At the St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church Festival this past Saturday. I’m on the far right with the white pants, playing the bass.
Forgiveness…
the story is here.
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The Festival…
is over. The tents and tables and chairs are moved. Things that can wait will be taken apart as time provides. The dumpsters have been taken away.
Festivals are places where people plan together, work together. and serve together. They can raise vital funds and put a public face on the parish. My parish and its Middle Eastern Dancers made the largest paper in Minnesota. People working together build bonds with each other, their guests, and put their best foot forward.
Festivals are also a ton of work, months in the making, and often just pure sweat. A handful of people are driven to exhaustion one weekend a year because people want, no need, help to pay for their parish. Tempers build. Relationships are strained. Towards the end there are a lot of tired eyes and faces. Sigh,
I haven’t figured it out yet. I like all the good things and dislike all the bad stuff. Where does that leave me? Pretty much where I was before save for one important thing. Every festival we have reminds me of the fact there are people who truly cherish their church home and are willing to sacrifice and give of themselves in extraordinary ways to see that it survives. There’s a raw pool of energy there that hooked to the right things could change the world and in time by grace it will.
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I am convinced…
that, in the end, a Christian sexual ethic will triumph. This is because it most agrees with human happiness and design as it comes from the Designer. The problem is that we currently live in an age of arrogance, an age when all prior wisdom is considered suspect and knowledge that may appear to have spiritual sources even more so. So the ideas and wisdom formed over millenia of human experience are being disregarded in the belief they are shackles to progress rather than wisdom transcending time.
Of course it’s not so. Every generation thinks they invented sex and yet somehow doesn’t recall how they themselves got here. There is nothing new under the sun and our religious belief that somehow there is something new under the sun and that we are its source will eventually play out under the constant barrage of historical truth rooted in actual human experience and not utopian desire. We’re already seeing that happen in the great silent experience of people who’ve bought into our lies and have yet to voice their struggles.
Yet to get back to that place of respect and understanding, that place where we come to realize that the ideas that became traditional may just have become so because they, in fact, work in the world as it is and not as we think it should be, we are going to suffer. History is going to repeat itself because we are refusing to listen. Our current generation of lonely, broken, STD ridden people thinking that just breaking down one more barrier will be the key to love and happiness are going to find out they are wrong as have every generation before them which tried the same experiment. We will learn, the old lessons will be reaffirmed, but it will be by hard trial and painful experience and who knows how many generations and lives it will cost before sanity returns?
In that day the people now called homophobes, prudes, and regressives will be considered prophets and sages and those who continued to observe the Christian sexual ethic in the face of society’s barrages will be considered the forerunners of a new and better way of life.
Those who decided to flow with current will, if they remain alive, need us to help them pick up the pieces and try to make some sense out of the damage. And we will, because the love of Christ that motivates all true chastity also calls us to bind the wounds of those who have experienced the pains of its abandonment.
Until then we wait, watch, pray, and work for the greater good, even if the “greater” hates us for doing it.
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Can Liberal Christianity…
be saved? A story of the Episcopal Church that calls to mind the general decline of mainline Protestant life. Some years ago I had hoped that perhaps there would be a place for me in the Episcopal Church. Alas, I was not a Patristics scholar but I knew that where I was headed and where this church was headed were two different directions. Still, there is no joy in this. A venerable community of faith is in the process of collapsing both in faith, life, and numbers. A cautionary tale, as well, for us all.
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I Wish…
I could have been in this picture. These are the clergy of the Diocese of the Midwest gathered in late June at the Parish Life Conference. I couldn’t stay because I needed to come back to serve St. George, also a very good thing. Such is the life of a traveling Priest. This Sunday? LaCrosse, Wisconsin.
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FYI…
From time to time the title of this blog may be puzzling to some. What does “150 Knots” mean?
Well, it’s not about ships or planes it’s about prayer ropes. Orthodox Christians can carry prayer ropes each knot of which can be used to guide the person as they pray the “Jesus prayer” (Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner). A rather lengthy one would have 150 individual knots, each of which who be one supplication.
In these days there are all kinds of arguments over what should be done about the state of things. I can think of only one, pray. Enter into deep prayer and the Holy Spirit will guide us into what we need, how to live in this world, and what God would have us do.
When I’m overwhelmed it’s the least and the best I can do. Grab a prayer rope, say the Jesus prayer for myself, for the world, for everything, and then rest in God. Sometimes its about a few knots. Lately its about 150.
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The Truth Is…
I’ve gotten tired of all the shuffling and moving and behind the scenes stuff that seems to characterize the Orthodox headlines these days. It just seems like it’s all about keeping the Church in stasis through continued organizational crises. It’s a perfect plan. Keep the Church immobilized with questions of titles and politics while the rest of the world slides off the deep end without any help.
Imagine how different things would be if we were arguing about how best to serve the poor and needy. What if our debates were about strategies for the conversion of America? What if our mighty struggles were about how best to deepen our knowledge and practice of the Faith? How would it be if we just prayed a minute for each minute spent on Facebook or blogs arguing the minute details of who gets what?
I think there’s only one viable solution. All of us removed from the trappings of power simply need to do and be what we except our leaders to do and be and let the holiness and sense of purpose in us flow until its sweet water washes over our parishes and the greater culture.
Don’t wait to be led to pray, pray now. Serve the poor. Witness to the Gospel. Grow in your faith. Do good. Give alms. Worship with passion. Seek holiness in your own life and in doing so it will create a climate of holiness that will trickle up, through, and around the Church.
In time if the people will lead the leaders will follow.
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Wise Thoughts…
From St. John of Kronstadt...
“When you are praying alone, and your spirit is dejected, and you are wearied and oppressed by your loneliness, remember then, as always, that God the Trinity looks upon you with eyes brighter than the sun; also all the angels, your own Guardian Angel, and all the Saints of God. Truly they do; for they are all one in God, and where God is, there are they also. Where the sun is, thither also are directed all its rays. Try to understand what this means.”
“There is nothing impossible unto those who believe; lively and unshaken faith can accomplish great miracles in the twinkling of an eye. Besides, even without our sincere and firm faith, miracles are accomplished, such as the miracles of the sacraments; for God’s Mystery is always accomplished, even though we were incredulous or unbelieving at the time of its celebration. “Shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect?” (Rom. 3:3). Our wickedness shall not overpower the unspeakable goodness and mercy of God; our dullness shall not overpower God’s wisdom, nor our infirmity God’s omnipotence.” — My Life in Christ
“Oh, what great happiness and bliss, what exaltation it is to address oneself to the Eternal Father. Always, without fail, value this joy which has been accorded to you by God’s infinite grace and do not forget it during your prayers; God, the angels and God’s holy men listen to you.”
“The enemy of our salvation especially strives to draw our heart and mind away from God when we are about to serve Him, and endeavours to adulterously attach our heart to something irrelevant. Be always, every moment, with God, especially when you pray to Him. If you are inconstant, you will fall away from life, and will cast yourself into sorrow and straitness.”
“Do not be despondent when fighting against the incorporeal enemy, but even in the midst of your afflictions and oppression praise the Lord, Who has found you worthy to suffer for Him, by struggling against the subtlety of the serpent, and to be wounded for Him at every hour; for had you not lived piously, and endeavored to become united to God, the enemy would not have attacked and tormented you.”
“Do not fear the conflict, and do not flee from it; where there is no struggle, there is no virtue. Our faith, trust, and love are proved and revealed in adversities, that is, in difficult and grievous outward and inward circumstances, during sickness, sorrow, and privations.”
“Prayer for others is very beneficial to the man himself who prays; it purifies the heart, strengthens faith and hope in God, and arouses love for God and our neighbor.”
