Easily the sickest, funkiest…
filthy sweet organ in the history of rock and roll.
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When I was a child…
people used to ask me “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
They usually, of course, had a single thing in mind, like being a firefighter or a doctor or a teacher. My first thing I wanted to be when I grew up was an archaeologist. I was a little braniac even then. Over the years I’ve thought about being a solider, a musician, a teacher, a writer, a pastor, a business owner, you know the drill. Every option was good but each option was too small.
The truth is that I want to be everything that interests me and being defined by one thing may be a sign of being grown up but its also extraordinarily boring. So I’m a Priest, a musician, a writer, a husband, a caregiver, at any one given time or all of the above at any one given moment. The only thing that’s the “one” thing is following Christ, the rest is wherever my heart takes me. I guess I’m old enough not to care about whether people think I’m sufficiently grown up and wise enough to know that putting all your eggs in one basket just doesn’t work.
Have enough to eat. Have people that love you. Keep close to God. A roof over your head would be nice and the rest is gravy. Sing when you want to. Pray when you need to. Work when the work is there to be done. Love as best you can. Don’t leave a gaping hole in the earth when you’ve gone to your reward. Live at peace with heaven and your neighbors. What more is there? Only the stuff that people want you to do because it matters to them.
Maybe I’m just an old hippie without the drugs. Still I’ll die with a smile on my face.
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The hardest thing…
I think will be trust. After everything in the American Orthodox Church settles down trust will be the last to recover.
Many, perhaps, think the whole thing is about power, and it is in some way. Yet as the issues of who is in charge of what begin to settle the sheep will still be scattered because an enemy has struck the shepherds. After all, who can you talk to now? In the shifting alliances is there any safe place where your challenges won’t be ammunition for someone’s next move, your confessions a source of power to those who hear them, or your thoughts of the moment the fodder for www speculation even before they are completely developed? The titles may one day be all sorted out but the relationships may never be. Everyone will feel like they have to play the game and and no one will know for sure when its over.
If you’re a cleric that world is the new normal for the forseeable future. The damage is already done. Serving God in the Church is going to be a tense business, one eye on those you are called to serve, the other keeping track of the shadows as you try to guess the next move. Honesty, struggle, contemplation, its all gone for now, and so, for that matter will be creativity, risk taking, and the kinds of envisioning that look towards the future. Keep your head low. Keep your thoughts to yourself. Keep the money coming in and the people from complaining. Above all, watch your back. It’s not the gates of hell but it can sure feel like it sometimes.
Still I have no plans to give up. Orthodoxy is too precious to be deserted for the sake of a single era and certainly not for some uncomfortable years. I wish it was better. I wish it was, well, “orthodox”, but for now the better that drew me to the Faith will have to wait a while until reality starts catching up. This, too, is the faith of the Church.
For now no one is quite sure how to walk through this. No one is sure who to trust. We’re going to be hobbled for a while, wasting precious time while things that should not have been broken are fixed. Its our penance and if we are truly humble we should try our best to not leave it to be borne by our children.
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As I sleep…
through the night I am watched over by angels and cats and I thank God for both.
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I wonder how…
different I’d be if I was as anxious to acquire grace as I am to get my new instrument shipped. I already know the answer.
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I've been pondering…
for some time on the troubles that seem to be working themselves through the various Orthodox jurisdictions. It’s been a sometimes frustrating and sometimes hopeful sort of task.
Frustrating, of course, because it seems so meaningless. Our culture is in a deep moral crisis and millions wander through life without some kind of healthy guidance to make it through the day. So what is our agenda? Arguments over who gets the best places at the table, whose title is what, and who, in a certain way, gets to lord it all over the subordinates like the Gentiles.
Would to God that we were vying for who can have the deepest prayer life, or who can do the most to plant churches to strengthen the faithful and help the drifting. Imagine a contest among us as to who will love the most, or with whom the poor will find the greatest shelter!
Yet that is not to be for the moment. For now we have to pound our heads against the stubborn wall of pride until, it seems, we realize that the pain will go away only if we stop. For now the game must be played until the players, exhausted and battered, come to realize that its only a game, nothing more, that we’ve expended so much precious time and energy playing.
Gone is the triumphalism of Orthodoxy. Sex scandals are not only a Roman Catholic problem. We have them too. All the televangelists that we pointed fingers at with the big houses and unaccounted for money, well we have that in our way as well. The idolization of position and title has been dealt a fatal blow as well all stand exposed in our humanity like kids caught at the door of the store with a unpaid candy bar in their pocket.
Yet perhaps its at this place that we need to be. Perplexed, frustrated, humbled, unsure of ourselves, and even afraid. The closets have been opened and everything we’ve tried to hide under the bed is slowly leaking out. We look like the stars without makeup in the tabloid magazines. We are being weighed in the balances and found wanting.
Yet there is a voice that we can hear if they care to listen. Perhaps it is the voice of the God who loves us deeply whispering in our ears. “Your pedigrees, your temples, your titles, your connections, the great and holy gifts, all of these are good but none of them is anything without humility, grace, love, piety, and all the precious gifts that come with the Holy Spirit. Seek those first, seek first the kingdom of God and everything else will find its proper place.”
Some day, tired of hearing our own voices, we’ll be able to listen and perhaps that day is why we are here now.
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The Civil Wars…
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An interesting…
point of view regarding the recent challenges in the Orthodox Church and the internet.
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It's that I don't like…
what they do to me, the gossip blog sites in Orthodoxy, that has made me reconsider the time I have spent reading and occasionally writing in them. They seem, especially lately, to be mostly about anger and finding a way to one up each other. It’s like a kid’s game except for the fact that real people’s lives and reputations are being handled like yesterday’s trash.
I know there are problems , the Church is full of human beings. It was that way and will continue to be that way. I just am weary of people thinking that shouting at each other and name calling is going to help us through, it won’t. The longer I read sites like ocanews.org and ocatruth.com and a host of others with some dog in this fight the more weary I become. How can any one person continue to fuel such things and not have their soul begin to feel like a rock in their guts?
I don’t know. But I’m done. Let them shout at each other all they want. I’ve got better things to do like praying for our Bishops, doing the best I can to serve people, and not trying to burn my precious life energy on trying to control anyone but me. God knows what we need and God will provide.
