paragraph, and then you just have to think about it for the rest of your life? That's your second paragraph here. I hope you put it in the book of poetry I hope you're working on, without which the birds will stop singing, if you're not, and you don't.
Also, I don't put yard signs in my yard, though this has become an American thing to do, but if I did put yard signs in my yard, I'd have one -- hopefully on the edge of the yard, right to a neighbor's "In this house, we believe," etc etc -- I'd have one that said: WHY NOT GIVE STANDING ON THE OTHER FOOT A WHIRL FOR A BIT OF A MINUTE. YOU CAN ALWAYS GO BACK TO PUNCHING HERETICS AND JEWS IN CHRYSOSTOMESQUE GRANDUER IF CATS OF YOUR DOGMAS START SLEEPING WITH THE DOGS OF SOME SLINKY CATECHISM.
One thing occurs to me as I read: in early Ireland, the faith was monk centred. Abbotts rather than Bishops took the lead. That seems right. I think we still need the hierarchies: who else will guard the tradition? We are not protestants, after all. There has to be a centre. But the job of the centre is to hold the truth so that the margins can pursue it truly. Which is up to us.
So it was. And the history of the execution stake is carved by every idea ever creeded into ideology as they misread that writing on the bullet marked wall as an offer to hold their beer so their special truth can solve the ambiguities of multiplicity by subtraction.
I'm with you, too, Paul -- we still need the hierarchies, absolutely. As I said to Brian below: "We need someone to obey, to surrender to -- and that person needs someone to obey and surrender to -- all the way up to the Father of us all; hierarchy, when functioning beautifully, overcomes the tyranny of the ego. And the structure of the Church -- simply by being structures, rather than whims -- help, too: anything that challenges the flightiness of our moods can be a medicine. Liturgy in particular, I think..." -- and abbots, rather than bishops, as the primary face to face Father, I can get on board with that -- but if bishops tended, as a rule, to be like Saint John of San Francisco or Saint Martin of Tours, I'd wish the whole world were swimming with bishops, and I'd run out to obey them as often as I could...
As for "who else will guard the tradition" -- certainly us, too. Guarding the tradition in Orthodoxy very much rests also on the laity, sometimes especially so...speaking of Saint John of SF, when Fr. Seraphim started at first to make a habit of getting Vladika John's blessing before every printing of the Orthodox Word, John said: No, it's *your* responsibility to make sure you're upholding the Tradition -- and I have confidence in you to do that!
I kinda think there is tradition and there is tradition. The former is the search for the pearl of great price. The latter is what is sell to buy the field that contains said pearl. I think the history of confusing the one for the other is often called the Truth.
Graham, this is a great piece that our modern integralists (of both the Catholic and Protestant flavor) need to hear. The Venn diagram of kingdoms of Caesar and God is more 2 separate circles than overlap.
Martin's distinction between feral and wild is particularly useful. You need structure and discipline to survive in the wild; without it, you turn feral or die. Orthodoxy encapsulates that so well, and that's coming from someone who's not even Orthodox (yet?).
I also have visited Fr. Seraphim Rose's monastery while I was staying at St. Hermann's just about an hour away (www.sainthermanmonastery.com/aboutus.asp). It is a beautiful area in which to seek God. I can see the echo of that trip in your current projects.
We need someone to obey, to surrender to -- and that person needs someone to obey and surrender to -- all the way up to the Father of us all; hierarchy, when functioning beautifully, overcomes the tyranny of the ego. And the structure of the Church -- simply by being structures, rather than whims -- help, too: anything that challenges the flightiness of our moods can be a medicine. Liturgy in particular, I think -- as I said in Sunlilies: "Trapped in the prison of our own darkened hearts, our actions are often mindless and self-destructive. God's first salve for us, which begins to heal us from our isolating self-delusion, is liturgy: Renouncing self-will, we simply come together and sing—and, by doing this, we participate in the beauty and harmony of Creation, its Cosmic Liturgy: The sun rises and sets, the moon cycles through its phases, flowers spring up, blossom, and die, birds sing in the morning, and roost in the branches of trees at night, and we sing of all this to our Creator, coming alive together with all things..."
Glad you got to see the Platina monastery! It's so beautiful and quiet, isn't it!?
The very meal I needed.
This is brilliant. I thought I caught some traces of Kafka there in the middle, with the dark litany of what all the patriarchs say about each other. Or maybe Monty Python. ("We are the Russian Holy Church!" "No, we are the Holy Church of Russia!") In any event, a new wind must rise if people will believe in Jesus and His Gospel again—for the traditional authorities have not only discredited themselves, a lot of them are also quite clearly apostates who have no living faith in Him: an archonic bureaucracy like the rest. If people think that's Jesus, it's hard to blame them for their aversion.
Well said, Sethu -- and somewhere, I suppose here, since it's where I'm starting off for the day, I want to say: Welcome! It is very good to have you here at Sabbath Empire!
Kafkaesque is exactly what I felt like running through the demented forever-hallways of that passage...
Glad to see you tackling this. I certainly don't want to! Haha
But really, as Americans/Anglo converts we are in this bizarro space-time where East meets West while Christianity is busy both dying and being reborn.
At the end there a few remarks from Metropolitan Jonah popped into my mind which I found quite odd when I first heard them, but have slowly started to make sense.
He said that we should remember that the parish is NOT a consecrated community, like a monastery or a marriage. And went on to say that the parish priest's primary responsibility is to minister to the fathers of the parish.
Interesting! Is this talk of his to be found anywhere?
One of my difficulties trying to fit into the contemporary Orthodox world is that it seems our options are mostly either sane, quiet life as a monastic OR just accept modernity as it is and get some therapy about it on Sunday, maybe Saturday, too, as a member of a normal parish...
https://ap.okyrios.org/w/8sh3CJD84LPjKA2MLUuHKJ
Here it is. There's a part 2, too.
I've met Vladika Jonah and he's a wonderful and warm man.
I totally feel that. I will try to find that particular talk and shoot it to you if I can. He's got a lot of them...
I am puzzled by your interpretation of the NT and conversion. It is clear in the Synoptics that almost everyone who responded to Jesus’ call did not begin to understand what he meant or what he did. Mark and John are explicit: one cannot understand Jesus’s relationship with the Father and the meaning of if his ministry until after the resurrection and the coming of the Spirit. Think of the centurion who watches Jesus die and says, “Surely this man WAS the Son of God.” He can’t say, Jesus IS the Son of God until after Jesus is resurrected. Jesus during the Great Commission commands the disciples to baptize everyone in the name of the Trinity and to teach the believers everything he taught. Sadly, I don’t see much evidence for the second part of the commission. Most Christians see the words of Jesus an an impossible ideal, not a plan for a God - centered life. But what if the sermon on the Mount can learned and followed? No, change never happens overnight. But transformation is possible. Surely the Church would look very different and we might find the peace and love Jesus promises.
"They seem like three sides of the same damn coin, the one Yeshua said to render unto Caesar—three different ways to keep the dream of Christian empire alive, when really it should have died a long time ago, and perhaps never been born in the first place"— this is one of the most refreshing, clear, stabilizing things I've read in a long time. Thank you Graham. And for this whole very well-thought and well written essay. x
Also-- Carpathian Orthodoxy, wow. That struck something true, reading it
I was with you until #3. I see the same corrupt yearning, past and present, for Christendom in my church, Roman Catholicism. The deep divisions, arrogance, and lust for power are evident on all sides. But however charming, perhaps miraculous, the recitation of the Jesus Prayer is among those nonbelievers who attended Burning Man, it has almost nothing to do with the community of disciples Jesus wanted to create. Any 'discipline', including the Jesus prayer, fasting, the rosary, the Breviary, alms-giving, studying Scripture, and attending church every week are just the means to the end of loving God with heart, mind and soul, and loving your neighbor as yourself. Committing one's whole life to Jesus the Anointed means to learn to live the way Jesus sets out in places like the Sermon on the Mount. It means to learn what Jesus requires, and to practice His ways until they become second nature, your nature... His nature. #4 comes much closer to a genuine community of Christians, but I want to believe that God has not totally abandoned urban centers - the places where the vast majority of people will live in the future. That's a post for another essay.
Diana, I hear you -- and actually hope to address something like the point you're making here in my next essay, underway (which might run anywhere from satisfying to infuriating, depending!). I wouldn't say the spontaneous recitation of the Jesus Prayer at Burning Man years ago has "almost nothing" to do with the community Jesus wanted to create. "No one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor 12:3) .... to say the Jesus Prayer, not as some spiritual "technique" out of curiosity, but as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings (to hijack Wordsworth, I think it was) is a sign of the life-giving breath of God at work, raising dead people from the dust, making them new....and whatever happened with these people after Burning Man, I have no idea; since the Spirit does whatever he wishes, and is generally pretty good at it, I tend to assume at least some, if not all, of these people have been drawn further and further into the community Jesus has been busy forming for a long time now --- but I don't know. On the other hand, someone who belongs to the church organization that they're "supposed" to, but hasn't yet begun to call Jesus Lord in the depths of their own burning heart, may in reality be far, far, far away from Jesus' community, and not even realize it (may, in fact, be propped up in the illusion of closeness by all the religious stuff they're constantly surrounded by)
As for urban centers....of course, God hasn't abandoned them, nor will he ever -- cf. the Heavenly Jerusalem, etc. But we ourselves have largely abandoned Earth in them, and it's very difficult in them to carry out our original human vocation as gardeners, and therefore also to pray. There is a reason why the Desert Fathers are the Desert Fathers, not the Urban Fathers. We have, and are, bodies; those bodies relate to physical space in the way that they do. God created Earth for a reason; he never said to build cities -- that was our idea.
I am glad you answered. Thank you.
Your idea of the Spirit may be different than mine. Of course, you are right; the Spirit blows where it wishes, but God's power is purposeful not random. The kind of transformation required by Jesus takes constant seeking and "Burning Man" does not, I think, offer much more than transient enlightenment. (I could be wrong.) The Gospels suggest that knowledge of what is necessary to be a disciple of Jesus takes a long time to acquire and the disciplines practiced by the Desert Fathers do not bring immediate change. That doesn't mean that change is impossible or even has to be difficult. Once your mind, body and soul become aligned with the Trinity, the Christ-centered life is an easy yoke and brings great joy.
I wonder if men and women were meant to always be gardeners, or if whether we have lost some vital character trait that growing plants and raising animals made mandatory. For me, the vital component we have lost is the willingness to understand the difference between busy (Jesus during his ministry was busy) and hurried (Jesus was never hurried and he drove some of his disciples to distraction because he refused to be rushed.) My model for this trait is Fred Rogers, whose unhurried manner and slow television show appealed greatly to children and adults lucky enough to watch him. Perhaps living on a farm is the best way to learn and practice this skill, but it can also be cultivated in our scientific labs and urban classrooms.
"The Gospels suggest that knowledge of what is necessary to be a disciple of Jesus takes a long time to acquire" -- I know what you mean, Diana, and a more sensible person than I am would agree; there is, after all, a reason why the early(ish) church started imposing three year catechumenates on people before they could even be baptized...there is a lot of training, a lot of instruction, that has to happen for "real" conversion to occur....but the NT itself almost always presents conversion as immediate and spontaneous; no one has to deliberate about it; no one has to undergo training before taking the plunge -- it's always an immediate recognition of who Yeshua is, followed by an immediate, logistically unwise "So they left their nets and followed him." I think of the Ethiopian eunuch: No three year trial period as a catechumen, man, just immediate baptism in a ditch beside the road: "Look, here's water! What's to prevent me from being baptized?" Well *then* nothing; now, a lot of things.
As Jacob Needleman writes so deeply and thoroughly in Lost Christianity, first must come the holy desire. And this holy desire can arise anywhere at any time even at Burning Man. And we don't know if this desIre was maintained after the festival. But the fact that it possibly and spontaneously arose in a group is wondrous. Then comes the hard work of which you speak, maintaining the desire and acquiring the "discipline practiced by the Desert Fathers." Rare to arise and much more rare to be cultivated and worked.
Beautifully said, Wendyl -- Diana, I want my real answer to be Wendyl's here ;)
This is incredible in its scope and its power. I learned much and have been much challenged. I have a feeling I will need to come back and read this again - and perhaps again - to begin to appreciate the jewels within this essay. Thank you for sharing this.
Great piece, dear Graham. Provocative, unsettling, but also visionary and truth telling. Keep on and God bless!
Thank you, Father Radu! We're gonna need you Romanians to show us through the wilderness...
Wendyl’s post , stupid auto correct.
Yes , I agree with Wendy’s, your posts require much attention of the heart as your writing is very deep , very profound Graham . Keeps me from doing the washing up, which is a good thing. Makes me desire to pray even more. I read your writing and think of it as a parable for this time Elijah came thither unto a cave ( a true dessert father) 1 King 19:11 -12; “And behold the Lord passed by and a great and strong wind rent the mountains and brake it into pieces and the rocks before the Lord but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake: but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire...a still small voice”
We need our still small wild voices!
Door number three, please. Or door number four, or five? Just let me get out where it’s wild and in natural order. I would be in the Protestant category (on here anyway), but categorized against my will as I find it difficult to swallow any group think. You can imagine just how popular I am in my own Christian circles with remarks like that. These hierarchies and politics exist across all the Christian planes - divisions that have wearied me my whole life. The same face with different names. The religious mountaintops (Rome, Athos, good ole Billy Graham) are too constantly unsettled with ever-deepening cracks. Reading this (excellent) essay, I think I am doomed/free to be a spiritual outlier for good. I mean, I did grow up thinking YHWH was my actual father until age 7. I kind of prefer to be right back there - barefoot, walking with my dog on a dusty path toward the real Valley of Vision. Always hoping to see my friends at the end, or here and there along the way.
Graham, I so love this. This is so profound. You and Martin reach so deep into my heart with your questions, excavations, poetic renderings. I just want to let you know that am with you 1000% percent! No time to write out my thoughts at the moment but I will soon.
Thanks, Wendyl -- that means so much! I'm with you too!!
Graham! Just received another Liturgy of the Wild from Martin. Keeping up with the two of you is wonderfully overwhelming as your posts demand 3 or 4 or ten readings. You two offer such pungent "mossy" bark encasing my life here on the farm. Lately I don't dig into the earth, pick sweet coffee cherries, sing with the birds, lay flower offerings in the shrines without having fleeting dialogues with you and your essays, evoking words from your liturgies. So you keep me beautiful company. Being a newbie to Orthodoxy in Bali (where my parish up here in the mountains is a Balinese version of Hindu) I had looked into who "governs" Orthodoxy here in Indonesia and started getting into the whole Greek, Russian, ROCOR then Byzantine (now?) thing of which you have written with such depth. I had to just lay face down on the earth and surrender, be simple, forget all that and feel what is important, local, loving. Jesus is here in the temples, on the land. The Balinese have different visions of Who occupies their land and mountain tops, no matter, no difference truly. But they are my Parish, my neighboring farmers and worshipers, and we are one community, growing food together, sharing what we have, caring for one another. No divine liturgy here, but sacred chanting and prayers. I share in the Eucharist with holy water and rice grains. A deep bow and many thanks for your companionship!
Beautiful, Wendyl! "I had to just lay face down on the earth and surrender, be simple, forget all that and feel what is important, local, loving" -- amen, amen, amen -- from across many seas, amen, forever!
Yes , I agree with Wendy’s, your posts require much attention of the heart as your writing is very deep , very profound Graham . Keeps me from doing the washing up, which is a good thing. Makes me desire to pray even more. I read your writing and think of it as a parable for this time Elijah came thither unto a cave ( a true dessert father) 1 King 19:11 -12; “And behold the Lord passed by and a great and strong wind rent the mountains and brake it into pieces and the rocks before the Lord but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake: but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire...a still small voice”
We need our still small wild voices!
Glory to God, Leonore! A passage near and dear to my heart! Speaking of dishes, and being kept from doing them...my wife has a brilliant criterion for distinguishing between activities that are human and full of life, versus inhumane and depleting: If you can do the Jesus Prayer while doing the activity, it's good; if you can't, it's not. Her patron(ness?) saint is Isidora, whose job was just to wash up a monastery -- she wasn't a proper nun at all, just there to help. And she wore basically a dish towel around her head as a headscarf. And once a visiting monk caught a glimpse of the trees bowing to Isidora, the secret holy one...
I won’t look good with the dish towel , I’m a bandanna type of girl. Isidora and her Hidden Life.
Suffice to say Graham...you are one of those wise, still small voices in the wilderness. I strongly believe with all my heart that it’s the quite Christians , people who go about there quite “Hidden Lives” hearts of Faith and Grace, that will, simply and softly, like a child with the Holy Spirit, re - weave our broken Holy Sacramental Tapestry of life. Blessings to you Graham and Blessings to us all!
I love this and I love you, my friend. I wasn't sure what I wanted to be when I grew up before reading this, but an illegal parasynagogue might be in the running now. I am taken with the image of the mother of cain animal-ing out after the roots of Eden. I think the almost Hobbesian fear of this sort of casting-off from hierachy island going too far would be more charming if there was even a faint possibility that the Church often stumbling into such open-hearted chaos was at the root of the centuries of stupidity and murder.
A living way that trues the space between it and others with love and beauty is the only guard for one's particulars. I suspect the anther and pistil of the word of G-d is heavily clustered in the human imagination. As such it seems more likely to flourish in wind and the symbiotic mix of life around it than under the glass at some self-identified center. I have often wondered if the burying of the talents in the Yeshua's parable refers to this guarding of truth. What you bind on earth is bound in heaven and what you loose on earth is loosed in heaven. Just an outsider here, but I think lads (and it has been mostly a phallic project) who cannot bear the thought of a trueing that is more mutable than fixed and more multivocal than monologued have won the day for centuries and the world around them has grown grey with their breath. Why not give standing on the other foot a whirl for a bit of a minute. You can always go back to punching heretics and Jews in Chrysostomesque granduer if cats of your dogmas start sleeping with the dogs of some slinky catechism. G-d is the type of memory for which repetiton without innovation is the gateway to dementia. In the end, I am looking in from outside. Not an intact tablet guy. Not even a broken tablet safe in the box guy. More of a dust of the tablets on the tail fur of a hare tangled in the robes of Klee's Angel as it all blows out from Eden kinda guy.
Andrew! Brother!
You know how Walter Benjamin will have an essay and it's only a paragraph, and then you just have to think about it for the rest of your life? That's your second paragraph here. I hope you put it in the book of poetry I hope you're working on, without which the birds will stop singing, if you're not, and you don't.
Also, I don't put yard signs in my yard, though this has become an American thing to do, but if I did put yard signs in my yard, I'd have one -- hopefully on the edge of the yard, right to a neighbor's "In this house, we believe," etc etc -- I'd have one that said: WHY NOT GIVE STANDING ON THE OTHER FOOT A WHIRL FOR A BIT OF A MINUTE. YOU CAN ALWAYS GO BACK TO PUNCHING HERETICS AND JEWS IN CHRYSOSTOMESQUE GRANDUER IF CATS OF YOUR DOGMAS START SLEEPING WITH THE DOGS OF SOME SLINKY CATECHISM.
Finally a business scheme to relieve me from the working class hammer and shovel. Yard Signs of Wrecked Unfamous
"...the smell of hot sunlight coming off the bark of the trees."
That smell I know so we'll, thankyou for getting somewhat closer with text
Glad you know what I'm talking about! That smell is deep, deep in my reptile brain...it's my happy place....
This is great, Graham. I'm with you.
One thing occurs to me as I read: in early Ireland, the faith was monk centred. Abbotts rather than Bishops took the lead. That seems right. I think we still need the hierarchies: who else will guard the tradition? We are not protestants, after all. There has to be a centre. But the job of the centre is to hold the truth so that the margins can pursue it truly. Which is up to us.
Was it not William Butler Yeats who wrote “ the centre cannot hold”?
So it was. And the history of the execution stake is carved by every idea ever creeded into ideology as they misread that writing on the bullet marked wall as an offer to hold their beer so their special truth can solve the ambiguities of multiplicity by subtraction.
I'm with you, too, Paul -- we still need the hierarchies, absolutely. As I said to Brian below: "We need someone to obey, to surrender to -- and that person needs someone to obey and surrender to -- all the way up to the Father of us all; hierarchy, when functioning beautifully, overcomes the tyranny of the ego. And the structure of the Church -- simply by being structures, rather than whims -- help, too: anything that challenges the flightiness of our moods can be a medicine. Liturgy in particular, I think..." -- and abbots, rather than bishops, as the primary face to face Father, I can get on board with that -- but if bishops tended, as a rule, to be like Saint John of San Francisco or Saint Martin of Tours, I'd wish the whole world were swimming with bishops, and I'd run out to obey them as often as I could...
As for "who else will guard the tradition" -- certainly us, too. Guarding the tradition in Orthodoxy very much rests also on the laity, sometimes especially so...speaking of Saint John of SF, when Fr. Seraphim started at first to make a habit of getting Vladika John's blessing before every printing of the Orthodox Word, John said: No, it's *your* responsibility to make sure you're upholding the Tradition -- and I have confidence in you to do that!
I kinda think there is tradition and there is tradition. The former is the search for the pearl of great price. The latter is what is sell to buy the field that contains said pearl. I think the history of confusing the one for the other is often called the Truth.
That's it.
Boom.
Graham, this is a great piece that our modern integralists (of both the Catholic and Protestant flavor) need to hear. The Venn diagram of kingdoms of Caesar and God is more 2 separate circles than overlap.
Martin's distinction between feral and wild is particularly useful. You need structure and discipline to survive in the wild; without it, you turn feral or die. Orthodoxy encapsulates that so well, and that's coming from someone who's not even Orthodox (yet?).
I also have visited Fr. Seraphim Rose's monastery while I was staying at St. Hermann's just about an hour away (www.sainthermanmonastery.com/aboutus.asp). It is a beautiful area in which to seek God. I can see the echo of that trip in your current projects.
Well said, Brian!
We need someone to obey, to surrender to -- and that person needs someone to obey and surrender to -- all the way up to the Father of us all; hierarchy, when functioning beautifully, overcomes the tyranny of the ego. And the structure of the Church -- simply by being structures, rather than whims -- help, too: anything that challenges the flightiness of our moods can be a medicine. Liturgy in particular, I think -- as I said in Sunlilies: "Trapped in the prison of our own darkened hearts, our actions are often mindless and self-destructive. God's first salve for us, which begins to heal us from our isolating self-delusion, is liturgy: Renouncing self-will, we simply come together and sing—and, by doing this, we participate in the beauty and harmony of Creation, its Cosmic Liturgy: The sun rises and sets, the moon cycles through its phases, flowers spring up, blossom, and die, birds sing in the morning, and roost in the branches of trees at night, and we sing of all this to our Creator, coming alive together with all things..."
Glad you got to see the Platina monastery! It's so beautiful and quiet, isn't it!?