Oct 20, 2023·edited Oct 20, 2023Liked by Graham Pardun
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sep 22, 2023·edited Sep 22, 2023Liked by Graham Pardun
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.
Sep 22, 2023·edited Sep 22, 2023Liked by Graham Pardun
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.
Sep 22, 2023·edited Sep 22, 2023Liked by Graham Pardun
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
"...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
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.
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.