The painting toward the top is by Nicholas Roerich ("Russian Easter").
I've had a fair number of thoughts relative to these essays of yours, that I haven't managed to find time to type out fully. But perhaps, in response to these meditations here, on the vertical axis, I could do no better than cite a quote I've long loved, from the letters of the Russian martyr Pavel Florensky:
"From this comes my—I’ll say it in plain words—my contempt and hostility towards all the contemporary world... Evlach, a small town now, but then—nominem nudum, where I was born, is situated in the Transcaucasian steppe, bounded to North and South by snowy mountain ranges. The Caucasian range and the Armenian mountains are like diamonds, their sparkling sharpness quite beyond the imagination of those who have no experience of mountains, the ultimate perfection of their distant outlines thrusting up into the eternal, unquestionable, incorruptible, eternal in a way those who have no experience of mountains simply cannot conceive, into the depths and velvety infinity of the azure sky. And amidst these mountains lie the torrid open spaces, all woven from the metallic, resonant trills of cicadas and grasshoppers, from an abundance of growing things, fish, game, beasts of the hoof, predators, poisonous insects, snakes and sweet scents, famous for their karabach horses, the best in the Caucasus, and their dashing brigands, the most desperate in all Transcaucasia. In the free space of my soul there are no laws. I do not want law and order and set no value on it, for I know myself to be a brigand to the core of my being, who should not be sitting in a study but galloping through the stormy night, galloping with the whirlwind, without purpose... I want to take possession of the Azure, to embody it in myself. Yet never to forget that the Azure is ABOVE me, the Kingdom of Eternal Peace, a calm, serene Kingdom that pours itself into my soul. And, submissive only to the Azure, I still need symbols of my limits. It is the snow-peaks that frame the steppe which make me aware of my freedom and of my limits. The snowy peaks thrusting up into the Azure situate it closer to me—and further away... I will not come to terms, cannot come to terms with anyone who shuts off my view of the peaks with wooden fences or obscures them with smoke. Authority—fatherland—kingdom—priesthood—powers spiritual—these are the snowy peaks of my conscious being...
"For authorities issuing forth from the belly of Leviathan I have no recognition other than the toe of my boot. But it is precisely the immanent that is springing up now from every crook and cranny. The Church Authority, the sacraments, the meaning of dogma, God Himself—have all become immanent, are all losing every vestige of real being outside ourselves, are becoming projections of ourselves. Everyone is busy undermining the heights, misting over the earthly firmament, piercing the Azure."
Thank you once again Graham for all that your writing stirs up. I can see how the vulnerability you're willing to show inspires a community of deep sharing. Not sure if any of this will speak to where you are but it is my way of grappling with your soul-searching thoughts. Your essay calls me back to my basic principles in order to place myself between the creative tensions you discuss - time and space, vertical and horizontal gaze, body and soul, Orthodox and intuitive worship. I think I’m mainly telling myself things I need to hear again, so thank you for indulging me, but if it’s of any interest to you, I’m glad.
It doesn’t get any more basic as a principle than the story of the Fall. For me, the story of the Fall is not a moral story but a descriptive story of the holocaust of our spiritually-connected consciousness with the transcendent Other. Put another way, the story of the Fall describes how we stopped being narrated into being and we began narrating ourselves into being, with disastrous results. It is in between the tension of these opposites - being narrated versus narrating myself into being - that I quest for and discover my life.
Your discussion of time and space is very relevant to me, specifically in how I understand my efforts to resist narrating myself into being and to resist others’ efforts to narrate me. It speaks to how I understand reaching deeply within myself to hear the voice of the Other and learn how to differentiate it from my own mind/brain chatter. I experience the transcendent Other as having a “placeness” to its/his/her/their nature - it is somewhere I go within myself where I find the Teacher and where I can learn to let myself be taught. I recognize it as “in” “tuition”, a kind of classroom. As well, for me, the Other has a timeness to its nature, it is the Presence that is found in the present moment. Listening to my breath helps orient me to this place/time.
At this place and time encounter, I believe my story is actually being told to me, my song is being sung to me, even if it is mainly received in my unconscious because I’m not ready to hear it. I believe it is hitting me bodily with waves of spiritual sound, with light. And it is here that I begin again, and again, to relearn how to be narrated into being. I am not suggesting a kind of going within to this place/time that separates me from the physical world, although left to my own devices, that is probably what I would do. But because I am seeking the One that is the Storyteller, the Enchanter, the song and the story that I am turning toward is resonating through my body as well as my soul. And so, it is resonating through all to which I am connected. The music that a butterfly dances to around a lilac blossom is part of my delight, even if I can’t hear it. Together, we are being enchanted.
I do go on. But I think your own enchantment Graham inspires others like me to listen more deeply for our own song. Thank you.
Beautiful, Mary. I've read this a few times now, and what I think of is Genesis 1, the liturgy of the cosmos, where the Holy One says, Let there be, let there be...and how, in response, in the psalms, the holy ones say: There is, there is, there is...
Beautiful vision. The eternal song always available, and together, each of us able to receive our original part in the cosmic composition. We become the work of art. I imagine as a poet, you’ll have an intimate perspective on the blessing and burden of that calling.
I love that one so much, Sabine! And have had the joy of singing it in English many times at our parish. This is the first recording where I encountered this unspeakably beautiful thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKQRktt3xeI
We sing the georgian setting (posted above) in English often, along with Sabine's setting. We're learning it in Slavonic now, a setting that echoes the Eastern setting of Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent. I love it all.
that’s a beautiful essay and a good reminder that nothing is perfect. We are just human beings both flawed and beautiful. Also from my experience, no matter how noble the truth, how beautiful the inherited structure, if it isn’t held with love and "real" relationship and becomes coercion it conjures the opposite of its claims. At the same time I try to remember that God said, “it is very good.”
"The world flowing through structure" as I think you said it, Kathryn -- that's the Way. I knew a priest (now passed away) who was very intentional about porousness, about living flow through structure at his church -- tons of sunlight flooding in from the east end, but also: the iconostasis was only half there, maybe a third -- the boundary was there, but there was as much empty space, or more, as there were flat surfaces with icons. The church culture, too -- you could tell that energy was just flowing easily around the temple, among the people -- it was light, spacious, airy, profound. On paper that might be the same religion as a super rigid, mechanical, joyless overkill of correctness, but in reality, it's a different one. By the way, yesterday I read Berdayev's essay, "The Ethics of Creativity" which was very illuminating and helpful, I thought, for those of us who have gone off the deep end of artistic creation, and can see no other way of living...he says something like creativity is its own spiritual path, its own sacrifice, with its own kind of free and living logic, at odds with the ascetic 'humility' which sees virtue in being anti-imaginative. I think we artists will tend to be way out on the edge of things, which is what we want anyway...
That’s a beautiful church story and maybe like a harmonic note in our heart-memory it reminds us to keep listening. There will always be a tension between the structure and the wind blowing through, but ultimately it is music together as you described. I think the disconnect in Christianity from the natural world is revealing itself right now. And God bless the poets for we can't be anti-imaginative. I'm with George MacDonald on this. This is a wonderful talk by Malcolm Guite: When a Heart is Really Alive: George MacDonald and the Prophetic Imagination:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEEIHrdIk8g
Is that the same as his book *The Meaning of the Creative Act*?—or maybe it was a precursor. Anyway, the idea sounds the same, and that thing is great.
Mm, not sure. I read it as a medium-ish essay in an anthology -- hard to imagine it as a book, but maybe. I would guess -- being deeply, deeply creative himself -- this was a core idea he circled around in a lot of formats...
This is fantastic, man—you've really pulled together a strong synthesis here, with all the pieces coming together well. Also, Dostoevsky was one of the two main influences who made me into a Christian (the other being Søren Kierkegaard). I believe that passage is from Elder Zosima's sermon in *The Brothers Karamzov*?
And your description of strip malls is as hilarious as it is accurate.
Amen, brother -- I was thinking of you. Also, I read DBH's "Tradition and Apocalypse" by your recommendation, and its energy was in the background (hoping to bring him into the foreground next essay, maybe...but anyway, very liberating...)
“Tradition and Apocalypse” was so helpful for me in its articulation of the difference between tradition (living, organic, open to apocalyptic novelty) and traditionalism. I’ve also found Evdokimov’s account of his time in Paris a beautiful example of how one can belong to a tradition whilst embracing and celebrating other Christian traditions.
I forget if I talked with you before about my view that the one false religion is ideology and the one true religion is poetry, where the Gospel is the final poetry; and therefore, ideological Christianity is a false religion, at odds with the Gospel. I thought of that apropos of what you wrote about your friend's distinction between abstract doctrines like apostolic succession vs. the direct intuitive perception of the holy.
No, you hadn't mentioned this distinction before, but of course it's vintage Sethu and brilliant. And very helpful, as usual. I find it reassuring to think that the one true religion and the one false religion are both rooted in Yeshua -- this seems to be exactly what the NT is trying to warn us, and excite us, about.
Well, I'd say that the one false religion isn't necessarily rooted in Him, although it is particularly awful when it attempts to assimilate the Gospel, because then its idol becomes the actual Antichrist. "The corruption of the best is always worst."
Maybe "rooted" was the wrong word...if you trace the one true religion, and the one false religion back, they both point back to the same origin (rather than from two opposite sides of a spectrum, etc). I'm not saying *He* is the origin of the false religion, only that the false religion is as close as close can be, without being true.
I’m thinking that McGilchrist is helpful here: the difference is not really in objective proposition but rather in subjective disposition—the *how*, not the “what”. The same combination of words could mean radically different things, depending on the frequency of the speaker.
I keep thinking about not being orthodox anymore. Maybe I’d be “carefree” then, unburdened by the heavy cloak of the church. But I end up going, time and again . And I end up chanting, and sighing, and at some point, weeping . I somehow get pulled in ....and carried by the liturgy (as you so beautifully described) cause it always calls me to itself.
To me, it sounds like part of the intrinsic dialectic of individual vs. species that's part of being a person: "alone vs. "all one", as Camus put it (the pun sounds better in the French). We want to be individual and creative and free, but then we run the risk of being like Icarus or getting asphyxiated in too rarefied an air, so we try to ground ourselves again; but *then* we run the risk of getting drowned by the groupthink of the tribe and wanna break away—and so on.
Thanks for sharing this, Joanna. It's kind of mysterious to me, though I think I'm starting to get it, why so many of us Orthodox experience exactly what you're describing -- dreaming about throwing off the yoke, running away, coming back, weeping...There is so much power there, not to be taken lightly--but also not to be groveled before, either...it's real! It's really real! And as mysterious and ambiguous and deep as life itself is, which is not safe at all -- we'll all die here -- but which is overwhelmingly beautiful. I think this inner struggle you're describing, and which I'm trying to describe, too, is the struggle of coming alive.
So well said Graham! It’s so comforting to be able to talk about this ! I can’t talk about these complicated feelings so well with the elders of my church so thank you for being here and writing about your feelings so eloquently !
“….Orthodoxy itself is not absolute, but only slowly and painfully making its way up the reality gradient, like everything else is, converging like rays of sunlight on the perfect beauty and perfect wholeness that all of us desire in our own hearts, and which we know in our heart of hearts must be our true home.” That’s interesting. And it gets at a certain stillness that I am pursuing or is perhaps pursuing me, that feels very different from arguments and rationalizations and other ways I try to convince myself of things or allow other people to convince me.
I can’t explain even to myself, why it’s so much harder for me to be a “joiner” of Christianity than a joiner of other things. The only answer whose truth I’m fairly confident of is “because it’s so much more real.” Which is not exactly an easy thing to accept. A few times in your essay, it seemed to me you were showing me that realness.
Yes! "Because it's so much more real" -- that's it! There is no arguing, rationalizing, persuading when you stand before a tree in an old-growth forest, only silence: The expanding presence of real reality makes things quiet. Well, probably the easiest way to enter into Christian life, without being a "joiner" is to show up to Orthodox liturgies and just stand there, and not believe anything, but just be there. My friend, whom I quoted extensively in the essay, for whom things like argument, rationalization, persuasion, just don't register at all as anything while he's immersed in the the Liturgy -- he's just starting out on the path, but because he's suffered through so many "-isms" and "-doxys," and suffered through life in general, he's already much farther along the Orthodox path than a lot of us who came to Orthodoxy wanting to be "right" et cetera
Again again and again until knowing turns to flesh and blood and light and life that can nourish trees and lilies and every sentient creature as they nurture us -- where the gradient and the binary (great distinction and conjunction!) dissolve and resolve beyond telling. You get it so right and wrong and then back again with angel bread to share. On we go. Thank you.
"You get it so right and wrong and then back again with angel bread to share" -- I love that. And that describes, I think, the artistic orientation toward life, which I'm trying to embrace and perhaps orchestrate a bit better so it's not quite as destructive (but, still, a little destructive...)
I love your intellectual charity, here, Graham, even to Plato 😂 --Matt
"Reading is the act of listening and speaking at the same time, with someone you've never met, but love. Even if you hate them, it's a loving thing to do.
You speak someone else's words to yourself, and hear them for the first time.
What you're doing now is listening to me, in the parlor of your mind, but also speaking to yourself, thinking about the parts of me you like or the parts that aren't funny enough. You evaluate, like Mrs. Miller says. You think and wrestle with every word.
It's like when you're hearing a great story from Scheherazade and you're seeing past the thing to the main thing--past the adventures of the orphans to Scheherazade herself, begging to stay alive another day. The same way, in a small-town church in Oklahoma with a kinda dopey pastor, my mom could look past the thing he was saying, to the source of it.
She was replenished by the same thing that amused my dad. And that infuriated Ray."
Thanks, Matt -- give me another ten years, and I'll maybe approach the intellectual charity of the legendary Mr. Axvig in his kingdom of humane letters. Also, you are like someone who has been trained in the kingdom of Nayeri, who can pull out new treasures as well as old...
Given my general posture these days, the words of your "another brilliant friend" really resonated with me. Thanks Graham for being willing to share such intimate/raw feelings and thoughts. And your closing in the Postscript is a profoundly wonderful word to take along for the rest of life's journey, the deep river in the valley: "Because it was so good to know that I, and all of these also lovely, also broken people around me, were still absolutely nowhere near completing our prayer to the Lord."
So good to hear, Chris. His words were balm for me, too, and I hope to hold onto the anchor of this rawness, this real human reality, when the next round of wild thoughts comes rushing, as of course they will...it's a long, long, long journey...
This, this is why I’m an Orthodox Christian. The forest church lives in my heart and is at the center of my faith and practice. I found myself falling into your words, feeling the sun on my face, hearing the people chant in worship, thank you for the long outro, I was able to remain. We cannot hold onto anything Graham. Nothing is our’s. We must love.
Thank you for taking me on this journey with you, it is a privilege.
It is an honor and joy to sojourn along side with you brother. Joining with you in the uncompleted prayer… until it is complete : )
Amen, brother. What a wild journey this is, traversing the ruins together...
I've nothing to say. This essay is a beautiful forest. Thank you for wandering among the sunlight and the temple and sharing what you find.
🙏🏻
A passionate hymn - The Deep, Deep Love of Jesus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLTu1xv2-Us&list=RDMM&index=6
I used to love that one when I was kid (and still do). Epic hymn, for epic hymn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEwxbGJ3baU
The painting toward the top is by Nicholas Roerich ("Russian Easter").
I've had a fair number of thoughts relative to these essays of yours, that I haven't managed to find time to type out fully. But perhaps, in response to these meditations here, on the vertical axis, I could do no better than cite a quote I've long loved, from the letters of the Russian martyr Pavel Florensky:
"From this comes my—I’ll say it in plain words—my contempt and hostility towards all the contemporary world... Evlach, a small town now, but then—nominem nudum, where I was born, is situated in the Transcaucasian steppe, bounded to North and South by snowy mountain ranges. The Caucasian range and the Armenian mountains are like diamonds, their sparkling sharpness quite beyond the imagination of those who have no experience of mountains, the ultimate perfection of their distant outlines thrusting up into the eternal, unquestionable, incorruptible, eternal in a way those who have no experience of mountains simply cannot conceive, into the depths and velvety infinity of the azure sky. And amidst these mountains lie the torrid open spaces, all woven from the metallic, resonant trills of cicadas and grasshoppers, from an abundance of growing things, fish, game, beasts of the hoof, predators, poisonous insects, snakes and sweet scents, famous for their karabach horses, the best in the Caucasus, and their dashing brigands, the most desperate in all Transcaucasia. In the free space of my soul there are no laws. I do not want law and order and set no value on it, for I know myself to be a brigand to the core of my being, who should not be sitting in a study but galloping through the stormy night, galloping with the whirlwind, without purpose... I want to take possession of the Azure, to embody it in myself. Yet never to forget that the Azure is ABOVE me, the Kingdom of Eternal Peace, a calm, serene Kingdom that pours itself into my soul. And, submissive only to the Azure, I still need symbols of my limits. It is the snow-peaks that frame the steppe which make me aware of my freedom and of my limits. The snowy peaks thrusting up into the Azure situate it closer to me—and further away... I will not come to terms, cannot come to terms with anyone who shuts off my view of the peaks with wooden fences or obscures them with smoke. Authority—fatherland—kingdom—priesthood—powers spiritual—these are the snowy peaks of my conscious being...
"For authorities issuing forth from the belly of Leviathan I have no recognition other than the toe of my boot. But it is precisely the immanent that is springing up now from every crook and cranny. The Church Authority, the sacraments, the meaning of dogma, God Himself—have all become immanent, are all losing every vestige of real being outside ourselves, are becoming projections of ourselves. Everyone is busy undermining the heights, misting over the earthly firmament, piercing the Azure."
Oh wow, Ives. This passage is gorgeous, and lionhearted -- thanks for taking the time and energy to share it!! Amazing!
Thank you once again Graham for all that your writing stirs up. I can see how the vulnerability you're willing to show inspires a community of deep sharing. Not sure if any of this will speak to where you are but it is my way of grappling with your soul-searching thoughts. Your essay calls me back to my basic principles in order to place myself between the creative tensions you discuss - time and space, vertical and horizontal gaze, body and soul, Orthodox and intuitive worship. I think I’m mainly telling myself things I need to hear again, so thank you for indulging me, but if it’s of any interest to you, I’m glad.
It doesn’t get any more basic as a principle than the story of the Fall. For me, the story of the Fall is not a moral story but a descriptive story of the holocaust of our spiritually-connected consciousness with the transcendent Other. Put another way, the story of the Fall describes how we stopped being narrated into being and we began narrating ourselves into being, with disastrous results. It is in between the tension of these opposites - being narrated versus narrating myself into being - that I quest for and discover my life.
Your discussion of time and space is very relevant to me, specifically in how I understand my efforts to resist narrating myself into being and to resist others’ efforts to narrate me. It speaks to how I understand reaching deeply within myself to hear the voice of the Other and learn how to differentiate it from my own mind/brain chatter. I experience the transcendent Other as having a “placeness” to its/his/her/their nature - it is somewhere I go within myself where I find the Teacher and where I can learn to let myself be taught. I recognize it as “in” “tuition”, a kind of classroom. As well, for me, the Other has a timeness to its nature, it is the Presence that is found in the present moment. Listening to my breath helps orient me to this place/time.
At this place and time encounter, I believe my story is actually being told to me, my song is being sung to me, even if it is mainly received in my unconscious because I’m not ready to hear it. I believe it is hitting me bodily with waves of spiritual sound, with light. And it is here that I begin again, and again, to relearn how to be narrated into being. I am not suggesting a kind of going within to this place/time that separates me from the physical world, although left to my own devices, that is probably what I would do. But because I am seeking the One that is the Storyteller, the Enchanter, the song and the story that I am turning toward is resonating through my body as well as my soul. And so, it is resonating through all to which I am connected. The music that a butterfly dances to around a lilac blossom is part of my delight, even if I can’t hear it. Together, we are being enchanted.
I do go on. But I think your own enchantment Graham inspires others like me to listen more deeply for our own song. Thank you.
Beautiful, Mary. I've read this a few times now, and what I think of is Genesis 1, the liturgy of the cosmos, where the Holy One says, Let there be, let there be...and how, in response, in the psalms, the holy ones say: There is, there is, there is...
Beautiful vision. The eternal song always available, and together, each of us able to receive our original part in the cosmic composition. We become the work of art. I imagine as a poet, you’ll have an intimate perspective on the blessing and burden of that calling.
Beautifully told, Graham. Thank you.
Thanks so much, Adam.
https://youtu.be/NnG85eO_J68?si=1GcKrUYuvS0ubj-c This is my favourite version of the Cherubic hymn.
I love that one so much, Sabine! And have had the joy of singing it in English many times at our parish. This is the first recording where I encountered this unspeakably beautiful thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKQRktt3xeI
We sing the georgian setting (posted above) in English often, along with Sabine's setting. We're learning it in Slavonic now, a setting that echoes the Eastern setting of Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent. I love it all.
Hi Graham,
that’s a beautiful essay and a good reminder that nothing is perfect. We are just human beings both flawed and beautiful. Also from my experience, no matter how noble the truth, how beautiful the inherited structure, if it isn’t held with love and "real" relationship and becomes coercion it conjures the opposite of its claims. At the same time I try to remember that God said, “it is very good.”
"The world flowing through structure" as I think you said it, Kathryn -- that's the Way. I knew a priest (now passed away) who was very intentional about porousness, about living flow through structure at his church -- tons of sunlight flooding in from the east end, but also: the iconostasis was only half there, maybe a third -- the boundary was there, but there was as much empty space, or more, as there were flat surfaces with icons. The church culture, too -- you could tell that energy was just flowing easily around the temple, among the people -- it was light, spacious, airy, profound. On paper that might be the same religion as a super rigid, mechanical, joyless overkill of correctness, but in reality, it's a different one. By the way, yesterday I read Berdayev's essay, "The Ethics of Creativity" which was very illuminating and helpful, I thought, for those of us who have gone off the deep end of artistic creation, and can see no other way of living...he says something like creativity is its own spiritual path, its own sacrifice, with its own kind of free and living logic, at odds with the ascetic 'humility' which sees virtue in being anti-imaginative. I think we artists will tend to be way out on the edge of things, which is what we want anyway...
That’s a beautiful church story and maybe like a harmonic note in our heart-memory it reminds us to keep listening. There will always be a tension between the structure and the wind blowing through, but ultimately it is music together as you described. I think the disconnect in Christianity from the natural world is revealing itself right now. And God bless the poets for we can't be anti-imaginative. I'm with George MacDonald on this. This is a wonderful talk by Malcolm Guite: When a Heart is Really Alive: George MacDonald and the Prophetic Imagination:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEEIHrdIk8g
Is that the same as his book *The Meaning of the Creative Act*?—or maybe it was a precursor. Anyway, the idea sounds the same, and that thing is great.
Mm, not sure. I read it as a medium-ish essay in an anthology -- hard to imagine it as a book, but maybe. I would guess -- being deeply, deeply creative himself -- this was a core idea he circled around in a lot of formats...
That was a good book!
This is fantastic, man—you've really pulled together a strong synthesis here, with all the pieces coming together well. Also, Dostoevsky was one of the two main influences who made me into a Christian (the other being Søren Kierkegaard). I believe that passage is from Elder Zosima's sermon in *The Brothers Karamzov*?
And your description of strip malls is as hilarious as it is accurate.
Amen, brother -- I was thinking of you. Also, I read DBH's "Tradition and Apocalypse" by your recommendation, and its energy was in the background (hoping to bring him into the foreground next essay, maybe...but anyway, very liberating...)
“Tradition and Apocalypse” was so helpful for me in its articulation of the difference between tradition (living, organic, open to apocalyptic novelty) and traditionalism. I’ve also found Evdokimov’s account of his time in Paris a beautiful example of how one can belong to a tradition whilst embracing and celebrating other Christian traditions.
I forget if I talked with you before about my view that the one false religion is ideology and the one true religion is poetry, where the Gospel is the final poetry; and therefore, ideological Christianity is a false religion, at odds with the Gospel. I thought of that apropos of what you wrote about your friend's distinction between abstract doctrines like apostolic succession vs. the direct intuitive perception of the holy.
No, you hadn't mentioned this distinction before, but of course it's vintage Sethu and brilliant. And very helpful, as usual. I find it reassuring to think that the one true religion and the one false religion are both rooted in Yeshua -- this seems to be exactly what the NT is trying to warn us, and excite us, about.
Well, I'd say that the one false religion isn't necessarily rooted in Him, although it is particularly awful when it attempts to assimilate the Gospel, because then its idol becomes the actual Antichrist. "The corruption of the best is always worst."
Maybe "rooted" was the wrong word...if you trace the one true religion, and the one false religion back, they both point back to the same origin (rather than from two opposite sides of a spectrum, etc). I'm not saying *He* is the origin of the false religion, only that the false religion is as close as close can be, without being true.
I’m thinking that McGilchrist is helpful here: the difference is not really in objective proposition but rather in subjective disposition—the *how*, not the “what”. The same combination of words could mean radically different things, depending on the frequency of the speaker.
I keep thinking about not being orthodox anymore. Maybe I’d be “carefree” then, unburdened by the heavy cloak of the church. But I end up going, time and again . And I end up chanting, and sighing, and at some point, weeping . I somehow get pulled in ....and carried by the liturgy (as you so beautifully described) cause it always calls me to itself.
Your writing is so beautiful ! Thank you .
To me, it sounds like part of the intrinsic dialectic of individual vs. species that's part of being a person: "alone vs. "all one", as Camus put it (the pun sounds better in the French). We want to be individual and creative and free, but then we run the risk of being like Icarus or getting asphyxiated in too rarefied an air, so we try to ground ourselves again; but *then* we run the risk of getting drowned by the groupthink of the tribe and wanna break away—and so on.
That is a great point Sethu. I am an artist and a free spirit so church can feel suffocating at times but it’s also a safe nest to “fly” home to.
Thanks for sharing this, Joanna. It's kind of mysterious to me, though I think I'm starting to get it, why so many of us Orthodox experience exactly what you're describing -- dreaming about throwing off the yoke, running away, coming back, weeping...There is so much power there, not to be taken lightly--but also not to be groveled before, either...it's real! It's really real! And as mysterious and ambiguous and deep as life itself is, which is not safe at all -- we'll all die here -- but which is overwhelmingly beautiful. I think this inner struggle you're describing, and which I'm trying to describe, too, is the struggle of coming alive.
So well said Graham! It’s so comforting to be able to talk about this ! I can’t talk about these complicated feelings so well with the elders of my church so thank you for being here and writing about your feelings so eloquently !
“….Orthodoxy itself is not absolute, but only slowly and painfully making its way up the reality gradient, like everything else is, converging like rays of sunlight on the perfect beauty and perfect wholeness that all of us desire in our own hearts, and which we know in our heart of hearts must be our true home.” That’s interesting. And it gets at a certain stillness that I am pursuing or is perhaps pursuing me, that feels very different from arguments and rationalizations and other ways I try to convince myself of things or allow other people to convince me.
I can’t explain even to myself, why it’s so much harder for me to be a “joiner” of Christianity than a joiner of other things. The only answer whose truth I’m fairly confident of is “because it’s so much more real.” Which is not exactly an easy thing to accept. A few times in your essay, it seemed to me you were showing me that realness.
Yes! "Because it's so much more real" -- that's it! There is no arguing, rationalizing, persuading when you stand before a tree in an old-growth forest, only silence: The expanding presence of real reality makes things quiet. Well, probably the easiest way to enter into Christian life, without being a "joiner" is to show up to Orthodox liturgies and just stand there, and not believe anything, but just be there. My friend, whom I quoted extensively in the essay, for whom things like argument, rationalization, persuasion, just don't register at all as anything while he's immersed in the the Liturgy -- he's just starting out on the path, but because he's suffered through so many "-isms" and "-doxys," and suffered through life in general, he's already much farther along the Orthodox path than a lot of us who came to Orthodoxy wanting to be "right" et cetera
"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
Again again and again until knowing turns to flesh and blood and light and life that can nourish trees and lilies and every sentient creature as they nurture us -- where the gradient and the binary (great distinction and conjunction!) dissolve and resolve beyond telling. You get it so right and wrong and then back again with angel bread to share. On we go. Thank you.
"You get it so right and wrong and then back again with angel bread to share" -- I love that. And that describes, I think, the artistic orientation toward life, which I'm trying to embrace and perhaps orchestrate a bit better so it's not quite as destructive (but, still, a little destructive...)
Glad you found home.
I love your intellectual charity, here, Graham, even to Plato 😂 --Matt
"Reading is the act of listening and speaking at the same time, with someone you've never met, but love. Even if you hate them, it's a loving thing to do.
You speak someone else's words to yourself, and hear them for the first time.
What you're doing now is listening to me, in the parlor of your mind, but also speaking to yourself, thinking about the parts of me you like or the parts that aren't funny enough. You evaluate, like Mrs. Miller says. You think and wrestle with every word.
It's like when you're hearing a great story from Scheherazade and you're seeing past the thing to the main thing--past the adventures of the orphans to Scheherazade herself, begging to stay alive another day. The same way, in a small-town church in Oklahoma with a kinda dopey pastor, my mom could look past the thing he was saying, to the source of it.
She was replenished by the same thing that amused my dad. And that infuriated Ray."
--Daniel Nayeri, Everything Sad is Untrue
Thanks, Matt -- give me another ten years, and I'll maybe approach the intellectual charity of the legendary Mr. Axvig in his kingdom of humane letters. Also, you are like someone who has been trained in the kingdom of Nayeri, who can pull out new treasures as well as old...
Given my general posture these days, the words of your "another brilliant friend" really resonated with me. Thanks Graham for being willing to share such intimate/raw feelings and thoughts. And your closing in the Postscript is a profoundly wonderful word to take along for the rest of life's journey, the deep river in the valley: "Because it was so good to know that I, and all of these also lovely, also broken people around me, were still absolutely nowhere near completing our prayer to the Lord."
So good to hear, Chris. His words were balm for me, too, and I hope to hold onto the anchor of this rawness, this real human reality, when the next round of wild thoughts comes rushing, as of course they will...it's a long, long, long journey...
This, this is why I’m an Orthodox Christian. The forest church lives in my heart and is at the center of my faith and practice. I found myself falling into your words, feeling the sun on my face, hearing the people chant in worship, thank you for the long outro, I was able to remain. We cannot hold onto anything Graham. Nothing is our’s. We must love.
Thank you for taking me on this journey with you, it is a privilege.
Amen, Shari -- and how wonderful to walk this wild, forested path together...