Against all this

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

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?

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

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

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.....

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

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

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

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

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

Thoughts on Syncretism

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?

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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...

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?