October 27th may be a very hard day.

It would have been my brother Paul’s birthday, his 45th, but its been changed into just another painful milestone as we ponder his death and our loss.

I was in my car driving home when I heard that he had died. I had planned to go home, get the keys to St. George Church, and spend some time there in prayer for him (I only knew at the time that there had been an incident and the paramedics were with him). But time had run out. When I called from my car to check on things and all my mother could say was “Paul is with the Lord, and I need to be with his wife…” Then everything faded to black.

Since that time I have been mostly numb, focused on doing the right thing and helping where I could. There are moments, of course, but the whole thing still seems like an illusion. This Friday will remind us all, again, that it isn’t so and nothing will be the same again.

And I will light a candle somewhere for him and for me. For Paul it’s a sign of the light of Christ which never fades and a kind of existence we can only imagine, a freedom and rest from the struggle that marks this broken world. For me it is a light of hope, that somehow, somewhere this all makes some kind of sense.

I presume there is a plan to this all, that somehow in the eternal scheme of things this must happen and that its effects, so terrible and painful for us, are even now working out some greater but invisible good. But as to the specifics I remain totally and utterly without a clue and probably will for the rest of my life. There’s not much I can do about that as I am me and God is God and there are things I will only know when I myself follow my brother.

Until then a candle will have to do.

An open letter from senior and prominent Islamic leaders across the world in response to Pope Benedict proclaiming, among other things, the incompatability of terrorism with Islam.

Worth the reading.

There is a part of me that hates politics and what has become of the political system in the United States. But I also know that its not holy, or right, or good, to pretend to be above it all and not try to transform even a broken system with whatever goodness is at our command.

There is no political party that encapsulates the Christian vision of a just society, sadly often the Church itself fails to do that. Every politician will be a mixture of things good and bad as we all are and history fluctuates which means nothing human is forever written in stone. We will always be faced with imperfect choices but to not seek to be salt and light because of it is sin.

All across the political spectrum there are people who have good ideas, good positions, and even if they don’t have everything we may want they will have some and perhaps more than thier opposition. We must, as people with Christian values, seek these people out and support them wherever we find them. Even if we are distressed at the shape of things we must still make every moral effort we can to make things better. Being sullen, angry, and uninvolved is not an option.

So vote, not as a beholden to one party or person, but as a thoughtful Christian soul seeking to bring out the best in this country even if the best is only a little nudge in the right direction. To despair and withdraw only ensures the triumph of lesser things.

Part of the attraction of Orthodoxy, and why I remain Orthodox, lies in the very real and practical wisdom that flows through this faith like gold threads in a larger and beautiful tapestry. To the unaware all there is ritual and esoteric quotes and a strange attraction to beauty for its own sake that seems so out of sync in a culture which values function above all. But within is wisdom for the very real world of hard choices and human struggle.

These past days have focused my mind on that interweaving of faith, scripture, canon, council, liturgy and thought that is the Tradition and the anthropology of it all as it addresses the way we see ourselves, how we proclaim our identities to the world.

The spokesman for ex-congressman Foley stated what many feel when he identified his client as a gay man and an alcoholic. I’m sure some of it was to garner sympathy for a person disgraced by sending sexual messages to teenage boys, but within this lies a mania of our culture, the identifying of ourselves by our struggles, labeling ourselves by our sins.

To this the Orthodox Tradition points us in a radically different direction because it calls us to see ourselves as we were meant to be by God, not a wildly fluctuating mass of pathologies and misdirected passions but children of God designed for communion, even union, with our Creator. While we certainly acknowledge we sin, and sometimes often and with intent, we are never allowed in Orthodoxy to let those dark parts of us define us and doing that is in itself a kind of darkness. We identify our sins not because they define who we are but because we know what we should be and see our sins as things we must face and overcome to be what we truly are.

Orthodoxy is puzzled when someone would say “I am a gay man” as if that is the center or the focus of identity. There is no such thing as a fornicator among us, or a liar, or a violent man but rather a collection of people struggling to be as we are supposed to be who in our struggles have to face and put to flight enemies within us seeking to destroy the image of God even as we seek its restoration within us and the whole world. Our sins are that which is inauthentic within us, that which is contrary to God’s design, that which diverts us and keeps us from fulfilling the destiny implanted in us when God breathed a unique kind of life into us at the dawn of time.

Our sins are never who we are or were meant to be unless we make that choice and its only when we finally and completely give in that we are lost. Until then there is hope.

On the nature of ministry…

The elections are in earnest here in the United States and it looks, for now, that the Republicans may be swept from power in one or both houses of Congress.

When the tally is done the winners will claim a mandate, the losers will lick thier wounds and vow to fight on but the truth is that little will change. “But can’t you see the scandals of the Republicans…?” some will say and I will answer, “Of course I can and I’ll even vouch for the fact that a party that swept in to power promising to change the status quo has done nothing of the sort and frankly has become the very kind of people they complained about when they were the minority”

And amid all the talk of a “new era for the American people” and the “restoration of the integrity of government” that will flow from Democrats provided they win in November one thing is certain. When they held power they had episodes of corruption and mismanagement that were every bit as bad as anything they pointed out in the Republicans. And after a brief honeymoon where wonderful statements will be made they, too, will return to business as usual except, of course, it will be thier constituencies gaining from the ear marks and back room dealings.

The truth in these things is simple. There will not be a better politics until there are better people.

Toadyism, in dealings, corruption, greed, lust, pride, all are part of human government regardless of its shape and probably always will be. Place people in those positions without a sense of transcendent morals, without a structure for knowing truth and practicing decency and the result will always be the same. A mere change of faces in the halls of power will make not a single difference.

Sadly the one institution with the power to transform people has failed the mark. Either we in the Church have retreated into the pretense of a holy isolation, caved in to our culture’s various pathologies and baptized them, or chosen to play the political game and lose ourselves in the process. Our preachers have gone wobbly in the knees, our teachers love the approval of the tweed jacketed more than God, and our leaders desire to rub shoulders with the powerful more than walking with the Crucified.

The good thing in all of this is one day it will get so bad the Church, or what’s left of it, will emerge from its addictive daze and begin, again, to be what she was meant to be in the world, real salt, real light, savory and pungent, a yeast whose life transforms what it touches and a mustard seed that grows into a tree of shelter.

If you go to church regularly and don’t recognize those images you’ll understand why things are the way they are.

For most of my life, as I can remember, dysthymia has been my companion, a shadow falling.

Many who know me would be surprised to hear that, those who know me well are not. Over the years I have become skilled in living with shadows, a skill developed in years of experience matching depression move for move, thrust, parry, retreat, and attack. I can smile when I need to, engage when I must, and you’d never know. Only those who see me in an unguarded time are aware of it. Until now.

There are many different kinds of depression and many causes and thankfully most will never have more than an occasional bout of the blues once in a while. Dysthymia is a chronic low grade depression that presents itself in my life in somewhat predictable fashion (usually at the end of summer, around Nativity, and sometimes in early spring) and sometimes just appears. Years of practice have allowed me to know when I am sliding in to what I call a “trough” and the feelings of loss, frustration, and hopelessness of one kind or another begin to emerge. It’s hard to sleep but the hardest thing is the feeling of being abandoned by God, the cruelest trick of all because it strikes at my very heart.

This is such a time.

But I’m not asking for pity. I have no idea why, outside of the medical facts, this is happening to me but I’ve long ago stopped asking the questions as anything other than a symptom. I rarely ever speak of it because I don’t want people to see me as my condition, don’t want to have to constantly explain things, don’t need to have people define me as that “depressed” guy. I refuse to allow this thing, this illness, this struggle, to become me.

And that’s why I’m breaking the silence.

I was cautioned by the well meaning to avoid talking about this. What would people think of a Priest who is damaged, somehow less than perfect? How would they handle my secret? What would they do when they discovered there are moments when I am weak? How would they cope with knowing there’s a soft spot under my black shirted armor?

But something else matters more.

In the Church right now are many more like me, people who have lived with this quiet pain, these shadows falling, for decades. They have endured. They have cried alone in bed late at night. They have encountered countless well wishers who don’t understand. They have moments of profound aloneness, days when they feel God has abandoned them and salvation is lost. They’ve been shamed into silence by the nature of thier struggle and wonder what it must be like to be a normal person.

In this moment when I feel the night settling in and know the fight is on all I wish to say is “Do not be afraid…” Your mind will tell you that God has left but it is not so. The dark will seem like forever but the weeping of the night does pass. A part of you will wish for death but you must not succumb. Fight for this day, for this minute if you have to. A little while is all you need, one moment to get some help, to take those damned pills, to run for whatever light you see even if the devil himself is trying to pull you down. Go to Liturgy even if every part of you wants to stay at home in bed. Let His precious Body and Blood work it’s silent graces. Weep if you must, but never surrender to the fictions in your mind. When morning comes, and morning is more precious to us, rejoice and let God’s sun warm your face and dry your tears.

And know that you are not alone.

This past Saturday was the usual trip to LaCrosse and St. Elias, with a twist.

Coming in to LaCrosse and traveling over the Mississippi river I attempted to downshift and discovered that 4th gear was missing, gone, not there, vanished. Turns out 2nd and reverse were also missing which made for quite a scene when I later backed my car out of a hotel parking lot using my foot for a motor (sort of like Fred Flinstone).

Now my car, which usually has been remarkably reliable, had some transmission problems which the dealer fixed and were, thank God, covered by the warranty. But this was new and visions of my being stuck somewhere out in the country with an immovable hunk of metal under me caused a certain amount of concern.

What to do?

There was no way to drive it back to the dealer before closing and it was too much of a trip to have someone pick me up. So the die was cast and all interested parties back home were informed of the situation and preapred to pick me up when I returned on Sunday. As to the car, who knows?

Sprinkled with holy water and blessed by the prayers of the faithful of St. Elias the adventure home began after Liturgy. First challenge, climbing the bluffs to the prairies above, then getting to Rochester, and then making it to the dealer where my wife would be waiting so I could leave the car and get home.

Needless to say it was a prayerful trip with XM radio football scores to fill in the gaps. It turned out to be a minor part that could be fixed in less than an hour.

A day of two later it occurred to me, broken as the car was I had been given all the gears I needed to make it safely home.

I’m still working out the lesson for me in all of that.

In the furnace of these times lesser things are being burned away and a pure focus is emerging.

It’s not about a desire for, or a glee at, the shape of things. I look at the world and feel mostly sadness and a certain sense of having the normalcy of the world taken from me by the winds of culture. Rather something is happening, a change is coming, and glimpses of it are already present.

The times are rousing me from my sleepy state, that sense of just flowing with things in the space between awake and dreams. I am more alert, more aware, more alive, then I have been in a long time. To use a biblical image the scales are falling off my eyes and vision is beginning to return.

I’m seeing the world more clearly in this time when all seems to be shadows, but more importantly I am starting to see Jesus with greater clarity as well. He stands out more as the darkness seems to grow and glows with a fiery intensity as night falls. It something I missed when my delusions led me to believe that all was well or at least tolerable.

Now I’m certainly no saint. My life is cancerous with sin in ways I don’t even know. But I’m beginning, just beginning to see, and what it is I’m coming to know is deep and real and beautiful and right. If I can have just a taste of it I will leave this world a happy man and there is a radiance in it all that cuts through this gray rainy day with the light of a million suns.

As a child I remember the bible camp that filled our summers and the chapel on the grounds with the words on the wall that said “We would see Jesus…” Can it be that after all those decades I finally am? And what I’m starting to see, even in fragments, is so amazing that I can only begin to wonder at it all and barely stand in the face of it.

The Light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never overpowered it…