If you spend time at all on line you know there are a zillion sites all about this and that and who’s doing what to whom and pro and con on just about anything. It’s a world of complaints. It’s depressing, a lot. Everyone has a sword, no one a plowshare.

There seems to be be several choices. Ignore it all and hope it goes away. Thrive on it and live for the daily combat and gotcha scores. Enjoy it as some kind of sign of the coming apocalypse in which you and yours will be safely snatched away so that God can burn a few billion folks to set the score right. Or do something about it.

As terrible as these times may seem, and some of the darkness of these days has little to do with a sheer amount of darkness but rather about how we get to witness it all over and over again in a 24 hour media world, it’s also a good time to be a Christian. We’re free from the burden of being the culture. The powers that be are not us and frankly they’re making a huge mess of it all. In time the sheer volume of pain will wake up a society still drowsy from all its drugs (materialism, relativism, etc.) and our moment will arrive.

Will we be ready? Will I? When the world seeks answers will they find them among us? I hope so. Because what the world needs now is not more wallowing in its own painful filth or another hundred dead ends. What the world needs now is a way out, something better, and that’s all about Jesus Christ.

Orthodoxy Today

Frederica Matthewes Green on men and Orthodoxy.

Standing at my first Baptist church and with

Bp. MARK this past weekend.

Here

It was said that in his youth a man named John who lived on Cyprus had a dream in which a beautiful maiden named Compassion appeared to him and told him she was the eldest daughter of God.

As John grew, then married and had a family, the dream never left his mind. When he became a widower and then an ascetic it stayed with him. As popular acclaim required he serve as the Patriarch of Alexandria that dream followed him to his palace. And as Patriarch he made it his mission to give to many, to all, to people he did not know, and people far and wide, and by generosity express compassion and so serve God.

These acts were not always met with approval. The Church in Alexandria in the early 600’s was wealthy, prominent, and there were those who would keep the wealth intact. But Patriarch John understood something greater than the economy of those times, and ours as well, an economy based on acquiring and storing for ourselves. John understood that in God’s economy what was given away, what was shared, was what came back to you and that the glory of the Church was when she lived not for herself but for God and those outside her walls. It was that attitude that made John notable in his life, acclaimed in his service, and eventually glorified by the church where he is now known as St. John the Merciful.

And it’s this attitude that’s found in our Epistle and Gospel readings today. Our Orthodox faith teaches us that we truly own nothing in this world. All that we acquire in our time here is given to us by God, the source of all good things, and we are required to hold it in trust and use it for the glory of God and the benefit of all. At the end of time we will be asked to give an accounting of what we have been given and the basis of that accounting will not be in how much we acquired by how much we have shared.

We Orthodox often use the hammer of “tradition” against each other, arguing about what kind of music we have, what language we speak, how the Priest served, what kind of food we need to make, a million things we all think are tradition. But the truth is if you want to know the heart of Orthodoxy none of those things matter in any particular way at all. Jesus himself said it best we he urged those follow him to love God with all their heart and soul and mind and love their neighbor as themselves.

If you love God in this way, you will trust him for all your needs. If you love your neighbor this way you will understand that you find your own true life in living for others and all that you have, all that you are exists for the benefit of all. If you understand this you will have mastered the tradition of our faith in a way that people obsessed with rubrics and cultures and liturgics and who does what and who has the power will never know. Whatever they may gain they gain for only a short while but those whose lives sow bountifully into the lives of others for the sake of the love of God hold on to their treasures for all time.

It is said of St. John the Merciful that he commanded his coffin to be made but left unfinished and his grave to be partially dug. At various times during the year he instructed those in charge of making coffins and digging graves to approach him and say “Master, shall we complete the preparations for your death…?” In this way St. John reminded himself of what things truly matter in this life.

Perhaps something like that would be good for us as well. We should ponder our end not as some kind of exercise in morbid introspection but rather as a way to give our lives focus and meaning. The Psalmist asked of God, “Teach us to number our days so that we can increase in wisdom” and another has said “The shortness of life underscores the value of giving ourselves to the right things.”

If we did we would soon come to realize that we truly own nothing in this world, even the clothes they bury us in will one day turn to mulch. We would understand that everything we think we possess, including this church, is not our own and what matters is not what we hold close to ourselves but what we give away. And perhaps the most remarkable thing is that as we draw nearer to understanding this we become more free from the tyranny of life, more alive, more whole, more real, and more focused on the things that last. And we begin to know what it is to have eternal life.

The story here…

It’s Sunday night back at home in Minnesota. Vacation is done, work awaits in the morning.

Some weeks ago the plans were ambitious, a trip to Seattle to get in a baseball game or maybe a flight to New Mexico to view archaeological sites. A hard month of work and the preparation for our Bishop’s visit took that all off the table. We settled for a trip to Bemidji, Minnesota and followed the fall colors to Marquette, Michigan on the Upper Peninsula.

Even on vacation I enjoy driving, miles under the wheels and simply seeing things I’ve never seen before. Planes are faster but cars are more real, what you see from the air as little squares of ground and distant roof tops fill with people and houses and the palette of life. From 30,000 feet you’d never know that below you was a place called Ball Club, Minnesota or see Agate Falls hidden under the Michigan trees.

Moments with nothing to do are rare for me. I usually get a few hours on Saturday morning and the quiet of the ride home but often not much else. Yet work and family found their way into this time as well. Even if you go away from it all it seems to have a way of finding you and dragging you in to its own whirlpool. I remain convinced that cell phones and the internet have played havoc with the whole idea of vacation. You can never seem to get “away” because whatever you’ve left behind can track you. It was good to leave work for a while but I never did get a few hours on a beach or a long walk in the woods. I miss that and as Monday morning looms I feel like I only had part of what I needed and that it will be months before I find it again.

Yet sleep is coming and I’ll take as much of that now as I can and we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

It’s around 9:30 at night and I’ll be in bed soon.

These past weeks have been busy beyond belief with arrangements for an episcopal visit, the change of staff at work, vacation plans, an illness in the family. I’ve pushed through more paperwork and dealt with more people asking for help then I can remember.

But one part is done, work is over for this week and the time for church things will begin tomorrow morning. I’m sitting and writing and waiting for a load of laundry to get done and then my pillow beckons.

A month ago I knew this was going to be a very busy time. Yet somehow things got done. Some people let me down but I was often amazed at who stepped in, who added a little bit of help to take some of the load. Events that seemed impossible for a moment somehow found a way to resolve themselves. When there was tired there always seemed to be a little more strength. Nothing about me, everything about grace.

It’s not done by a long shot. I’ve got three more days of an episcopal visit. Our Bishop is a very nice man but I still have to study the services and will be flying solo in all of this for the first time. I’m nervous but not because the Bishop makes me nervous but because I want everything to be perfect and too often snare myself in that and miss all the good things along the way.

I want everything at St. Elias to go so well that I think I have to do it all. Now that’s arrogance!

There’s a lot of things I wish would have happened this past year, buildings painted, things started, progress made, things that would make a good impression and help the parish but I have to be careful that I lead and not drive people. There’s a big difference.

More than anything else I would like our Bishop to see what we’ve been doing, how hard we’ve been working, the progress we’ve been making. We’ve got a long way to go but we’ve also traveled far and I hope he sees the progress. I would like the people of St. Elias, as well to know our Bishop and be hoonored by his visit and sieze this moment to get a sense of their own future.

Bu now I’ve got to sleep. Lots of things to do. Lots of miles to travel. And lists everywhere.