Some Halloween observations: notes toward a new guide for the perplexed

These are a few observations culled from the last month, in which a poignant juxtaposition occurred. Two events crossed like a conjunction of planets.

The first is the dreary and ongoing decline of the Great Suburban Mall called "Western Civilization" -- a term that is becoming more oxymoronic with every Wall Street Punch-and-Judy show (aka "sell-off's").

The second is the happy marriage of my daughter to my son-in-law. This Orthodox wedding was a splendid crowning, and grows brighter and deeper with memory -- as memory ages, and becomes more substantial, like a good port in cask.

This past New Calendar Halloween, I was visited by the revenants of Boethius and Maimonides, who were peeved that I was complaining about being perplexed by these opposite feelings. "These are shallow emotions," Boethius sniffed testily, "and are not worthy of the terms 'joy' nor 'melancholy.'" 

Maimonides simply muttered, under the hirsute shrouds of his ghostly beard, "You are not intelligent enough to be perplexed."

So they left in a huff, without giving any help for our miasma. "Philistines," I heard them grunt in unison. "Philosophy is impossible for this generation."

So, left by myself and stretched (or, rather, seasoned) by the good tension of two gravitational poles, one begins to wonder aloud. As is my wont on these phosphorescent pages, I would rather set down lists of thoughts, for now, than publish long essays that I would never read again in full.

First observation: Civil unrest follows upon wealth disparity. Notice that I do not confine "civil unrest" to specific activities like "Occupy Wallstreet" or whatever might happen at the governor's mansion in Ohio. Note also that I am neither endorsing or condemning unrest. Certainly, I condemn all violence and destruction: but aye, there's the rub, because I notice sinful violence and destruction all around -- and certainly not just at the hands of the marxist-benighted poor. The Philistines, more often than not, are disproportionately represented by the one percent.

First corollary to the first observation: Some wags recently have suggested that the ninety-nine percent in America are actually subsumed by the one percent of the world population. Yes, I have heard this before, that most of the poor in America are actually rich by Third World standards. This is undoubtedly true: but saying this is a red herring in the argument at hand. Whether we like it or not, the Old Testament prophets (along with New Testament prophets like James, the Theotokos, and, maybe, Someone Even Bigger) never once talked about wealth disparities in a worldwide or even cross-cultural context. I am sure that Christians should care about the poor in the Third World. But the argument for this concern is implicit in Holy Tradition. What is rather explicit is the argument for helping the poor in one's own land. And "poor" in Holy Tradition means "the neighbor who is poorer than you." 

Second corollary to the first observation: The Church has always either commanded or demanded that employers (or masters or bosses or lords of the manor) take more care of their employees than to treat them as mere parts of the money-mimeograph-machine. Say what you'd like of Ayn Rand's economic brilliance, or that of other marketplace antichrists: but the Church has never lost sight of the fact that the care of employees must go beyond a marketplace valuation that is eked out in minimal wages. I just wish someone in the Church would have the guts to say that not only are abortion and homosexual marriage sins, so also is the moving of factories from American communities to cheaper labor markets. I'm sorry, but if you do this, God will wither your business. It is happening now. If you pollute the earth, time will destroy you. It is happening now. If you steal money from the middle class, as was done during the Wall Street bailouts, your precious wealth-protection programmes you thought were safe will collapse soon under the sticky webs of sophisticated financial derivations. It is happening now.

He that has ears and all that ...

Atlas has indeed shrugged: and the first welfare-moochers who are falling off are the one percent who quote that eponymous rot.

Second observation: Perplexity is mystification, and it is deliberate. There are bullies, to be sure, who do the mystifying and perplexing. But there are less true victims than you would think -- for mystification usually requires a willingness to be mystified for the procedure to work. Perplexity is suffered, more times than not, by those who were lazy enough to become perplexed. This wretched state of affairs is true for my case, at least. There are many opiates for the masses, but true religion (contra Marx) is not one of them.

First corollary to the second observation: We are surrounded by false dichotomies -- which seem to be the sina qua non rhetorical device of this current programme of mystification. Here are a few such wretched chiasms:

• ethnic whatever (fill in the blank with Russian, Greek, Carpatho-Rusin, Serbian, Syrian, Rumanian, Bulgarian) versus american (or "convert")
• ethnic + mainline accomodationist versus american + convert + tea party + conservative traditionalist + rightwing wallstreet brownshirt
• academic + mystical + Sherrard-quoting versus fundamentalist + pietist + Seraphim Rose-quoting
• environmental + civil-rights concerned + economic justice versus traditional morality (e.g., anti-abortion; pro-traditional-family 

I am bone-tired of the "cradle" versus "convert" dichotomy: such talk is nothing but gas, as Orthodox Christians can only be everyday converts, and we are all but infants in cradles, in the tree-tops, always in danger of "when the bough breaks."

The foolishness of these dichotomies lay mainly in the tawdry logic behind the clumping of disparate groups on either side of the false chiasma. Traditional moralists do not belong with the right wing, or with the cheerleaders for the industrial destroyers of the natural family and the natural world. The interests of hyper-financialists who move factories and get giddy about globalization are really served by mainline accomodationists, not us "illiberal" conservatives who cannot bring ourselves to sign off on evolutionary doctrine. Abortion and the destruction of the natural family, and the wholesale rejection of natural law, make money for those who feed on the bottom-line.

Third observation: Passion is communicated far more rapidly and efficiently than is virtue. There are some more factors to be noted. The stupider the passion, the more quickly it is communicated. Lust, for example, goes faster than pride, and gluttony takes first place at the finish line. Another factor: the more modern and/or technological the communication, the harder it is for virtue to make itself known. True speech is completely eclipsed by the blather of commercials, which are all lies and false witness. Love requires nothing less than than the hard primitive work of craft, husbandry and Eucharist: social networking cannot handle love.

First corollary to the third observation: It is easy to assemble a mob via facebook. It is impossible to displace the marketplace gods online. Revolution is as simple as lighting a match to a pool of gas. A virtuous State requires virtuous and intelligent people, who have trained themselves against passion.

Second corollary to the third observation: The communication of passion via the dendrite-reverberating internet (think of the vibrating tissue-glob-mass of IT on Camazotz) is better than pectin in a bacteria-petri-dish for fertilizing the self-labeled mutations that use gruesomely ironic terms like "accountability" and "orthodox" and "news" and "voices from wherever." My God, how shrill we've become, and so pedestrian. Listening to conference broadcasts on AFR is an affliction straight from the repertoire of the Famous Farting Demons of the Fifth Ditch of the Malbolges: I had hoped I had left conference-speech (a dialect of newspeak) behind, once and for all, when I said ta-ta to the commission-addicted protestants back in 1991. Now it's here, writhing amongst us: maybe this mass psychosis, this schizophrenic-clanging linguistic deformation is concomitant with self-demanded self-rule? I wonder.

It has also produced diversions (i.e., gamboling) that are much more fun: I've been called a "convertski" in one rather misbegotten photon-matrix -- which is patently funny, so to speak, as I was somewhat responsible for some of the most ethnic and old country speeches of one so lately beloved by the same voice that holds no small dudgeon for the convertski class. "That is where you make your bloomer," I'd like to say to some Orthotic voices that spasm regularly on the cyber-waves, "Why serious rift? Why dickens?": I quote Bertie Wooster here, of course -- a worthier and more rewarding voice than many in the churchy bloggo-twit-facebook-googlo-universe.

Fancy that: Bertie Wooster sounds better, and is far more courteous, than a lot of webspace in the Orthodox cyber-conversation. And I'll throw in the Roman Catholic and Byzantine crowd to boot.

Fourth observation: At no time in history was the Church ever responsible for providing services to the poor, as a segment of the population. The Church has always taken care of its membership that needed help. The Church has frequently offered food, healthcare, education and shelter to the poor -- even to those outside its fellowship: the Artoclasia at the Lity took place in the vestibule, so that the hundreds of loaves could be soon distributed to the waiting poor. But the Church has never taken the place of the State in providing welfare to the poor as a population. It cannot do this, and to suppose otherwise is to spout immoral cynical drivel. Only the State can operate a safety net: if you want one (as I do), then you'll have to abide by a State program. No amount of Church or community adhoc assistance is going to be able to do what only the State can do. 

First corollary to the fourth observation: If someone says something like, "Let the Church take over welfare like it did in the old days," then that someone hasn't a clue about the old days, or the reality of the Church. Moreover, that someone would rather engage in absurd arguments to cynically advance his own bombast for the sake of ratings.

Second corollary to the fourth observation: Most Christians would be better off not listening to call-in shows. The Brady Bunch is comparatively more enlightening and edifying.

Fifth observation: We are groaning, like creation, for the manifestations of the sons of God. For our part, we are waiting for a deified episcopacy, as St. Dionysios the Areopagite, somewhere, suggested must be for the life of the Church. The episcopacy must be deified, the priesthood illuminued, and the diaconate purified. Insofar as this is not the case, then the gates of Hades will look insurmountable, and disorder will obtain.

First corollary to the fifth observation: If Christ is the substance of the Church, then prayer is the Church's only condition: prayer, that is, formed by Tradition and Dogma. Programs and strategies, objectives and missions are really terms that belong to the agora, and are thus even more antitethical to the Church than are terms that proceed from the State. In the very modern act of transitioning from such political structures like bylaws and constitutions to commercial structures like mission statements and marketing analyses and strategies, we are now more condemned than are those who preach civil religion and sprinkle holy water on nuclear missiles.

Second corollary to the fifth observation: No one, outside the fullness of Orthodoxy, is competent to evaluate or rehabilitate an Orthodox clergy. And anyone who is to administer psychotherapy to a bishop must be one like St. Silouan, or the Elder Nikodim of Karoulia. To subject a bishop to the worldly authority of a psychiatric treatment facility is an act that offends Apostolic Succession, no less. Either remove a bishop from his cathedra, or repent (which is a far, far more likely event). Either way, do not send him for psychological testing that will tell you only what you already think you know; and do not send him to counseling to test if he is cooperative and will promise to do what you say. If you do this, you have done what even David feared to do, when he found Saul sleeping in a cave. Gospodi pomiluj.

Sixth observation: Life in the Church is meaningful insofar at it coheres to the model of the Theotokos. The dreary, tragicomic repetitious history of apostasy is characterized mainly by attempts to live otherwise. We try to live more conveniently, more modernly, more secularly, more amenable to the "cultured despisers" of the Church. More democratically -- so that, mayhaps, the benefactors will feel as though they were "stakeholders," and thus more obliged to part with their largesse. So phobic we are, over the centuries, of falling back into the penury of having to say "Silver or gold have I none."

The Magnificat reveals a transcendent disregard of property and governmental involvement. Who really cares that the federal (or state, or municipal) government pays us little mind? Pilate said, obtusely, "What is Truth?" not really as a question, but as an "a-christological" axiom, heedless of the Answer standing before him. I have no shyness about speaking in the public square, but I need no institutional position: neither does Jesus, Mary or Joseph.

First corollary to the sixth observation: Conciliarity is predicated only upon repentance, theoria and communion. Councils and conventions are not the same: there is no linguistic congruence, only accidents and coincidences -- signs, that is, that Providence works despite our contrary intentions. After all, the great evidence for the authenticity of Orthodoxy lies neatly in the fact that Orthodoxy has survived its people ... you and me. The greatest fear about a new Holy Council is that it will be too much like a conference, and not enough about theoria.

Second corollary to the sixth observation: The only thing that can be planned is ascesis. Charisma cannot be packaged into budgets and strategies, initiatives or programs. David learned the hard way that he should not take a census, neither should he pay a farmer to haul the Ark of the Covenant on an oxcart. We are proving, morosely, that history repeats itself through wilful ignorance of these stories. Only ascesis can be planned: I suppose even James would permit saying, "If the Lord tarries, we want to be praying this time next year."

Third corollary to the sixth observation: What did the Theotokos do in the Church of her Son, until her Dormition? There's a goal.

Seventh, and last, observation: God adds to the Church those who are being saved. And so, in history the Church goes through times of expansion and apparent contraction. The growth of the Church is a sign: it cannot be an objective. You and I probably ought to make peace with the melancholic fact that the wider culture is making it more and more difficult to be Orthodox. Too many people are not growing up. Too many people do not care for truth, justice or beauty. 

The first corollary:

No one will say this at conferences and conventions, or at retreats that take place at resorts instead of monasteries. I really doubt if a commission will mention this in their annual report: after all, commissions cannot speak English. 

So let me spit it out.

Judgment begins in the house of the Lord.

And since time brooks no falsehood, it seems that as time goes on, that which is not true in the Orthodox community will fall away. The birds will come and eat up the seeds. The quickly sprouting saplings, rootless, will fade in the heat. The weeds of lust and avarice, gluttony and pride will choke off the fruit.

Look around you. This is happening. Here, now.

The second corollaries:

What to do?

"Bind up the testimonies," Isaiah said to his community in a similar moment. Now is the time for prayer and fasting, for this kind of demon cannot be bidden to leave otherwise.

Now is the time for love and mercy in your family, your neighborhood and your church.

Now is the time to be winsome and childlike.

Now is the time for gentle speech, wisdom and trust.

Now is the time to say you have absolutely no idea how the future will pan out, and what exactly you and the church will be doing next year: "whereas you do not know about tomorrow -- what is your life?" (James 4.14).

Now is the time to protect the weak and to care for the broken earth.

Now is the time to care for the little things, and to eschew the great opportunities.

Now is the time to leave off theological speculation and ecclesial reorganization, and do the simple things of repentance and thanksgiving.

Now is the time to be poetic, and prophetic ...

... and to learn what peace is so you have some of it to give away.

"Hmmmm." I didn't know he was looking over my shoulder. He was alone. The cranky, but great, eagle had gone his own way.

"It is much like I felt years ago. Permit me to quote myself."

He drew himself up in a fine rhetorical posture, and read from memory: "Her dress was a miracle of fine cloth and meticulous workmanship, and, as I later learned, she had woven it herself. But it had darkened like a smoke-blackened family statue in the atrium as if through neglect and was dingy and worn ... Some ruffians had done violence to her elegant dress, and clearly bits of the fabric had been torn away."

"She still stands. Try as we like to pull down the seven pillars, her house remains."

Comments

[Stella]

This is one of your most outstanding posts ever. I thank and salute you.

Tiny proofreading issue: You have two "third observations" and sets of corollaries thereof. You may want to revise your numbering of your (actual) fourth observation and following points.

This post wins the internet today.

[Fr. Jonathan]

I am in your debt for your kind editorial work.

The fix is in.

And pardon the pun. This low sort of humor is irresistible to me.

Thanks, Stella.

[Stella]

You know, I was so taken by your post that I forgot to extend my congratulations to you and your family on your daughter's marriage. May God grant the newlyweds many years! And many years also to their happy parents!

[Rdr. Raphael]

Father, this is an outstanding piece. Thank you for sharing it. When I allow myself to get sucked into the rumor/gossip vortex, I can trust you to hit me over the head with a life ring.

[Darlene]

Father, your words make me want to run and hide myself awhile until the storm is past. But I wonder if it will pass or only worsen until...what? The Second Coming? I dunno. Is the state of affairs within Orthodoxy on the point of death? Surely there are still some prophets in Orthodoxy who have not bowed the knee to Baal. Yes?

[Abba Poemen the Ubermensch]

...you don't recognize the evolutionary development of species? why?

[Fr. Jonathan Tobias]

I see, Abba, lots of intra-species adaptation. But I have not seen any inter-species translation -- no one has.

Adaptation that produces newer and more complex species is a phenomena that is required by theory, but is not borne out in reality.

So I would ask you, with all respect: So you do recognize the evolutionary development of species? Why?

Only in Trinity are love and work, belief and thought, prayer and life, the same.

[Abba Poemen the Ubermensch]

First off, this was a great post. I think your suggestions are correct: pray, fast, repent, love our families and neighbors and churches and the strangers we come across, with lightness of spirit.

To the evolution question: no one has seen a species visible to the eye evolve into another one. The dynamics are not like a Photoshopped morphing of one picture into another.

The evidence is in the superior explanatory power over both observed phenomena and historical data. I'm not a specialist in this, so one who has been formed in, or who is well-acquainted with, anti-evolutionary arguments could probably run circles around me. It's an area of interest, but it's not my direct focus of study.

Though there is much ideology that piggybacks on top of evolution for some (Mary Midgley deals with this), this isn't an argument against evolution, or one to the effect that it is essentially ideological. If there is a serious philosophical criticism to be mounted against it, it is the mechanistic model of causation (Kant seemed to suggest this in one of his Critiques, and Hans Jonas made this a strong theme of his _Phenomenon of Life_, if I recall correctly). There are mechanical causes, and they saturate biological systems. I think that our common experience shows there is a remainder of causes, however, even if this cannot be demonstrated, and even if this has no relevance for the evolution of a species.

I am worried that most people who object to it, even if they don't admit so, are ultimately afraid of dealing with the consequences for their dogmatic commitments and the anticipated collateral on their religious/spiritual life. That's not a good motivation.

[rebekkah]

Father, thank you for being so pastoral. (i'm showing my protestantism. sorry.)
...for "tending the sheep" in the midst of many wolves. blessings.