The Other Side of the Sun

Riding the bus to work

2011-08-29T15:58:00.000-05:00

On my left hand rests my watch,
Ticking entropically toward oblivion

On my right rests my prayer rope,
Repentant rhythm revealing rest

Odd pairings

2011-06-17T17:51:00.004-05:00

I combine here silence with appetite. I'm quite unsure whether it works.

May your words be charged with the hunger, hope and longing of your Silences
May your deeds overflow with the urgency of what remains undone

If you have no Silence within you, no sense of your work’s incompleteness
Then you must Stop speaking, Stop doing

Until there be “Fire shut up in your bones”
That you not become incessant busyness, a clanging cymbal

On Writing

2009-11-24T12:48:00.003-05:00

O Merciful and man loving Creator of all

All things are in Your hand and the truth of all things is written by You.
My hand of flesh trembles, then, as I take up the pen.
How can I, foul and corrupt through my many sins, ephemeral and dead by birth, write of things unseen?
How dare I write Of Your Divine Majesty, of Your Incarnation, of Your Life-creating death and most Holy Resurrection?

What can I do of myself but compound old errors and make new ones?
Yet You command and so I obey.

I obey with the hope that Your Mercy may yet lead me in the way of repentance.

I obey with the hope that because You are Just, none might be lost through my many sins, my errors and the weakness of my explanations.

I pray You, Divine Master that my hardened heart which cries out against You as “a hard master, reaping where you did not sow”, might at least relinquish my hand to You that somehow repentance might work in me.

That by Your grace my fist be unclenched and my hand begin to write.
That by writing the truths I do not yet believe, I might begin to believe,
to repent and to be saved.

Cold

2009-11-13T12:38:00.000-05:00

Bright autumn light
Sparkling frost
Skittering brown leaves
Whispering of summer lost
In a voice from Bradbury’s Mars

Pentecost

2009-05-31T08:45:00.015-05:00

O sweet eternal Light

Your descent has raised us up to heaven

O Flame which cools the passions, Sword which heals all wounds

O Most Holy Spirit

In Your Silence begins all true speech

In Your Stillness is the root of all life

O Spirit of the Living God
Descend upon us
as you did upon the Apostles

That our deeds might bring your living stillness
That our words might carry your healing silence

Just enough...

2009-01-13T23:59:00.002-05:00

There is just enough light
The stars glimmer and fade
The sun rises and sets
The moon waxes and wanes
All in season and rhythm

Not enough truth?
Not enough answers?
As well complain the moon wanes too soon,
the sun sets too early and the stars are lost in cloud.
Why complain when you can trust?

Where does the pain go?

2008-09-25T10:33:00.020-05:00

Pain is sometimes a very lonely thing. We've all encountered the fresh pain that comes from clumsy comforters who say things like "It could be worse!"and "Look at the bright side!" as they hastily retreat from our presence. Then there are the "rescuers", just as damaging in their own way. They have such a hatred of pain that they compulsively try to "do something" to erase it.
Sometimes it's possible to fix things, just as sometimes we need to 'buck up' etc. But sometimes we are simply in terrible pain and no one can "fix" it. In periods like these when the problems are not yet soluble "seeing the bright side" is more anesthetic than curative and "fixing the problem" would require either a time machine or full-blown psychosis. So where can we put our pain to keep it from overwhelming us?

In Fr. Lev Gilet's book "In Thy Presence" he writes about God's entry into every intimate detail of our condition in the Incarnation, especially all our sufferings. He mentions the story of the three Hebrew children who survived the fiery furnace they were thrown into when they would not commit idolatry. There appears a fourth figure, a "Son of Man" who is with them in the furnace. He does not take them out of the furnace, nor does He turn off the heat. Until reading this I always thought of it as God keeping them from experiencing the heat by simple fiat. After all, we believe that "When God wills the order of nature is overruled." But what if God did not apply invisible asbestos to them? What if they experienced the suffering and He suffered with them and their intimacy with Him preserved them in the suffering?

What if the One Who "changed the fiery flames into dew" did so by taking on the suffering of His servants, entering into their pain rather than erasing it? Don't we see this in Lazarus' death where Christ sorrows with Lazarus' family? Jesus says to His disciples that part of the reason for Lazarus' death is that they might believe. John spends a good deal of time recording the grief of Lazarus' family and friends as well as Jesus' reaction to all this pain. He suffers with them and then resurrects Lazarus. What are the disciples learning to believe? Not only that Jesus has power to resurrect but that he is willing to taste of death, His own, but also that of His loved ones.

By the time Gethsemane arrives, He has already drunk deeply from the cup of human suffering. And in that place of dreadful glory what is revealed to us? His immediate knowledge of suffering alone. After entreating His followers to stay, to watch and to pray with Him, He is abandoned by all.

What if the answer to our suffering is His suffering with us? What if the answer to my question is "Straight into the Heart of our Maker?"...

April Snow

2008-03-31T07:56:00.002-05:00

Snow falls thick, fast, and urgent
blanketing the world one last time

A boy on the beach finding just one more perfect stone
just one more bucket of sand on the castle

How blame the season for a child's exuberance?
especially when his Father has permitted....

Twisted wreck of self-love

2008-03-16T18:52:00.003-05:00

This last Sunday my priest spoke of how the Church has constructed Lent with a view to healing us of self-love. It is such an insidious and commonplace disorder. How many things do our passions present to us as needs? And why do we fall for it so easily? One answer is that the passions actually do need these things and without them they (the passions) will die. In a culture where we're taught to identify with the passions, rather than control the normal ones and destroy the evil ones, it's easy to see how we can develop the habit of resisting the discomforts of Lent.
An interesting side effect of dealing with one 'need' presented to us by the passions is that a new one usually pops up immediately. This reveals the wisdom of the Church in prescribing a common fast, rather than an a la carte approach to Lent. Our true illness is the habit of self-indulgence or self-love. Denying ourselves one thing only for the period of the fast may in fact lead us to simply overindulge in something else. The breadth and length of the prescribed fast are calculated to afford us the best possible chance to gain mastery over the passions. It is of course possible to pervert the fast into an exercise in pride or an excuse for enormities of self-indulgence later. Lent will not do its work if we are prayerless and unrepentant.

May the work of this Holy season pervade our hearts and minds with the Goodness of God which leads us all to repentance.

Questions of lent

2008-03-03T08:44:00.003-05:00

O Merciful Lord
I know that with each breath I draw
I am your servant

Yet why do I seek to be the servant who enters Your labours at the 11th hour?
Why abuse the knowledge of your kindness?
Why eat again from the bitter tree?

What disordered appetites drive me to this frenzy of self-love-loathing?
I do not know, but I would begin to know how lost I am without you.
Find me out, my Lord and save me.

Amen

Against all this

2007-09-01T12:53:00.001-05:00

The whimpering advent of Eliot's Hollow Men:

"Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;"

Against all this, as ever, are clear words spoken in sunlight that feed the heart of one man from another. Against all this, as ever, are those prophetic voices which cut through chains and drag us, blinking, into daylight. Against all this, as ever, are the midwives of souls, the begetters in Christ, the infinite litany of intimacy which is the true and natural order of all things.

The obedient treading of stars

2007-07-12T20:52:00.000-05:00

When the sun rises slowly some mornings, I wonder if he has a hangover?
Hiding miserably behind dark clouds whilst groping for coffee and orange juice.
Sorry folks, no Psalm 19:5 today, just a pale, wan disc, peering bleary-eyed through hazy skies.

The Hebrews could understand the world mechanically.
They had machines, after all. But they did not choose this.
Instead; a world where mountains skip, rivers flee and trees clap.
He speaks, Creation responds!
How much now lost in our hunger for control?
How corrupted the very nature of nature by our persistence in sin?
What restored in His earthly sojourn? What remains incomplete?
From this groaning of all creation, what fruit?

Where is yes?

2007-07-02T19:48:00.000-05:00

This past Sunday was the story of the two demoniacs. Their wills so bound they could not exercise them. My priest talked about how we must use our wills each day.

Reflecting on it I see my grand commitments and my million inner vows all tethering me to the false triumph of intention. Pretence of accomplishment, rooted in vain fantasy.

Instead, right now, in this moment, I want to know how to to say yes to God. I want to exercise my will instead of my imagination. That I not be a prey to the passions.
Have mercy upon me O Lord and help me.

Media

2007-06-26T00:41:00.001-05:00

Words, so damn many words
cheapened like watered scotch
that was cheap already

Numbers, bloody stupid numbers on paper
Some damn fool somewhere
got it into his head that
a few marks on a piece of paper
were enough to count for the firm handshake and plain dealing of men

Pictures, don't get me started
Used to be, people thought maybe what we could see came from someplace so fine it was invisible
This world a shadow or a copy of that one
Then we got to taking pictures of everything
Nowadays almost no one believes in the invisible places anymore
Hell (and I mean that literally) we don't even think we need this world anymore,
let alone a place for it to come from

Father's Day

2007-06-13T22:34:00.001-05:00

Wrote this almost two years ago on Father's Day........

I am a fool

While my son plays
(on the kitchen floor of my apartment)
I sit here trying to speak fire

While my son plays
(with pokemon cards we got today)
I try to coax flame from the embers of my soul

While my son plays
(fiddling with the tv screen after his cartoon is over)
I bombard my heart with demands for water of life
_______________________________________

While Daddy plays
(sitting at his computer)
I am a firedragon

While Daddy plays
(sitting at his computer)
I breathe fire

While Daddy plays
(sitting at his computer)
I am a fish in the ocean

Hmmmm.....

2007-06-05T07:38:00.000-05:00

This is disturbing. I'm thinking "Can't look away horrified fascination", like a train wreck.

vic --

[adjective]:

Visually addictive

'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Grant me your salvation on my bed

2007-05-23T23:01:00.000-05:00

I never understood this phrase in prayers before falling asleep. Why say such a thing?
Recently I had an experience that gave me a meaningful personal sense of this prayer.
I was lying in bed, trying to sleep and I had so many worries, cares, fears and temptations scurrying through my head that I could not rest. My heart was wearied and troubled by many, many things.

In the middle of this mess the phrase came to me. "Grant me your salvation upon my bed."

Bed, that place where we fall asleep and wake up. Where we entertain our dreams and wrestle with our fears, uninterrupted by the distractions of life. Alone with our thoughts.

Bed, where we wrestle with our fears and thoughts. Where we rest from the difficulties and sorrows of life. A place of fear, hope, possibility and so much more. Where we make love, where we know and are known, body and soul.

How natural to ask God to be with us in this place.

Naked

2007-05-21T20:55:00.001-05:00

Ashamed - I pillage the garden,
grabbing at straws and leaves of circumstance
Anything will do.

Stitching them into
A wretched rag
Which draws focus, saps strength
and begets new shame

Anthropos Thanatos or Anthropos Athanatos

2007-05-05T10:28:00.000-05:00

Thanatos
Unshaped by life
For I have refused to live
Controlled by death
For I refuse to die

Athanatos
Giving shape to life
For you have lived
Unconstrained by death
For you have embraced death

Nerdo

2007-04-27T11:00:00.000-05:00

Thanks Stacy I'm nerdier than you are!!!

Thoughts on Syncretism

2007-04-25T23:13:00.000-05:00

A post by Stacy over on Orthodork Cafe got me thinking about this question. I replied to the question about when something becomes syncretism by suggesting that our culture is too self-absorbed to develop real syncretism. I now take that back. Not the self-absorption bit, the syncretism bit.
"If syncretism is the development of new religions based on combinations of existing ones I wonder if we have the cultural depth required for it. It strikes me that the postmodern capacity for (and level of) self-indulgent consumerism is more likely to produce individualistic dabbling in many religious practices rather than a serious commitment to something more than oneself (albeit an amalgam of several other religions).
Perhaps this is because the desperation we feel is not a desperation rooted in physical survival issues. Ours is the desperation of ennui in the face of overabundance of physical goods combined with a spiritual and social vacuum unparalleled in human history."

In the above-quoted text I think I actually describe an "in" for syncretic thought.
It is the abundance and desperation together that make the unique combination for a new syncretism. It must be a religion based on materialism or material self-expression. While every religion has its own set of symbols and rituals, ours is a generation that sees the continual generation of new symbols and rituals as its religious vocation and practice. It is a new kind of disorder and it is the result of having all of human history and culture to draw on with no real belief in anything. So history is seen as a repository of material on which we can draw to "make our own meaning" by changing, mixing and matching symbols, rituals and ideas from various religions, eras and places. I have more thoughts on this theme but they are as yet 'ungelled' and so I welcome conversation to help with the process.

what is left?

2007-04-25T00:01:00.000-05:00

We deconstruct everything
like milkdrop photography run amok

Freeze any frame, capture any moment
pare down life, find the empty core
We have emptied ourselves
This very paring and pixelation
has brought us down to nothing

who knew that our inward gaze
which started out so fondly
would become the basilisk's glare?

Southland of the heart

2007-04-14T05:33:00.000-05:00

Yesterday. I felt
Today I ache
like a bad tooth has been pulled
Empty space where there was something
something poisonous, but something I knew
knew in candid, clinical terms
keeping out the grief and loss
while leaving the wound open

How do I live now without my anaesthetic pain?

The burning of this moment

2007-04-12T21:00:00.000-05:00

I am living this second and all I can do is reflect on its passing

History already
What is in our gaze that deadens all we see?
converting it into past and never seeing it NOW and HERE

I suppose it is only faith that gives us the present
by seeing with the eye we only see what was
by logic and calculation we see what might be or what might have been

By seeing with the heart we see what is
or at least we trust that there is an is
This act of trust is all that remains to us

For Holy Week

2007-04-03T21:16:00.000-05:00

As Adam sought to hide his wretchedness with leaves;
So I have sought to cover my own sins by blaming others.
As in your compassion you gave to our first parents garments of skin;
So grant me, gracious Lord, the garment of repentance.
As the brothers of Joseph ruined the garment meant to rule over them, soiling it with the blood of their sins;
So I have ruined the gift of my baptism, seeking to hide my sins from my Father by presenting Him with a lie.
O most gracious Lord, who used the wickedness of Joseph's brothers for their own salvation;
Leave me not to myself, but transform the wicked passions of my flesh, that I might serve you with my whole heart.
The Roman soldiers gambled for Your garment that only one might possess it.
Grant me to receive the seamless covering of Your love which none may possess alone.
As the veil of the temple was rent at Your fulfilling of the law,
So let my fleshly thoughts be burst like an old wineskin filled with the new wine of Your love.
As You left in the grave the winding sheet, grant me to leave my love for death behind me;
That this garment of mortality might bring me to yearn for true immortality which is found only in You.
Amen.

In time for Pascha!

2007-04-01T18:26:00.000-05:00

Our parish just got the altar and solea floor redone and the new icon screen went up this past week. Very beautiful!

We also have two beautiful new fresco/mural icons of the Crucifixion and Resurrection to the left and right of the icon screen

Spring Moon

2007-03-31T22:22:00.000-05:00

Out my window
I see the moon,
Stretching toward full

Out my window
I see the grass,
Growing toward green

Out my window
I see the snow,
Fading in the sun

In my heart
I see Lent,
Beginning to flower

I never thought
Pascha might come too soon...

Remembrance of injury...John XIII

2007-03-25T21:35:00.000-05:00

In reference to Judas' betrayal of Christ St. John Chrysostom says:
"These things are written that we bear not malice toward those who injure us; but rebuke them and weep for them; for the fit subjects of weeping are not they who suffer, but they who do the wrong."

St. John starts with Christ's betrayal by Judas and concludes with the example of Joseph as someone who, before Grace and even before the Law, did not cling to remembrance of injury to himself.

"What excuse shall we have, if after the Law, and after grace, and after the addition of so much heavenly wisdom, we do not even strive to rival him who lived before grace and before the Law? Who shall deliver us from punishment? For there is nothing, there is nothing more grievous than the remembrance of injuries."

I was struck by this phrase:"for the fit subjects of weeping are not they who suffer, but they who do the wrong."

It reminds me of the story of a monk who fell into sin and three of his brother monks wept. (I don't recall where I read it.)

The first wept because he himself was in the same sin and feared discovery or judgement.

The second wept because the sin was grievous to God.

The third wept because the sin was grievous to God and because of the damage it did to the sinner.

When I examine my own life I see so much of the bad fruit that comes from resentment against those for whom I ought to weep that I fear lest I do not even make a beginning of repentance. I have confessed over and over the symptoms of my malady but not yet gotten to the rotten core of the matter.
God help me.

Trader Vic's Spell Cheque Report

2007-03-23T22:34:00.000-05:00

Bye far the mass majority of ideas impacting on issues that peak peoples interest are related too stuff that people care a bout. My colleges and I halve studied it and rote a big report. The results are very concerning too us. Weir hoping Yule cheque are web sight fore moor analysis on this reel important tropic. Its to sad when no buddy takes time too reed any moor.

Accept fore those who don't except are theory, most people are apart of are teem. The wrest of them form a small click that is a part from the mass majority of us allot of the times. They do there own thing but cant except that every won ells has there own weigh to. Its to bad we cant just work together but their not excepting of others idea's. Oh well, they're you go.

Buy the weigh, are report tocks allot a bout how spell cheque wont right yore reports fore yew. Wee wreck amend yew reed it.

How to ruin everything...

2007-03-23T00:26:00.000-05:00

In "The Princess and the Goblin", George MacDonald says this of Curdie's relationship with his mother:
"Not that she and Curdie ever thought of how much they worked for each other: That would have spoiled everything."
puts things into perspective doesn't it?

My title

2007-03-22T22:53:00.000-05:00

I quite like this. I've often thought of "undamaged" and "bucket" as the perfect words to describe me....
Thanks to V&E, Little Rose and Simply Vic

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is:
His Noble Excellency Victor the Undamaged of Ofsted in the Bucket
Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Speed Listening!!!

2007-03-20T23:38:00.000-05:00

Have people ever accused you of not being a good listener?
Do they say you tend to cut them off before they finish speaking or seem to stop listening shortly after they begin?
Do you tend to feel slightly bad about this but don't know what to do about it?

Well, here is the solution to your problem. The solution is that you don't have a problem, they do!
After all, they are the ones complaining, aren't they?

The key here is to move beyond the calcified perceptions and perspectives of this pack of whiners.
You can help them to rise above all this pettiness when you realize that these poor misguided wretches need your help.

You can help them by explaining to them that what they perceive as a lack of interest or poor listening skills on your part is actually just the opposite. You were so interested in what they were saying that you were listening faster than they were speaking!

You heard what they had to say even before they finished saying it!!!!
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Jacob's Ladder

2007-03-20T21:40:00.000-05:00

I love connections but I am often too dense to see them. My parish Priest drew the connection between what Christ says here and Jacob's Ladder in the Old Testament:

"Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these. And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man."

In effect Jesus is telling Nathaniel that He is more than king of Israel but the means by which Israel came to be. St. John Chrysostom says that Christ is correcting Nathaniel's insufficient picture of who He is.

How often He needs to do this with me. I am willing to give Him a crown and "make Him a king" but it is all in my own fantasy where I am the ultimate authority. I believe C.S. Lewis once said something like: "I used to live in a very small world all my own, occasionally wondering whether there was room in my world for God. I now find myself in a much larger world wondering whether God can believe in me."
God help me.

From morning prayers....

2007-03-15T07:02:00.000-05:00

"Teach me to treat all that comes to me throughout the day with peace of soul, and with the firm conviction that Your will governs all. In what I do and say guide my thoughts and feelings. In unexpected events, do not let me forget that all things are sent by You. Teach me to act firmly and wisely, without making others bitter or embarrassing them."

I am especially struck by the last bit as I consider my life:
"Teach me to act firmly and wisely, without making others bitter or embarrassing them."
Lord teach me and make me open to Your teaching today.
Amen

V&E - New blog - old photos

2007-03-12T20:24:00.000-05:00

My friends V and E have a blog. It is over here. They were crowned last spring here in Ottawa. Before the wedding the boys took V out for a "special crowning" at the Barley Mow in Ottawa. I've published these photos before but, as I warned him many moons ago, this gift will keep on giving.

My friends Andrew and Marta will be crowned this spring.....what will happen to Andrew?

I'm better at drama

2007-03-09T20:40:00.000-05:00

I have a miserable cold. It is miserable and I am miserable at dealing with it. Did I mention it was all-round miserable?
When something bad happens to me I'm able to find a way to make the best of it or offer it to God if it's a "big thing" like losing a job or breaking up etc. I'm not so good at dealing with things like this miserable cold (did I mention how miserable it was making me?) The everyday, mundane events are more of a stretch for me than the 'blockbuster' dramatic stuff.

Today's reading .... Not my will

2007-03-08T20:53:00.000-05:00

One of the many good things about Lent is that the fast is not of my choosing. To be sure I choose to what extent I keep it and in conjunction with my spiritual Father I try to apply the season to my personal life. But there is this underlying sense that it is not My fast but Our fast, the Fast given us by Christ through the Church. That is a good thing.

Walk Tall

2007-03-08T00:02:00.000-05:00

Bigotry and hatred are enemies to us all
But Grace, Mercy and Forgiveness can help a man walk tall

John Mellencamp - Walk Tall

I just love that song

Power over sin

2007-03-06T22:07:00.000-05:00

Knowledge is not power
repentance is power

I can know all the triggers inside me that predispose me to sin
yet the knowledge only makes me a miserable bystander
as I watch the passions storm through me, sevenfold worse than before

God help me to repent
forgive me

Cruciform Logic

2007-03-05T23:07:00.000-05:00

In George MacDonald's wonderful story "The Princess and Curdie", the young man Curdie is trying to determine whether he had a real or a dream encounter with a great Princess. He doubts the reality of the encounter because he saw her change from one form to another.

His wise mother has this to say in reply to his doubts:
"'Of course,' answered his mother, 'it is not for me to say whether you were dreaming or not if you were doubtful of it yourself; but it doesn't make me think I am dreaming when in the summer I hold in my hand the bunch of sweet peas that make my heart glad with their colour and scent, and remember the dry, withered-looking little thing I dibbled into the hole in the same spot in the spring. I only think how wonderful and lovely it all is. It is just as full of reason as it is of wonder.'"

I don't think it an unfair stretch to say that this is the logic of the Cross. The Apostles wondered how the Crucified One could be the Risen One. Today we wonder how dying to ourselves can bring us to True Life.

It disconcerts us when the inner logic of things is laid bare in such moments of transformation or "double vision". I will never forget travelling with a group of fellow parishioners on pilgrimage. En route we stopped to pick up a Hermit. It was mid November and it had begun to snow heavily with high winds by the time we arrived at his hermitage. He is a small frail, old man and my first thought was that the skirling wind might carry him off like a leaf. Yet even as I looked at him I felt things shift and saw him to be immovably centred, anchored in the Cross. I will try to remember him this Lent for he, like the Risen One he serves is "just as full of reason as he is of wonder."

Nature's Semandron

2007-03-03T12:08:00.000-05:00

Withered fingertips pressed against sky

Ache for the quickening thrum of spring

A gesture unmet

A koan only answered in time

Yet shall this tree clap

Autumn

2007-03-01T00:13:00.000-05:00

More recycling...
I've not posted this before but I wrote it years ago...

Moments, leaved together fade to end autumn
September's slash of cold rain
Baked in cool dry furnace of
October brilliance.

Must,
sharpened to sweet by Chill.
Green,
fired to red, orange, Yellow.

Time's kiln releases
sweet ferment of
Life into memory.

Leavening leave-taking
drenches mind's palate
with warmth of slow lightning.

Arc refracts
through lens
of winter's seeming flood.

Earth-bread and Sun-wine
sweet, aching ferment of
life rushing torrentially
into the one cup.

Babel

2007-02-27T21:37:00.000-05:00

Saw this movie last night and found it very disturbing. It had little actual death in it but yet was full of death. Very well crafted and well told set of stories but truly horrific in many ways...

St. John Chrysostom says.....

2007-02-27T00:47:00.000-05:00

"For a man cannot possibly live a pure life without believing in the Resurrection..."
Homily 45 on St. John's Gospel chapter 6 vv. 28-30

How deeply am I wedded to death, with so little thought for the Resurrection?
Colourless wretch that I am, this pale shadow of assent might pass for fervour,
But for He Who is the Resurrection.

Lord, I believe, help my unbelief!

His taste of death....

2007-02-25T22:59:00.000-05:00

O Sweetest of fruits from the bitterest of trees!
Adam, reaching for the sweetness of forbidden knowledge
Grasped only the bitterness of death
Yet You, O my Saviour, in grasping the bitterness of death
have brought forth the fountain of immortality!

Living toward the Chalice

2007-02-24T08:09:00.000-05:00

Presanctified yesterday. What an amazing service! My whole day yesterday seemed fraught with danger and hope toward it. Would I find myself lashing out sinfully at some imagined slight or would I navigate through this narrow passage toward the light of communion? By God's grace I made it to the Chalice. Yet as I reflect I suspect it is also because of my ignorance that I received communion. How much bitter pettiness and hidden sin did I bring to the Cup? Grant me to see my own transgressions Oh Lord....

O Lord and Master of my life
take from me the spirit of sloth
despair,lust of power
and idle talk.

But give rather the spirit of chastity,
humility,
patience,
and love to Your servant.

Yea, O Lord and King
grant me to see my own transgressions
and not to judge my brother or my sister;

From the Lenten prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian

Canon of St. Andrew

2007-02-22T07:41:00.000-05:00

This was my first Lenten service at my home parish as I was away visiting my kids last weekend. Very beautiful.

Lurching into Lent

2007-02-20T21:01:00.000-05:00

Headlong, pell mell, here we go!
Don't know if I can be ready for this but I hope I can at least profit from it, unready though I be. I'm planning to try and post something "Lenten" every day till Pascha.
Might be long, might be short, might just be "Lord have mercy!" Something every day, though, I hope.
For today
Lord have mercy
You know Oh Lord, what a magpie I am
You know how quickly I will trade away
the penetrating warmth of your quiet presence
for the bright shiny plastic bauble
skittering along in the world's wind outside the nest of prayer
Help me, Oh my Lord

On growing old

2007-02-12T21:39:00.000-05:00

This is a recycled post. I liked it when I wrote it almost a year ago and I still do. I think it captures something of the ambiguity of our relationship to our physicality.
Something I like to think about as lent approaches.

The Body Remembers
River of youth's strength remembered cannot quench
Fiery accretion of the body's many small betrayals.

Yet the body carries as much of beauty as decay
Lines of laughter, strength of bearing, clarity of gaze
Born of resistance to meanness & joy in life's grandeur
Now the spirit, unbowed, shines ever more brightly,
In the time-polished mirror of its most ancient friend.

James, Baptism and obedience

2007-02-10T12:35:00.000-05:00

As Lent approaches I have been reading the Epistle of James. It is making me very uncomfortable. I am seeing how little I trust God and how often I judge others. And how deeply these things are connected. God help me.
Below is my grammatical and textual exercise in identifying the place of Baptism in James' Epistle. It is nearly worthless but I leave it in as it was what got me started reading the Epistle again.

Some words from James:

22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.
23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror
24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like.
25 But the man who looks intently into the perfect law of liberty, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.

The mirror and the perfect law of liberty are presented in parallel and so refer to the same thing. How odd. looking in a mirror matched with looking intently into the perfect law of liberty.
What then is this law of liberty and how does the idea of a mirror help us to understand it? The original Greek doe not say "sees himself" in the mirror but rather "sees the face of his birth" in the mirror. I don't know anything about patterns of speech in NT Greek so it might just be the normal way of saying "sees himself"....But it's construction sounds so awkwardly different that I think it means exactly what it says. What is the face of a man's birth? I doubt James is talking about baby photos here. Baptism perhaps? This would make the image in the mirror coincide with "the perfect law of liberty". Our baptism gives us a "new face" as Paul says (As many as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ Galatians 3:27). This connects with the previous text where James refers to the "implanted Logos Who is able to save you" (1:21).
I don't want to get lost in the technicalities of Greek grammar but rather to understand what the Apostle is trying to teach us about the relationship between baptism and obedience. It is the same relationship that he has drawn for us between faith and works. Faith without works is dead. So too, Baptism without doing the works it shows us is dead. Christians who would like to rest on the laurels of baptism and those who would like to rest on their one-time "conversion" are both given a rough ride by James. James also rejects the notion that we will be saved by works apart from Christ as he refers us to the Person of Christ, "the implanted Logos who is able to save".
Our response to Christ in us is our working out of our own salvation with fear and trembling.
"For we are His workmanship, created for good works in Christ."(Ephesians 2:10)

Deal of a lifetime!

2007-01-27T08:13:00.000-05:00

Wow! This makes me want to run out and buy a car just so I can take advantage of this deal. How do they manage to offer such deals and stay in business? This is 100% real by the way. I took this photo myself and the filling station in question is about 5 blocks from my house.

Time

2007-01-17T18:47:00.000-05:00

Is time merely the dreary sidereal addition of moments whose final sum is death?
What is time?
From the groaning of stars to the crying out of stones
From the fleeing of Jordan to the winking of the moon
From each flower's opening to sun's eye closing on night
Time is the Yes of all creation
whose final sum is Life

How far to Jericho?

2007-01-15T21:35:00.000-05:00

1 cubit to Jericho
This way so little traveled,
All aclutter with passions yet unformed by Mercy's tender fire.
Quagmire of sloth
Unbridged, undrained - breeding ground of temptations and distractions.
Ambushed by demons - I lie bleeding and broken.
Oh! Who shall deliver me from this body of death?
My own flesh and blood have passed me by,
Princes and sons of men in whom there is no salvation.
Who then shall be my help?
Here comes one I have long despised - come to finish me?
His stride is firm with resolve, Yet not with arrow's cruel purpose
Wielding the Sun He heals my eyes
Wielding the Moon he calms the passions
With Holy Mercy He sears my wounds
His Broken Flesh touches me and He disappears into my Heart.
I follow and find myself in Jericho.
walls of selfishness - fallen

Orthodox Serbia

2007-01-12T18:50:00.000-05:00

This stuff is just too beautiful. For the impatient among you, start at about 1 min 30 seconds in.

My house is empty

2007-01-10T17:32:00.000-05:00

Kids are gone back to Thunder Bay now. Monday was a long march of airports and waiting and tiredness all round. Left my place at 5am and got back home at 1030 pm. Andrew arrived back home with Marta last night so it was a pleasant, busy evening. Tonight I'm home alone and fully conscious for the first time since they left.
I think there is something I need to do with the loneliness I experience in their absence. It must be offered up but I don't quite know how.

My Lord I do not know how you reached out
and placed Your blessed hands upon the cross
Yet You did so and instructed me to follow.

Show me how
to offer up this suffering
that it be not an occasion for sin
but filled with Your purpose

Let my wounds, however small
be conformed to Yours

dysfunctional humour

2007-01-05T18:58:00.000-05:00

What's a dysfunctional family's favorite beverage?
Triangulatte of course....

What's the difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist?
A psychologist is someone in a black room with the lights out and the shade drawn looking for a black cat.
A psychiatrist is someone in a black room with the lights out and the shade drawn looking for a black cat that isn't there.

Two psychologists meet each other on the street and one says to the other....
You're fine, how am I?

Here's a question to ask a roomful of psychologists:
Why do some people stir coffee clockwise and others stir it counterclockwise?
Wait till a number of theories have been offered, right brain, left brain, left right handed, Australia etc...
The answer? To dissolve the sugar.

"I can't get used to my body's limits"

2006-12-27T16:30:00.000-05:00

Amazing music by Brett Dennen, thanks to SimplyVictoria for introducing me to his music via her blog .
The last few days I've been thinking about this particular line: "I can't get used to my body's limits" from the title track of the album "There is so much more".

My children are here for the holidays and the first night my son stayed with me, the 23rd, we went to the children's hospital to deal with what turned out to be a double ear infection (poor little bug!)We were there from 630 till midnight before seeing a doctor. He's on the mend now but that visit to the hospital took the stuffing out of both of us. I was anxious about my son and already tired from a long slog at work leading up to the holidays etc.

Today my roommate Andrew took all the kids out for a bit whilst I had a nap. He had to actually tell me he was doing this (and tell me to have a nap!) I was too out of whack to realize I needed it. Thank God for friends, family and other assorted angels who keep us from our own stupidity at times.

Free me from the memories of sins long gone by.....

2006-12-26T10:08:00.001-05:00

As part of morning prayers we say:
O Birth-giver of God, my most holy Lady! Unworthy as I am, I beg you, by your holy and powerful prayers, cleanse my clouded mind and bruised heart. Free me from the memories of sins long gone by. Rescue me from every inclination to do wrong. In your goodness help me, for I am poor and lost.

Free me from the memories of sins long gone by.....
how do you put an evil memory away?
What is it made of anyway?
Is it "just" a picture in your head, that you can simply erase or discard?
Or does it live on inside your body, printed on your cells?
Some horrible, non-recyclable, exercise in frozen plasticity.....

Sometimes we don't want to be free, perhaps the sin was sweet and we wish to hold on.
Perhaps the wound is deep and we have learned to live our lives around it, no longer using that part of our heart for much of anything.

How does She free us?
She educates our heart till it can no longer desire the sin or even the echo of its sweetness. She heals the wound, perhaps by breaking the skin and cleansing it first.

This generates some paradoxical thoughts. When we indulge a sinful memory we think we need to be chastened and rebuked, yet perhaps we need to be educated gently instead.
When we have an old hurt, we might wish to receive comfort for our pain but we might need instead to have the wound reopened or the bone broken and reset in order to be healed.
Free me from the memories of sins long gone by.....Whatever it takes.

They bring the light

2006-12-18T07:22:00.000-05:00

My kids have been away since September with their Mom. This has been one of the most difficult passages of my life. I've been to see them a few times but how can going from seeing them all the time to once a month be anything like enough?
They arrive for 2 weeks on the solstice, Dec 22. Then it's six more months of this until July when they are with me for summer holidays and back here permanently.
Enough preamble:

They bring the light

Shining in their small cupped hands
pouring from their beautiful faces

The world turns and my heart with it
The bulls of Bashan are set at nought

My heart sings with life
My children are home

Handful of Dust

2006-12-15T01:20:00.001-05:00

Breath of air
whispering in the dust
of autumn

I remember the sooty smell of Inverness
As a child I went often to the hospital there
I couldn't breath, that's what I remember
It's an odd thing to remember, not doing something

Illness, healing and sin....John 9

2006-12-02T21:49:00.000-05:00

When Christ's disciples ask him why a particular man was born blind, they suggested two reasons. "Who sinned?", they ask "This man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Our Lord's answer? "Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him....." Jesus then proceeds to heal the man by making mud with spit and sending him to wash in the pool of Siloam.

According to St. John Chrysostom, the disciples ask the question rhetorically, not believing that anyone had sinned, but therefore wondering why this man was then born blind.
Christ responds to this in both his words and his actions. Why does Christ say "that the works of God be made manifest."? Does He mean to tell us that God engineered this man's blindness so Christ could do this miracle and thereby prove Himself divine? Is that what is really being said here? I hope not.

Looking at what happens after this, we may see a little more of what Jesus is really after. The man is healed through obedience to Christ's command. He went and washed and then saw. The man had a part to play in his own healing. Further, the man attested to Christ as his healer. He did not try to pretend that the pool of Siloam was magical or that God had used some other means to heal him. Persecuted by the religious authorities and abandoned by his own family the man still holds to Christ. This faithfulness to the source of Life was in itself part of the man's healing and the manifestation of the work of God. Upon his faithfulness to Christ, which got him kicked out of the synangogue, Christ comes to him and reveals Himself as the source of all healing and life. This man then becomes the first person recorded as worshipping Christ in John's gospel....and one of only a very few pre-resurrection worshippers, period.

So here is the work of God manifest, not a miracle as the occasion to show Christ as the Son of God, but rather Christ showing Himself as God in order that the miracle of salvation be worked in this man's heart. A physical healing, yes. A physical healing to show everyone that He was God? No. He healed this man in order that the man might see Him. The man did see Christ and asked for a second gift of sight. He asked Christ to show him the Son of God, that he might worship Him.

The sad, pathetic backdrop of this man's beautiful journey is the religious authorities taking the rhetorical question of the disciples as their answer to the whole thing....

"They answered and said to him, You were altogether born in sins, and do you teach us? And they cast him out."

They believed, in the end, that the man 's parents must have been dreadful sinners and passed it on to him in the form of blindness and in his willfulness in not trusting their judgment of Christ.

May I not be found to follow the corrupt inclination of my heart but instead be found to say with he who was also born blind..."Lord, I believe!"

passage

2006-12-02T19:56:00.000-05:00

Today we had the funeral for the falling asleep in the Lord of our dear sister Nadia. Her passing was a thing expected, yet one is never 'ready'. She had been so ill for so many years. I marvel as I write this....She had become so luminous through wrestling with cancer that light seemed to pour out of her. In fact, those who did not know her before her illness often did not know her to be ill. Her whole person was transfigured by Grace. I am reminded of an icon of St. Nicholas I once saw....His face is quite dark and there are grooves in it from tears....yet the whole is suffused with an inner glory. The truth is clear in this image as it was clear in Nadia's life....
I will try to find an image of the icon to add to this note.

Little girl

2006-11-28T22:33:00.000-05:00

A sparkling jewel among the stars
You laugh and I follow
a merry chase you lead
but only for those who will follow
not for you, the grumpy spirit
not for you, the cranky daddy
a light load for all who would dance with you
a merry heart for all who know you
Je t'aime patate.

My boy

2006-11-28T22:27:00.000-05:00

I see your picture sitting on my desk little boy
and my heart pours out of my eyes in a river of sorrow

I miss you so much
I want so much to care for you,
to protect you from the sorrows and trials of life

I want so much to see you fly on your own
I ache so much for you
That you begin to be the man you will become
And that you always stay the boy you are
An exuberant shout of delight in this world of God's gifting
A hug for those who weep
A dance with the wind
and you are away
away
away
away

Ungh......

2006-11-20T08:01:00.000-05:00

That pretty much sums this morning up. I've been at work the better part of the weekend. Thank God my work is so close to Church so I was at least able to get to vespers on Saturday and Liturgy yesterday. I'm feeling beat up by work but at least I'm not shambling into a busy crazy week without having been to the chalice.

Heretics and heresies

2006-11-06T00:26:00.000-05:00

I am an Orthodox Christian by choice rather than by birth. In my case this means I'm Orthodox because I believe it to be the fullest expression of Christian faith. This means I also believe that deviation from this fullness is, plain and simple, heretical. So how then do I approach fellow Christians who are not Orthodox?
What is the disposition of my heart in conversation with non-Orthodox believers, people I respect, love and trust whom I believe are adhering to one or more heretical ideas about God, His Incarnation, our salvation in Him?
As I type this I wonder what would happen if I were to meditate on how poorly I have lived out what I profess. What if I were to think on these things in my heart before having that conversation where I am challenging a brother or sister to consider whether the Orthodox Church might have it right on a particular point. What if I were to repent of my failure to live out the point in question?
What if I began with the sure and certain knowledge that I am a heretic of the heart, and begged God to forgive and cleanse the weeping sores of my wickedness?
What if I removed the mote? And in removing the mote I saw that the mote's shadow, coming from my own eye, was a large part (not all, but a large part) of the beam I thought I saw lodged in someone else's eye?
What would that be like?

Elephant Man

2006-11-05T01:08:00.000-05:00

Just watched this movie for the first time. Very beautiful and moving. I noted that it was produced by David Lynch who also did Twin Peaks. In my view this was a much better use of Lynch's talents than Twin Peaks.