Second Terrace

Pop quiz

This little pop quiz appeared recently in a New York Times opinion column by the usually reasonable Nicholas Kristof.

I quote the quiz in its entirety, along with the answers at the end.

1. Which holy book stipulates that a girl who does not bleed on her wedding night should be stoned to death?

a. Koran
b. Old Testament
c. (Hindu) Upanishads

2. Which holy text declares: "Let there be no compulsion in religion"?

a. Koran
b. Gospel of Matthew
c. Letter of Paul to the Romans

3. The terrorists who pioneered the suicide vest in modern times, and the use of women in terror attacks, were affiliated with which major religion?

a. Islam
b. Christianity
c. Hinduism

4. "Every child is touched by the devil as soon as he is born and this contact makes him cry. Excepted are Mary and her Son." This verse is from:

a. Letters of Paul to the Corinthians
b. The Book of Revelation
c. An Islamic hadith, or religious tale

5. Which holy text is sympathetic to slavery?

a. Old Testament
b. New Testament
c. Koran

6. In the New Testament, Jesus' views of homosexuality are:

a. strongly condemnatory
b. forgiving
c. never mentioned

7. Which holy text urges responding to evil with kindness, saying: "repel the evil deed with one which is better."

a. Gospel of Luke
b. Book of Isaiah
c. Koran

8. Which religious figure preaches tolerance by suggesting that God looks after all peoples and leads them all to their promised lands?

a. Muhammad
b. Amos
c. Jesus

9. Which of these religious leaders was a polygamist?

a. Jacob
b. King David
c. Muhammad

10. What characterizes Muhammad's behavior toward the Jews of his time?

a. He killed them.
b. He married one.
c. He praised them as a chosen people.

11. Which holy scripture urges that the "little ones" of the enemy be dashed against the stones?

a. Book of Psalms
b. Koran
c. Leviticus

12. Which holy scripture suggests beating wives who misbehave?

a. Koran
b. Letters of Paul to the Corinthians
c. Book of Judges

13. Which religious leader is quoted as commanding women to be silent during services?

a. The first Dalai Lama
b. St. Paul
c. Muhammad

Answers:

1. b. Deuteronomy 22:21.
2. a. Koran, 2:256. But other sections of the Koran do describe coercion.
3. c. Most early suicide bombings were by Tamil Hindus (some secular) in Sri Lanka and India.
4. c. Hadith. Islam teaches that Jesus was a prophet to be revered.
5. All of the above.
6. c. Other parts of the New and Old Testaments object to homosexuality, but there's no indication of Jesus' views.
7. c. Koran, 41:34. Jesus says much the same thing in different words.
8. b. Amos 9:7
9. all of them
10. all of these. Muhammad's Jewish wife was seized in battle, which undermines the spirit of the gesture. By some accounts he had a second Jewish wife as well.
11. a. Psalm 137
12. a. Koran 4:34
13. b. St. Paul, both in 1 Corinthians 14 and 1 Timothy 2, but many scholars believe that neither section was actually written by Paul.

I am quick to applaud its attempt to render Islam in a more accurate light.

Not for a second do I believe that modern Islam is our greatest threat. Secularization and unbelief are far more threatening and perilous. I think that conspiracy theorists who like to suggest that mosques contain missile silos and arms caches may be correct occasionally, but are, in the main, of the same sort that used to quiver and quail about communist invasions during my rapture/Bolshevik-phobic troubled youth.

But the quiz suggests some implicit conclusions that are not at all well-founded. To suggest that because the Gospels do not record any statement of Our Lord against homosexuality, then therefore He must have diminished the Law's condemnation of it, ignores the fact that Our Lord said that He came to fulfill the Law, and not one jot or tittle of it should be obscured. Moreover, the Apostle Paul surely did not acquiesce to the homosexual hope that they can change the construct of human nature willy-nilly.

It is highly doubtful whether any of the Levitical or Deuteronomic capital punishments against fornication were actually carried out (given the probable dating of Deuteronomy, and its reformist character). Since we are all familiar with the usual complaint about the absence of archaeological evidence for Old Testament events, let's use that same complaint and ask for such evidence of actual carrying-out of these egregious sentences against familial law-breaking. In any case, the tone of the Old Covenant Law is a thousand times more humane than other legislation in surrounding societies of its time.

The prohibition of St. Paul against female leadership in the cultus still goes on in the Orthodox Church: but we do not have to interpret this as inhumane or chauvinistic, despite the clear, rather sophomoric, attempt of Mr. Kristof to suggest such a thing. Moreover, I would like to see evidence of how vocal women are in the mosque. Are they? No one can conceivably suggest that Islam is as humane toward women as Christianity has been.

The second question in Kristof's little pop quiz is the most misleading. 'Which holy text declares: "Let there be no compulsion in religion"?' Yes, the Koran says this. But the Koran also teaches, in more than a few places (maybe as many as 164), that it is good to wage jihad against other nations of other faiths, so that these vanquished people may be able to "freely" enter into Islam. If they do not, they enter into the second-class citizenship of dhimmitude.

The mere fact that Mohamed had one or two Jewish wives does not at all suggest evidence of his multi-cultural sensitivities: it rather suggests that he, consistent with being a camel-salesman, was comfortable in a commercial multi-religious environment, and sought to manufacture (like L. Ron Hubbard did, centuries later) a hybrid faith out of the fetid religious climate of the bazaar. I like Jaroslav Pelikan's suggestion that Mohamed was really a Jewish Gnostic -- which means that he more likely would have been a Jewish New-Ager or Mormon if he were alive today (something more akin to Glenn Beck).

Please do not mistake me for a Beck-spouting anti-muslim tea-partier. I am not this, and I find that ilk tiring and hopelessly confused about history and religion. But Kristof is suggesting that Islam is something that it is not – that it is a humane religion happy to co-exist in the neighborhood. It is certainly not this. It is not tolerant of the existence of other traditions. "Islam" does not mean "peace" by a long shot: it means, as we all used to be taught, "surrender." One cannot equate it with Christianity's general ethical record in history: there is no contest in this regard.

Say anything you'd like about Islam representing "The Other" – but it should be kept in mind that the concern for "The Other" is made possible only in the pale of the Christian legacy (just as all liberalism and humanism, and even atheism, require the safe harbor of Christendom – despite the relentless ingratitude of these derivative -- and retrogressive -- traditions).

The God of Islam is not at all the Holy Trinity. Since the Incarnation, knowledge of God can only be Triune and Christological.

We do not have to be afraid of Islam. But Islam can be mean, and has nothing in common, theologically, with Christianity.

Nativity Catechesis of St. Theodore

Catechesis of St. Theodore:
On the Nativity of the Saviour and the vigorous pursuit of our ascetic life.

Brethren and Fathers, already the Manifestation of God is near and the day of joy is at the doors; for it is a great joy, such as has not been since time began, that the Son of God has come to us, not through riddles and symbols, as He appeared of old to the fathers, but by coming to live with us and manifesting himself in His own person through His birth from a Virgin. There has been nothing more blest than this in generations of generations, nothing more wonderful among all the wonders that God has done since time began. For this reason Angels are proclaiming the good tidings of the mystery and a star revealing that the heavenly has been brought to birth on earth; for this reason Shepherds are running to see the salvation that has been proclaimed, and Magi are bringing gifts fit for a king; for this reason a new song is being sung for new events, because God, who is glorified in the highest, has appeared as peace on earth. And the Apostle bears witness when he says, For He is our peace, Who has made both one, breaking down the middle wall of partition, the hostility between us, in His flesh. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that He might create in himself one new humanity in place of two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both to God in one body through the Cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. This is what the prophets and the just since time began desired to see, but did not see except through faith; while we have both seen and our hands have touched, as it is written, concerning the Word of life, and this life has been revealed, and we have received sonship. But what shall we give in return for all that the Lord has given to us? Already holy David anticipated and cried out the answer. I shall take the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. So then let us rejoice, O faithful, because we have been granted to give the Lord a return for all that he has given us. And what is this return? The cross-bearing way of life that we have taken on, and the confession in which we stand and we boast in our hope of the glory of God. And this is confessedly a witness. Meanwhile it is not for us to feast for just one day, but throughout our life; just as those who are governed by the flesh and in thrall to the passions are unable to feast, even if they seem to feast, nor are they at liberty, for they are slaves of the passions sold under sin. Indeed it is written, Everyone who sins is a slave of sin; but the slave does not abide in the house for ever. The son abides for ever. Since then we too have been granted to have been called sons according to grace, we remain in the house for ever, if we hold firm the beginning of our undertaking to the end. And so, empowered by the Holy Spirit, let us still hold to our spiritual state, and let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, to obedience, to humility, to meekness, and let us be eager for everything which is of the best, not weakening in our resolve, but straining ever more and more, and the more so as we see the day drawing near. For the great and manifest day of the Lord is drawing near, on which the judge of all will be revealed and will appear in the glory in which He appeared to the Apostles at His divine Transfiguration, as he brings and judges every creature and rewards each according to its work. But may it be given to us too, with all the saints, to see him looking upon us with a kindly face and taking us into the kingdom of heaven, by the grace and pity and love for mankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom are due glory, honor and worship with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and always and to the ages of ages. Amen.

A horrible little cranky note, caveat lector

Lately, a free-church evangelical protestant acquaintance of mine has been bemoaning the dreary news that his denominational numbers are on a downward trend. Little parishes are closing faster than little parishes can be planted.

Bill (for that is his name) should consider, in his threnody on decline, that it may not be his fault, or your fault, or even mine. Church decline may be no one's fault, simply because God adds to the church those who are being saved, and we may be finding out that a lot of people just don't want the bother of being saved.

I think we're at a point (hopefully, not permanently) where people generally know that they should attach themselves to the Gospel, but simply don't want to. God exists, and people know this (knowing God exists is no achievement: believing in Him is grace and work, in fear and trembling). But knowing this is something they would rather repress.

Much is repressed these days. God, His goodness, His eternity and omnipotence. But also Man, his nature, his immortality.

Especially repressed is the awareness of his tendency to die, and to continue on as a disembodied soul. Again, I think people know this. The awareness of this looming disembodied reality is what I call (not-so-poetically) "the 4 am abyss." This is a fearful thing, obviously: but I wonder if this fear isn't behind the curtain of much we call "anxiety" or even "depression."

The soul – or the thought of it – is repressed. It has become a four-letter word. If not used as a musical genre, it is more offensive (in its original sense) than the f-word, or the s-word, or all the other words that George Carlin once spoke in tongues.

Soul. Immortal (yes, by grace, I know). Non-migratory. Ineradicable.

Meant for fellowship in the peace of the Trinity. Founders otherwise in Hades and fog.

Again, I insist, everyone knows this and cannot get away from the thought of it.

Time will tell. Time will change things. Time scours, even corrodes, the plasticene integuments of fantasy away.

The Gospel is not Good News if there is no God and if there is no permanent soul. This fantasia is the method of this age: it is not real, but it is the catechesis. It is the mystagogy behind the Public Liturgy that has embraced all of life under the pall of Leviathan.

When we ask people to come to Church, we ask them – more now than ever lately – to turn against a popular mystery cult, so popular that it is from sea to shining sea, so comprehensive that it has fulfilled the potency of all anti-Gospel cult and has completely denied God and Man, and has isolated Moment outside of Time, Experience outside of Meaning, Will and Want outside of Truth.

There is no God in the anti-Gospel, as there is no Man. Or rather, there is, or there may be, but it really doesn't matter when there is neither tomorrow nor yesterday, nor even any day at all.

The Antichrist does not care about religion at all. We thought he did but we were wrong. He only cares about Time and tries to make it go away.

Time will tell. People do not come to church these days, or they try to secularize what remains of Church these days, only because and all because a denatured form of Christianity is so much easier in other places, and the Gospel of God to Man is so very hard. And inconvenient.

The Final Revised Houts Modified Inventory of Spiritual Gifts

(replacement of the Wagner Modified Houts Inventory)

In each item, select one of the two pared single words or phrases, separated by an ellipsis:

1. Comfort … Peace
2. Nostalgia … Memory
3. Mission Statement … Great Commission
4. Optimism … Hope
5. Probability … Providence
6. Incontrovertibility … Catechesis
7. Individuality … Co-inherence
8. Dysthymia … Grief
9. Ecstasy … Joy
10. Anxiety … Prayer
11. Freedom to Do … Freedom to Become
12. Entertainment … Order
13. Fun … Submission
14. Virtual Reality … Icon
15. Potpourri … Incense
16. Celebration … Quiet
17. Empowered … Meek
18. Self-esteem … Hunger for Righteousness
19. Confidence … Poverty
20. Dance … Penance
21. Contemporary … Pure in Heart
22. Influential … Persecuted
23. Convenience … Trinity
24. Excitement … Jesus
25. Education … Sacrament

Scoring: the more right-handed responses, the better.

A complicated bereavement

A troubled lady asked the same question, yesterday, for about the thousandth time. I buried her middle-aged husband 2 years ago. His body was worn down from a series of painful illnesses and medical setbacks. God called his soul away, and my friend's body exhaled into dust and mourning.

I did not understand the timing of providence then, nor do I now, what with the surviving urgencies of a fatherless child and a guideless widow. The widow does not understand, either.

So she asks, and keeps asking, the usual: Why. When did he know. When did you know. Was it my fault. Was it his fault. What could we have done better. Should we have married at all since we married so late and he left so early. Why. How. As in, How do I do this. How do I carry on since he carried me (he did, and she knows it now).

From my old job in the behavioral health industry, I remembered that repeated questions like hers usually represent deeper psychic needs.

This lady has needs in spades. But she really wants an answer. She recognizes what I am doing, quickly, when I try my therapeutic reframing and I avoid providing the data she demands. She does not accept the facile dogma, "God did not explain to Job why: He gave Job what he needed, not what he wanted. Love is sometimes speechless, always beyond comprehension. God loves and saves, but does not explain."

It sounded elegant (because it's true). But like so many real things in today's gnostic morass, truth doesn't work.

At least, not in a positivistic epistemology. But I digress.

So now she wants to head off to a monastery and spend the day plying the monastics with questions until they reveal to her a sufficient revelation. An answer that works.

I will make the arrangements. The abbess and the sisters will listen and do a much better job than I in listening, because their quiet is bigger than mine (I count on this from all monasteries). I hope they will have her work in the garden and be quiet and talk just once in a while. If she does this, then things may work out.

But then again, things may not. She wants a magic knowledge that will settle in her mind like a golden brightness and set her anxieties to rest. She wants a conversion from weakness to strength, from morning terrors to peace at the hearth. She wants, I fear, an escape from history and a shortcut into the pleroma, because life now without her ailing spouse is simply life the way it always was, a low gray swath punctuated by some entertainments.

Thank God, there is the weekly witness of heaven and grace. Orthodoxy is a strange thing in a land gone gray, but life has that property of oddness when the alternative is practiced.

Death does that: it makes life strange. In the months after the event, it takes the gray that was always there and makes it clear, unignorable. Indubitable.

The poor widow feels this and doesn't understand. She lived in a gray land and spoke an idolatrous language, full of symbols and words that were deprived of meaning, signs that pointed to fantasy and little reality. She watched and lived in TV, quite the gnostic liturgy.

She found that TV doesn't prepare you for death.

I am full of answers, but she doesn't want them. Jesus wants us to repent and prepare, for the end draweth nigh. Marana tha. The tower of Siloam falls and Pilate's soldiers do some counter-insurgency work and inflict collateral damage. Repent. Two men work in a field, one is taken, the other is left behind. Repent. Watch and pray. Taste and see that the Lord is good.

I am full of answers simply because the Church chooses, like Mary, the better part, and sits (in her reality) at the feet of the Word Who has Logos in sumptuous largesse, much more solid fare than the weary gnosis of the psycho-political gospels (left and right). The Church has answers to all the "why" questions, and they are not so hard to figure out. My mother-in-law died of Alzheimers in a broken world, and my friend expired from cancer, because cancer is writ large in a life that has shattered into splinters of autonomy. And I have buried other friends whose hearts failed and lungs collapsed and who were shut tight in automobiles that ran off vector into mortal peril, and hurtled into a calculus of chaos, and a storm of pneumo-pathological evil made manifest in burning towers and homicidal tides.

I am full of answers and tears, ever. The Body of Christ is always standing at the tombs of friends, who have been stuck inside for four days, and this Body, albeit knowing better, still weeps. The widow knows not what she does or wants. I know what she needs. She needs the rejection of the gnostic gospel, for one thing, and the acceptance of the Orthodox gospel for another. She needs the turning away from salvation schemes in this world, from the you-are-special-messages that give you goose bumps for only a few moments, then land you in a post-rush drag.

She needs to escape the gray passions of resentment and 8-track memories set on endless loop. She needs to jump the track by embracing of Christ and dogma, and the ingesting His Body and Blood. She already has her answers: her husband will be saved through his death and her prayers, and so shall she. But she needs, more than answers, the entry into Beauty and the adoption of Goodness, and the speaking of Truth.

She needs what she already has. She looks elsewhere and will not find. The Gnostics will always disappoint.

And this is our problem here in this gray world of Chinese toys, saran wrap individualism and koolaid gnosis: we Orthodox ask catechumen questions, repeatedly, looking for answers, all the while when we are it. Already.

A word from Old Possum

"To persons whose minds are habituated to feed on the vague jargon of our time, when we have a vocabulary for everything and exact ideas about nothing – when a word half-understood, torn from its place in some alien or half-formed science, as of psychology, conceals from both writer and reader the meaninglessness of a statement, when all dogma is in doubt except the dogmas of sciences of which we read in the newspapers, when the language of theology itself, under the influence of an undisciplined mysticism of popular philosophy, tends to become a language of tergiversation – Andrewes may seem pedantic and verbal. It is only when we have saturated ourselves in his prose, followed the movement of his thought, that we find his examination of words terminating in the ecstasy of assent."

This T. S. Eliot said of Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Winchester, who is not read much, and is certainly not admired in Great Britain where England is fast disappearing.

I would say this of the Fathers in general, especially since they are held in contempt as mere "moralizers" in a world of formless lurching.

A minor text

Matthew 20.29-34

Once upon a time, two blind men were sitting on the berm of the Jericho road. They did as the blind in the old world usually did: beg and starve, scrabble in the hot gravel, sipping grimy water with thanks, grateful like the Rich Man wanted.

The blind – that is, the obvious poor, that is, they who see clearly their own blindness, which is a rarity – that's what the biblical blind do, and do really well. Beg and starve and scrabble.

I pay attention this morning to what they did not ask for. Fill in the blank. Silk and porphyry, bangles and jasmine were not on their mind, nor spiced wine, nor even the cool touch of a woman's hand across their brow: they did not ask for these. They were reduced to simple requests.

They heard that Jesus was passing by (Ιησους παραγει), and I wish that we all heard just that, don't you? That the Word of God was walking out of Jericho, coming spatially and temporally our way on the earthy, unpleasant, economic path of commerce of convenience and of grim necessity. Physically. Commonly. The Second Person of the Holy Trinity, Divinity united without confusion with Humanity, glory streaming like a sieve or like an artesian well or a burst dam into the sullen ghetto of Nod, east of Eden, like deluvian Grace.

God, I can't hardly believe that the Name above All Names suffered grit and thorn between His toes, under His soles, and blistered His hands and walked, and hungered and thirsted at times with a stitch in His side, with Transfiguration bursting through His Flesh despite the apostles' insensitivity.

But there in the scrabble were the poor as they always are: even the poor who don't know they're poor because they've air-conditioned themselves enough to think that minor comforts make them unpoor.

From a planetary perspective, no one is not dirt poor.

There on the roadside were the poor, and where the poor were, the Lord went and goes.

The blind men were uncouth: ελεησον ημας, κυριε, υιος Δαυιδ. That is, "Have mercy on us, Lord, Son of David." They kept repeating this, probably shouting, certainly crying. The crowd tried to intervene, tried to keep things on schedule. They tried to silence the two blind men, because the poor can be so annoying.

Unbeknownst to the blind men, Jesus had been dealing a lot with crowds already. In particular, there was the crowd of twelve disciples whom He had just told about the Passion: "We are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man will be delivered to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn Him to death, and deliver Him to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and He will be raise on the third day."

Quite accurate, that.

Unbelievably, this little crowd quickly degenerated into partisan politics. Perhaps the Word of the Son of God about the crucifixion of the Son of Man was so offensively alien that it could not register in the minds of those who scrabble, like the poor, in the gravel of preferment and egotistical violence. They were the ignoramuses of the poor, who were blind to their own blindness.

(It is oddly tragic, isn't it?, how persons devolve into crowds when eschatology presses in on their temples. When a temporal revolution impends it sends out shock waves from the future back, and weak souls fall from dignity and jump into the stultified scripts of histrionic, failed old men. Passions usurp the mind and eclipse the light, and obscure the recognition of God and Other, and of the Word. Jesus is, after all, the only safe Way to step into the future.)

Under the looming shadow of the rising Cross in their foreboding, near-impending future (they could hear the thunder of Good Friday, I think, if they had ears to hear), they stopped for the Carnival of who gets what position on the corporate chart, who gets to wear which vestment, who gets what title or honorific, who gets to wear the medallions and the jeweled apparatus and the seated preferments and the encomiums. They were thinking of corner offices, with a good view, after the political vindication of parousia.

(The poor already know, in their "gravel-consciousness," that corner offices will not survive that particular fire.)

If you're busy being blind to your blindness, and being ignorantly poor, then you want to shoo away the obviously poor, and the children, and the Samaritans and the Syro-Phoenicians and the lepers and the gleaners and the Publicans and the harlots and lame and the demon-possessed and the blind.

These guys remind you of too much, you know. They offend, mainly, by what they portend.

So it's best to go your way, keep going, keep the parade going. Keep the conferences and the agenda and the elections and budgets on schedule. The show must go on. Go, go, go, said the thrush (who also said that humankind cannot bear much reality). Keep walking, keep parading, if you stop you'll only see yourself in the gravel, scrabbling, forgetting all the nice things to ask for, forgetting silk and wine and the cool touch of urbanities and pillow-soft conveniences.

But the poor blind men were importunate, like the widow with the unjust judge. But this Judge was not Unjust …

… and He stopped (και στας ο Ιησους).

Because they were poor, and He was He.

I wish He'd stop today.

Or stop me.

-- the Jericho road.

Sleep and rise, fair maiden, Daughter of your Son

During the celebration of this Holy and Great Feast of the Dormition, we have many occasions to ask the Virgin Mary to come and save us.

We do so with humble and hopeful hearts, because this request reflects our frequent supplication to the Theotokos for her compassionate intercession. "Pour the grace of your Son and our God into my restless soul," we pray in the evening. And in the morning: "By the strength of your prayers, cleanse my clouded mind and bruised heart. Free me from the memories of sins long gone by."

This speaks of a warm, tender piety that is missing in other Christian communities. It speaks of an intimate dependence upon a more powerful, more compassionate human being, whose maternal personality comforts all those who need her prayers.

We are so accustomed to this dependency, having been raised on it like milk from our childhood, that we are surprised when our friends ask questions about this. "Why do you pray to the Virgin?" they ask with sincerity. "She is not God – how can she hear your requests for her prayers? Why do you ask for her pity? for her help with confused minds, restless souls, and broken hearts?"

There is a response to these good questions – not from the explicit credo or doctrine of the Church, but in the Church's internal piety and praise. In particular, let us look at the words from these very services of the Holy Dormition.

"Come, all ye ends of the earth, let us praise the Most Holy Translation of the Mother of God."

In these words of St. Germanos, which are sung at the Great Vespers for this Feast of the Dormition, there is not one hint of requiem or sorrow. There is only serene rejoicing and deep reflection on the mystical dogma that we experience this day.

Departing this life is all gain for the Mother of God. She, more than anyone else, came to understand intimately the words of St. Paul: "For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain."

There is no grief at the Dormition of the Theotokos: "Let us praise this holy Dormition," Germanos says, "for she has delivered her spotless soul into the hands of her Son." There is celebration and gladness, as this Vesperal verse continues: "The whole world, restored to life by her holy Dormition, in radiant joy celebrates this feast with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs together with the angels and apostles."

It is a celebration, and it is a celebration that involves the whole world, both material and immaterial, both in heaven and upon the earth.

All creation celebrates this "translation" of the Most-Holy Theotokos out of the grave, even, and into Paradise. We see this in the abundance of flowers and herbs this day. Every bloom, and every fragrance is a testimony of the joy of Creation in the glory of the blessed Virgin. Why should we be surprised at this? According to St. Paul, "Creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation had been subject to futility … but it will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God … until that time, the whole creation has been groaning in travail ... "

In the Most Holy Theotokos, the long anticipation of Creation is fulfilled. Already, in the person of the Theotokos, creation no longer needs to groan, for it has found its anchor and extension through Christ in her. St. Maximos the Confessor teaches that in her, as the first and pre-eminent Christian, full of grace and the Holy Spirit, creation is re-unified to man, and that unity is then offered to God. Creation is blessed by God through man. Through the Virgin Mary, and through the intercessions of all Christians "made perfect in the faith," Creation is given the hope of becoming Eden again.

The Dormition is a well-spring of mystical hope for fallen man, as well as Creation. It is an event of assurance and promise. Here is someone like one of us, born into a broken world, into a darkened human nature and a culture of illusion and alienation. But this same someone in repose ascended the heights of heaven in the embrace of her Son – the Son Whom she held once as an Infant in her arms. Here is the Virgin Mary, who answered the Divine Call of the Archangel Gabriel, and said, "Behold, I am the handmaiden of the Lord, be it unto me according to your word."

"Be it unto me," she said, and she could say these words as a complete truth, for they already articulated the "logos" of her life. Instead of the waywardness of sin and passion, the Theotokos – even as a little girl in the Temple – pursued the vocation of prayer. Even before our Lord raised her into the heavens, her soul ascended – in a lifetime of devotion – into communion with the Trinity. Her life was a "vocation of ascent" – the Dormition itself was the capitol, the fulfilling image of that lifelong vocation.

She was the first of the Church who received the grace of Christ and participated in His Divine Nature … the first who received the individual Personhood wrought by the Spirit. And thus she was the first Creature to enter the fullness of communion, the fellowship in the always proceeding, ever emerging, fellowship of the Triune Uncreated Light.

After the Dormition, and because of the Dormition, the Theotokos breathed in the atmosphere of "forever." She emerged into the heights of eternity, and she looked upon Time and Space as creations of God, and not as gods themselves (which is a perennial and idolatrous temptation to us in the material realm). Her soul embarked upon the wings of the Spirit, and even now she is borne upon the winds of Grace – no longer limited by distance or sequence, division or alienation, or any obstacle of the fallen world.

It is impossible, now, for us to understand her. We cannot comprehend her experience, now that she has reached the everlasting sky of Divine Love.

But she remains one of us. She is a member of the Body of Christ, and so are we. We are bound together by the cords of redemption, and we commune with the same Body and Blood of Christ.

This is to say that the eternity of Christ and Mary – even though it is beyond us – is our eternity as well. Though we cannot understand the light and the truth and the beauty of the Virgin in Paradise, we may rest assured that she understands us in the wisdom of Our Lord.

So we find that we cannot answer just how the Theotokos hears the requests of the faithful for her prayers. We cannot explain the wherewithal of her intercessions and her presence. We find that our questions are couched in the language of limitation and darkness. We suspect that in response to these irrational questions of "how" and "when," the Theotokos, along with all the Saints, may simply respond with a gentle "of course" and "why not?"

But to the question of why the Virgin Mary is so concerned about the state of our hearts and the clarity of our thoughts, there is a satisfactory answer. Once again, we look back to the flowers to help us understand. The flower itself, along with the fragrant bloom of herbs, is an image of the Mother of God. Her life became a blossom like the flower, a sign of beauty, in the drabness of an ugly world. In her every word and every act, in the psychic language of her prayers, she opened a window into hope and forever. And at the moment of her repose, that blossom sprang into ultimate bloom, whose petals would never decay, but would deepen in beauteous splendor with every passing age.

Did we not sense this mystical link to eternity, in every moment of her earthly Christianity? Did we not hear the echo of Heaven, when she hid the youth of the Child Christ in her heart? Did we not understand the full import of her direction, when she told the wedding attendants in Cana, "Do whatever He tells you"? Did we not notice the lesson hidden in the words of the Gospel, when Jesus told Martha, "You are anxious about many things, but only one thing is needful: Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her"? Did we not hear Him, the Word of God crucified, speak to us from the Cross, when He said, "Behold your mother"?

Because if we did, we will know that the chief concern of the Mother of God is that we may know her Son. This is what she prayed for on the earth, and her prayers helped compel the great Apostolic Mission that proceeded from Pentecost – a mission that turned the world upside down.

But imagine now, that same concern, that same love and compassion, that same abundant knowledge of the power of the Saviour to save the sinner and to heal the wounded. If she knew Him best then, should she not be able to pray best now? If she believed Him best then, should she not be able to intercede for us now, and pray with the undimmed faith of Paradise?

We live in an age of unprecedented nervousness and lack of belief. Faith is sparse in our modern day, and there is no time to love, to talk of important things, and to care for needs of our friends. With so little faith, and so much unbelief, it is difficult now, more than ever, to pray.

The Most Holy Theotokos is able to pray, along with all the saints, to help us in this present weakness of our faith. The Theotokos can see far beyond the confines of this present darkness, and she desires us to know her Son, Who can brighten our souls.

So let us celebrate this holy feast of her Dormition, and rejoice in her victory and in her eternal life. It is for our benefit that we do so. For in her gladness, and in her beauty, the Most Holy Theotokos grants us the kindness of her richest, most powerful gift – the gift of a Mother speaking to her Son, the gift of the prayers of the Mother of God.

O Most Holy Theotokos, save us!

Amen.

_________

see also last year's post on the Theotokos.

Memory lane

Trust me. I'm working on a much more serious post. One that has references to Plutarch and Mary Douglas, the clean/unclean dichotomy and purification.

But in my casting about for discussions on demonology and the devil, I found this old piece of vinyl, which, in turn, led me to this dubious site.

Being a Dantean, I generally give a lot of allowances for anyone who says "Purgatorio" instead of "Purgatory."

The page "Divine Vinyl," to which my link directs you directly, is quite the walk down memory lane for many of us (i.e., those of us who remember vinyl).

I am appalled by how many of the groups listed I remember. Some I have heard as "special music" on Sunday nights or Revival episodes. Some, I remember possessing the actual disc.

Now, for the creepiest of them all, I nominate the one below. I never had this particular album, but I remember one of her other discs in the family record-cabinent. I don't know where it is now. It might be stacked in the basement, sandwiched between Chicago and the Imperials.

Without further ado, here is my nomination for the hands-down-creepiest-eschatological-vinyl-discussion-of-the-afterlife-and-one-of-the-many-reasons-why-I-rejoice-that-I-am-no-longer-a-premillennial-chiliast-heretic award, the first award ever given by Second Terrace:

You ready for this?

The runner-up:

Why follow Him?

Few occasions are more immediate than sinking your feet on the wet shore, breathing in the spray in the breeze, listening to the gulls and feeling the tangible light spill from the sea sun on your brow and your arms.

Few, that is, except for net-casting in the sea. There is the flaxen string, and a mass of sheet-bends and the bottom-of-the-sea smell of fish flesh and warm decay. There is familiarity in every cast, a launching of a spiral web into a trajectory, splashing into Galilean blue.

Sun, sea, wind and sweat work, heave in the sheets and pull in the silver, wriggling and flailing, flapping catch this day.

But into the routine interrupted a joke, of sorts, a permissible pun.

"Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men."

Let us consider this offer.

First of all, why fish for men, or women, or children? Why bother, especially with folk who were fishable, or catchable? Who is concerned with the religion of the insignificant? Let them alone. They have their own ways to make themselves comfortable. Why impose on them the burden of eternal thoughts, or weighty things like carnal natures needing to be eclipsed by spiritual nature, like the soul receiving the Word and Spirit. Let them be happy, in their own little way. Let them watch sports and talk shows. Let them chase after little, minor hopes in politics and economic issues and market reports. Eternity might be hidden in their hearts, but they're better off if they let their hearts stay buried and pay attention to the easier, consumable things.

Why pull the fish out of their element and into the sun?

Second, why follow anyone? "Follow me"? Is this not the height of presumption, that anyone should impose their choices on anyone else? As in "follow the leader"? Why give up one's own will to choose, every moment, what one wants? Immediately? Is this not what freedom means? Is this not what we vote for? what we argue for? what we pay for? Surely, the whole business of "following" must mean a surrender of freedom.

And a fisherman may chew over these matters carefully in the sun. The gulls call, and their voices echo from sea to shore. There is something wrong with what was just thought, all those protestations, as there is something always wrong with thoughts coming in from the outside: 

Being a fish in the school of human affairs is not such a pleasant business after all. Being caught up in sports and opinions, and even religious tumult, and being concerned with movements and ideas and retirement are not enough.

There is that Abyss at ninety degrees around every moment. Usually, it is fogged from view, but it echoes in a low thunder in weak moments at night. It is the dark matter at the boundaries of awareness, and one knows it's there. It resonates at the bottom of chest and soul and forces little realizations that being a fish in school will not suffice, not suffice in the least.

The fisherman shook his head, to rid his skull of these unpleasantries.

But, he knew, that "following" was not such a bad business, not with Him. "Following" meant certainly a surrender, but of "freedom"?

No. The freedom of choosing from a carnival menu was no freedom at all. No one in their right mind would die for that sort of freedom. 

Freedom lay rather in becoming what one was meant to become, and everyone has a background notion that what one is now is only the beginning of what one is meant to be. Freedom lay, too, toward the brave dealing with that darkness at night, but most of all a turning toward that light that is more than the sun.

Following Him was not such a bad business at all. His presence was full of that light. His words seemed to bridge and go beyond the Abyss. He knew the way from this moment of what is, to the finish line of what is meant to be.

Following Him was following a Friend, Who was also the Word of God. There is wildness and goodness in this following. There is a Revolution, yes, beyond all revolutions, but a Revolution of peace that fulfills all righteousness.

Everything He does, where He goes, every moment He enters, He makes His own and sets back in place for all time. The emergent fish would not die in this Son.

The familiar nets were left on the familiar sand, and the fisherman followed, immediately, on a grander strand.