Second Terrace

the warrior Jesus

This is a rare icon. It is a fresco in the Monastery of the Ascension of Christ in Kosovo.

It is being used as a defense of weapons, carrying guns, and aggression in general. Often, when points like these are made, several passages from the Old Testament about Israel's wars are deployed, also for the same purpose of justifying "righteous violence," and in the defense of the "right to bear arms" within the American gun debate.

Such use of the above icon is really abuse. The sword in the hand of Christ is a reference to Matthew 10.34: "Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword."

This sword refers to the mission of the Son of God to cut away, or to remove, sin and death from humanity and the rest of Creation. It is the same sword that is depicted in the Apostle John's Apocalypse: "from His mouth issued a sharp two-edged sword" (Revelation 1.16). And this: "From his mouth issues a sharp sword with which to smite the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron; he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty" (Revelation 19.15).

This is apocalyptic language, and it is meant to be taken symbolically. The attempt to wrest a "literal" meaning from these images ends up completely distorting Holy Scripture.

The symbolic meaning of the sword in Christ's hand is the removal of the corruption that stems from the Fall of humanity.

It has nothing to do with military force, or really any force at all.

The Kingdom of God expands and arrives not by coercion, but by persuasion. That has always been true. It will always continue to be true.

It is a curious thing that many believe otherwise. Many, if not most, think that at the Parousia, the Second Coming of the Lord, the character of Christ and His Kingdom will be completely different. When He appears in glory, it is assumed that the force of His unavoidable presence will drive everyone to their knees. 

And that is how the great conclusion of St Paul's stirring Christological hymn is understood:

"... that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Philippians 2.10-11).

The bowing of every knee and the confession of every tongue is assumed to happen, on one hand voluntarily for those who already believe, and on the other hand involuntarily for those who do not.

But the presumption of involuntary coercion at this point is a major inconsistency and a profound departure from the Christology of the Gospels. 

“Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; even as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20.25-28).

There is no basis for the supposition that Jesus will be any different upon His Return from His Gospel ministry, when the Prophet Isaiah said of Him that "He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick" (Isaiah 42.3, quoted in Matthew 12.20). 

And this: "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls" (Matthew 11.29).

Jesus does not impose the Good Will of the Father upon any human or any creature. God is omnipotent, but He is not coercive. The Returning Christ will not differ from the Feetwashing Christ -- it is an abject error in theology and Bible reading to suggest otherwise.

But that error is readily embraced and applied at many levels. The violent "warrior Jesus" is used to justify violence in Christian politics and warfare. It is deployed in many ideologies that purport to be Christian in superficial speech and behaviors, from neo-integralism to theocratic authoritarianism to even in Orthodoxy, with a small but very loud fanbase pushing monarchism and white Christian nationalism.

I wonder what came first. Was it the misinterpretation of Jesus' sword that gave rise to these extremist ideologies? Or is it the other way around -- that the ideologies that offer power and cultic identity came first, and manufactured such virulent unorthodox readings of the Gospel? 

Eschatology is a story of infinitely deepening and broadening divine beauty, and of our participation in that Kingdom, whose New Jerusalem is descending even now.

It is also the story of divine invitation and human free participation.

But it is still the story, as it always was, of the Kingdom of the Christ Who "is the same yesterday and today and for ever" (Hebrews 13.8).

The sword yielded by Jesus in the icon above is the "the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God" (Ephesians 6.17).

That this icon is misused as warrant for Christians to take up arms or engage in the culture wars, or the violence of partisan extremism is indeed scandalous and heterodox at best, if not something far worse.

But more tragically, such abject misinterpretation obstructs the misinterpreter from the true power of the real sword, and offers the naive crusaders only the hard cold realities of "for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword" (Matthew 26.52). 

 

 

the beginning of prayer on Spirit Day

It's really too bad that the phrase "thoughts and prayers" has become a cliche, and has produced the general notion that prayer is a default "last resort," that it is weak or even meaningless.

It is true that prayer is not an instrumental thing, where some sort of higher power can be manipulated into accomplishing something the pray-er demands. That sort of instrumentality is more like magic than prayer.

Just as it is helpful to understand "person" not first from human experience, but from the Trinity (where Personhood is first established), so also is Prayer understood first within the Divine World of the "Tri-unity" of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The best and really only word that we can use to describe the relationship between the Son and the Spirit on one hand, and the Father on the other, is exactly that word: Prayer. The Son prays to the Father, as is seen repeatedly in the Gospels, and is seen most recently in the ten days between the Ascension and Pentecost. The Spirit prays to the Father and searches out the infinite depths of the Father, groaning with words beyond the comprehension of any creature in supplication for Creation.

So it can be said -- indeed, must be said -- that "all good gifts" which comprise Creation (and Creation is only this, as evil is only privation of the good) are indeed the answer of the Father to the supplication of Son and Spirit.

Prayer in the Trinity is the complete -- with nothing left in reserve -- outpouring of Self to the Other to the point where there is a complete, indwelling of the Son and Spirit in the Father and each other.

And part of this outpouring is supplication, the presentation of all concern and desire for healing and the good.

But involving all of this and more than this, is the full participation in the Personhood of the Other, in the consubstantiality of Love that is the essence of divinity.

That is Prayer in divinity, in the Trinity.

And insofar as we humans participate in that very coinherence, we pray. We offer -- as an offering -- everything we are, everything we worry about, everything we desire that is good no matter how small or how impossible seeming.

We follow the more familiar example of the Virgin Mary, who interceded for her own family (likely her own sister) who ran out of wine in Cana. That is the model for "intercession" -- the essentially Christian act of praying for need in history.

And when we supplicate, we call upon the Father in the Name of His Son to realize the Son's Presence and Glory through the action of the Spirit -- which is precisely what happens in the Divine World.

In his majestic book "The Comforter" (truly the finest volume on pneumatology in the modern age), Fr Sergii Bulgakov gives wonderful, poignant advice on how we should pray in the modern age -- which is full of promise and peril, light and darkness, moments of goodness but tinged with seasons of tragedy.

We all know (or should know) that we are called to pray the Jesus Prayer with every breath we take (that is the goal):

"Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner."

Sometimes this prayer is shortened. Sometimes, simply to the extent of just praying the Name "Jesus," which is exactly what I think every child knows how to do even before they learn how to speak.

But on this day after Holy Pentecost, which we call "Spirit Day," it is important to remember that there is another prayer that should accompany every breath at the beating of our hearts.

And that is the Holy Spirit Prayer:

"O Heavenly King the Comforter, O Spirit of Truth, Who are everywhere present and fill all things. Treasurer of blessings and Giver of life, come and dwell within us, and cleanse us of every blemish, and save our souls, O Blessed One."

I pray for everyone and everything and anything. I do not worry if it is proper or theologically correct. I'm quite sure that God Who is infinitely wise, Whose Will is only a Good Will, is able to edit my prayers.

I never worry about the cynical phrase "Be careful what you pray for." God only blesses, never curses.

All good things are only answers to prayer.

Let us pray. Love -- the greatest work -- proceeds only from prayer, from Divinity to Humanity through the Godmanhood of Jesus and His Body.

Pray, because "with God all things are possible." 

another open letter to clergy

Dear fellow clergy:

I am writing this letter on the eve of the Orthodox celebration of Holy Pentecost. We celebrate and remember and experience the Personal Descent of the Holy Spirit, Who has come to make our hearts "streams of living water," to make us shine with the "light of life," as Jesus has come into the world of darkness as the Light.

We are accustomed to diagnosing the darkness. We are well-practiced in proclaiming the usual denunciations of transgressions like abortion, sexual sin, violence (at least, the violence of "others" who don't look or sound like us), and challenges to our own influence and power.

But the real darkness has always extended far beyond this diagnosis. And now, in these last few years, the superficiality of our "hot-button" denunciations has become painfully obvious.

While we march confidently in the National Right to Life March against abortion of unborn children, we are silent about the abortion of fourth-graders in Uvalde and grocery shoppers in Buffalo. 

While we record podcasts on Ancient Faith against Critical Race Theory and against classroom discussions about non-traditional families, we record nothing about voter suppression and white nationalism.

Brothers, if we're going to be prophetic, then let us be faithful to the complete prophetic ethic of Scripture and Tradition. If we're going to busy ourselves with cultural denunciations, then let us be brave enough to denounce also the sins of social injustice, wealth protection and capital accumulation, environmental degradation, and masculine domination. 

Shame on us for ever calling these concerns "liberal."

But there is a burgeoning darkness today. You and I stand on the cusp of a bleak generation.

We've been blessed in America to live in a democratic republic, a liberal democracy that insures the liberty of religion and individual rights.

But now, America is gripped in the clenched fist of rising extremism and authoritarianism. 

It is not the ridiculous notion of "soft totalitarianism," a notion that is oxymoronic at best and is more likely to be slavishly devoted to the likes of Orbán and Putin. 

Today, we face a monstrous wave of fascism outright -- a seething mass of intolerance, extremism, cultic and conspiratorial myth-driven mob identification. It cloaks itself in superficial religiosity that has nothing to do with the Gospel and everything to do with the worst moments of our long history in the world.

I ask you, brothers, to consider something. Not to join the partisan opposition. But simply this:

Let us preach the Beatitudes. Let us be characterized by the care and character of the Mother of God, who said "Behold the handmaiden of the Lord, be it unto me according to your word."

Let us rebut and refute the ideologies that beset our communities -- the irrational conspiracies of stolen elections and pedophile cults; the libertarianism of radical weaponization; white nationalism and fundamentalism;  authoritarianism and racism; chiliasm and "non-monastic monasticisms"

Let us at least turn off the oxygen to the fires of masculine domination. And let us, even, step boldly into the moral necessity of putting down QAnon cult theories by demanding that such accusations must be confirmed by "two or three witnesses" (i.e., the witness of rationality, in a spirit of careful and peaceful discernment).

Let us preach the Apostolic Gospel of the feetwashing Jesus, the kenotic power of the Ascended Lord.

Let us not be goats but sheep who recognize the Theanthropos in every face.

Let us work for the night is coming -- and come it most certainly will if we don't do our job.

Fr Jonathan Tobias

 

the reign of the ascended lord

The Promise of His Presence

At the end of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus said this to the eleven disciples:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even unto the close of the age” (Matthew 28.18-20).

The Gospel of Luke ends in a seemingly different way:

“And behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you; but stay in the city, until you are clothed with power from on high.” Then He led them out as far as Bethany, and lifting up his hands, He blessed them. While He blessed them, He parted from them, and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped Him, and they returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple blessing God (Luke 24.49-53).

In Matthew, the Lord promises that He will never leave His disciples. In Luke, He “parted from them and was carried up into heaven.”

Is this a contradiction? Certainly not, but it is what Orthodox theologians call an “antinomy” — i.e., something that only seems to be contradictory from our limited point of view as creatures, but is not in God’s infinite and transcendent Love.

The principal Orthodox hymns of the Feast of the Ascension resolves this apparent contradiction::

“You ascended in glory, O Christ our God; You delighted the Disciples with the promise of the Holy Spirit. Through this blessing they were assured that You are the Son of God, the Redeemer of the world” (Ascension Tropar).

“When You fulfilled the plan of salvation for us and united all things on earth to those in heaven, O Christ our God You ascended in glory, never leaving us, but remaining ever present. For You proclaimed to those who love You: ‘I am with you and no one else has power over you’” (Ascension Kondak).

It is the “promise of the Holy Spirit” that solves this apparent contradiction. The Holy Spirit makes the presence of Christ even greater, without limit, and fulfills Christ’s promise to never leave. It is by the Spirit that fulfills the wonderful, powerful promise in this most glorious Kondak: “I am with you and no one else has power over you.”

Christ's Request After Ascension

Christ is now at the right hand of God the Father: “The Lord said unto my Lord: sit at My right hand until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool” (Psalm 109.1 LXX). The Apostle Peter quoted this verse in the very first Christian sermon that was preached on Pentecost (Acts 2.34-35). He explained what had just happened at 9 am that very morning: “Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured out this which you see and hear” (Acts 2.33).

At the Ascension, Jesus presented His redeemed humanity to the Father: “Then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of the creation) He entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but HIs own blood … Who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself, without blemish to God” (Hebrews 9.11-12, 14).

In the mysterious and silent ten days between the Ascension and Pentecost, this was the request that the Son made to the Father for the sending of the Spirit. “And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever” (John 14.16). “It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Comforter will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16.7).

Christ Reigns Through the Holy Spirit

It is by the presence of the Holy Spirit that Christ is with us, and that He reigns.

The reign, the kingship, of the Risen Lord Jesus Christ is the present reality.

The present reign of Jesus Christ, Who is sitting at the right hand of God the Father, is a central theme in the preaching of the Apostles in the Book of Acts. In fact, the present reign of Christ is the central theme and theology of Acts.

Here are the Apostle Peter’s words in the second Christian sermon, which he proclaimed immediately after he and the Apostle John healed a man lame from birth near the Temple gate that was called “Beautiful”:

“Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord. And He shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you: Whom heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began” (Acts 3.19-21).

Jesus is Personally (i.e., “hypostatically”) in heaven at the right hand of God the Father “until the times of restitution” — this refers to the Parousia, the Second Coming of the Lord, when finally God “will be all in all.”

The Subjection of the Enemies

The Apostle Paul writes of this present reign, of what the Lord is doing at the right hand of God the Father until that moment at the end:

“Then comes the end, when He [Christ] delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. ‘For God has put all things in subjection under His feet’” (1 Corinthians 15.24-27).

The present reign of the Ascended Lord is the constant process of Jesus Christ, the Son of God seated at the right hand of God the Father,“putting all His enemies under His feet.” It is the ongoing process of “All things being put in subjection under Him.”

The Apostle Peter said in his sermon at the Beautiful Gate that the prophets in the Old Testament had spoken of this present reign.

The most important of these prophecies is by King David: “The Lord said to my Lord: sit at My right hand until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool” (Psalm 109.1 LXX).

It is extremely significant that Jesus Himself quoted this very verse in response to the Pharisees, who were challenging His theology and His authority: “If the Messiah is the son of David, then why does David call his son the Lord?” (Matthew 22.45).

There is a most important clue here as to the character and meaning of Jesus’ “politics,” the character and meaning of His power — Jesus is identifying His own divinity and authority in the context of Love! He had just spoken of the two greatest commandments — to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and … you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22.37, 39).

The only answer to this riddle, of course, was that Jesus was already eternally existing as the Son of God. But the even higher truth, that David only saw glimmers of, was that after the Gospel events of the Incarnation — including His Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension — was that He would be reigning at the Divine Right Hand until all His enemies would be put into subjection under His rule.

The Apostle John writes poetically and apocalyptically of this rule:

“He Who conquers and Who keeps My works until the end, I will give Him power over the nations, and He shall rule them with a rod of iron” (Revelation 2.26-27).

The Ways of Jesus’ Reign

How should this Reign be understood? What character is it?

I should tell you that there are more than a few these days who take “Reign” in entirely worldly terms. For them, they take what they know of the world’s power, violence, and domination, and they extrapolate those sinful patterns onto the Lord Himself.

As a particularly grotesque example, there is a so-called “Rod of Iron Ministry” that is growing by leaps and bounds in Pennsylvania, Texas, and Tennessee. Led by the son of the infamous Sun Myung Moon, this cult states explicitly that the present reign of Christ is a reign of violence and physical warfare.

One of the leaders recently said “We believe that the kingdom of heaven is a kingdom of armed citizens, so we believe that everyone in the kingdom should be armed.” The very weapons that were used in mass shootings in Uvalde TX, Buffalo NY, and Tulsa OK are carried in weddings and brandished in “church” services in this cult (which has recently welcomed as keynote speaker a candidate for governor of Pennsylvania).

I’m not exaggerating or being unreasonable. This cult is only one example of a rising tide in American culture — a tide of violence, racism, domination, and authoritarian power.

It is a “heterodox” and heretical falling away from Biblical Christianity that has forgotten all about the Jesus Who washed the feet of His disciples, Who called Himself gentle and forbearing, Who called His followers to meekness and peacemaking, self-denial and Cross-bearing.

The Apostle Matthew makes this clear in his Gospel:

“Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave; even as the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20.25-28).

Popular Misinterpretations

Nothing changed when Jesus ascended into heaven. The “self-pouring-out” and servanthood character of Love continues and will always be so, even after the Parousia, Jesus’ Second Coming. For this is the “personality” of the Body of Christ that can only be like the Head of the Body, Jesus Christ Himself. This is always and only the very order of the New Jerusalem. This is the civic life of heaven — “My life for yours.”

This is a radically different “political theory,” so much upside-down from the realpolitik of the “wars and rumors of wars” of the world.

And this is most important — especially in a time when the Name of Jesus is being abused by so many who want to assume violent power, domination, and oppression as “Christians”:

There will never be a time — at present or in the future — when Christ and His Body will wage violence and domination. Christ’s power will never — forever — be characterized by violence and extermination.

This goes against the too-popular idea that most have about the End Times, when the Lord comes back. They like to imagine that when He comes back, He will be completely different from the humility and meekness of His First Coming. This time, they say, He will come back to take revenge. And He will satisfy the demands for vengeance of all His followers who had been disadvantaged or put down by the world.

This demand for vengeance is not only unbecoming and immature. It is only contrary to the self-denying, servanthood character of Christ’s Reign. Such an expectation of Jesus (that we hear from the likes of Hal Lindsay and the ridiculous Left Behind series by Timothy LaHaye and Kirk Cameron), when He comes back, “to pay back the sinners just what they deserve,” is exactly the same as what many of the Jews wanted from the Messiah in Jesus’ First Coming.

Protestant pre-millennialists are fond of quoting this passage from the Apostle John’s Apocalypse:

“Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems; and he has a name inscribed which no one knows but himself. He is clad in a robe dipped in[a] blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, followed him on white horses. From his mouth issues a sharp sword with which to smite the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron; he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name inscribed, King of kings and Lord of lords” (Revelation 19.11-17).

This particular passage is one of the chief reasons why Revelations is not read in the services of the Orthodox Church. It is so easy and common to be grossly misinterpreted. On the face of it, it looks militaristic, violent, and triumphalist.

But Revelation was written by the Apostle John as a source of encouragement to his fellow persecuted Christians. It was deliberately written in apocalyptic language, and thus it is certainly not to be taken literally — i.e., in a simplistic, superficial, “plain reading of the text.” This terrible Bible Study mistake is precisely where so many protestant pre-millennialists go so wrong in their End Times prophecy teachings.

Jesus Conquers Only by Love

Since the Spirit conducts the Presence of the Reigning Christ, then it is up to us to voluntarily participate -- in synergy -- with the Spirit's indwelling. Our work is not sufficient, but it is certainly necessary, for the Presence of Christ to be actualized in our own life.

This is the "talent" that the Lord gives us in our lifetime. This is the work by which we shall be judged. 

Suffice to say that our own self-aggrandizement in domination, wealth, and power, our own penchant for violence, our own extremist acts, are all opposed to the presence of the Holy Spirit. We thus resist our own theosis. We participate -- in the satanic egoism of violence and domination -- in the spirit of antichrist.

The true "politics of Jesus" admits no such egoistic spirit. His realpolitik is the politics of feetwashing -- as it was, is now, and ever shall be.

In the above passage from Revelation, the Returning Jesus is described as having a “sharp sword issuing from His mouth with which to smite the nations” (19.15). It should be obvious that this is figurative language, as a literal reading is ludicrous.

The “sword” is the overwhelmingly persuasive Word of the Lord. Now matter how dark the world, no matter how sinful the sinner, Jesus’ persuasive Gospel will, at the end, utterly overcome all selfish argument, the original sin of satanism.

The Godmanhood of Jesus, out of Trinitarian Love, is so beautiful, so good and true, that every creature will, by the end, freely bow and freely confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

That, and nothing less, is the “sword of the Lord.” That is the light of the world that is the “flame of His eyes.” That is His crucified Love, which is why He is wearing “a robe dipped in blood.” That is His outpouring Grace and Victory, which is why He wears the diadem.

That is why He is called Faithful and True.

Satan and all the powers and authorities of the fallen world and of the Antichrist can only be dislodged by kenosis, by the Christological pouring out of self by self-denial and the servanthood of love (Philippians 2.5-11).

So we pray. So we work and witness. So we love.

In the Mean Time

So until that Day, the Last Day, we have faith. This is exactly, in the context of the Loving Servant, Jesus the Divine and Feetwashing Friend, how we should understand His curious words “Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him” (Mark 11.23).

The “mountain” Jesus is referring to is much bigger, much harder than a physical and literal mountain. It is much bigger than personal obstacles (which is the usual interpretation of this verse).

The “mountain” here is nothing less than the very powers and principalities that are being made into the footstool of Jesus.

These “mountains” — no matter how monstrous and depressing — are always moved by the conquering power of Love Divine.

I wish we would pay more attention to the New Testament than to political speech on TV and rallies — power that counts on violence, hatred, anger, and extremism. The Apostle Paul knows the true character of the greatest power, which is Divine, the conquering ways of Love:

“For though we live in the world we are not carrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every proud obstacle to the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10.3-5).

We Christians — who recognize Jesus in our neighbor’s face and act like Him — live in the world and love the world (because “God so loved the world”), we witness to the world as Salt and Light as the world is now, not as we want the world to be. We do not run away from the world, as is the fashion of some popular Christian and even Orthodox writers today. We do not engage in extremist partisan politics to demand that people become more familiar, more agreeable to our political tastes. We do not clamor for powerful Strong Men who will make us feel safer.

Jesus’ Present Reign as the Ascended Lord, seated at the right hand of God the Father, is a Reign of meek and humble love. He washes our feet now as He once washed His disciples’ feet in the Upper Room, and He always will.

He does so because the Trinity is just that way — each Person giving away Self completely to the Others.

And we are called to do the same.

And the world will know that we are Christians only by our love.

We have no King but Jesus. He alone is our King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

— Fr Jonathan Tobias, Ascension 2022

memory and the rose

Though it was a little on the warm side, the biennial Easels in the Gardens tour  in Edenton fulfilled high expectations. Where else is there so exquisite a blend of art on canvas and porcelain, get-up-and-dance music on Broad, and verdant, blossoming gardens in splendor?

Where else can you hear while wandering in a Victorian garden, like I heard at Beverly Hall, echoes of “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder?” It was Gabriel’s Men singing out of the long corridors of singspirations and brush arbor meetings, Christian Endeavor on Sunday nights.

I knew right then that time was tuned this day to a different key.

At one moment, I’m listening to my artist friend Patrick, in his and Lorrie’s courtyard, list about twenty specific hues of what I would have called, like a Philistine, a “pretty orange hibiscus,” the subject of his current canvas. Only an artist could narrate a mystical journey from the persimmon fringe of the petals down toward the glowing amber heart.

An artist, or a gardener, does not merely “know about” a flower. For any poet, knowing a flower is a matter of communion. Memory is never mere information: it is always a present relationship in the here and now, no matter how far it seems removed in the past.

In another moment, a few blocks away, Marsha and I are walking with Craig, a town councilman, down the pea pebble path of the garden at Coffield House. More hibiscus, even bougainvillea.

“Sure is different now.” His speech had turned wistful. Memory had flown back to September 6, 2003, on a fateful Thursday afternoon. Two weeks without power or water. Pecans and oaks torn down by the hurricane gales. So much damage, so much destruction to homes, historic buildings, especially at the historic Kadesh AME Church, which had been front and center of the African-American community hereabouts. 

Neighbors banded together. The whine and roar of chainsaws and heavy machinery filled the air, along with the charcoal fires of hotdogs and hamburgers smoking on the street. A lot of “ties that bind” were forged as the gardens healed, homes and buildings repaired, and trees replanted.

“Leaders lead, they do not drive,” I suggested, because that is exactly how the aftermath of Hurricane Isabel sounded like to me, a time-traveler bystander, who was just listening in on what Hilaire Belloc once described as a “climacteric moment,” when spiritual realities are unveiled and brought out into the open, if only for a fleeting glimpse.

Memories are like ghosts. It takes but a magnolia leaf, the wisp of jasmine, the shoulders of an ancient skyscraping oak, the scent of a field of roses, to take you back to a time that does not diminish but grows in vision and aroma as gardens of the past waft and wave under the breath of the Spirit hovering over the face of the waters before time ever began.

“I woke up this morning feelin' fine. I woke up with Heaven on my mind.” Gabriel’s Men again, this time in the finely wrought bower of Bruce and Marilyn’s Chapell House. It was stepping in the light, stepping into the living green everlasting: it was Eden again.

My friend David died on Saturday, the second day of Easels, in the fourth watch of the night in upstate New York. He was found in his easy chair, having “shuffled off this mortal coil” sometime in the dead of night, likely of a coronary event. 

So I took him with me, in memoriam, as my better half and I drove off to the Jubilee estate to visit the gardens of Cy and Nancy.

There was something meet and consoling about the magentas, the delicate fuschias, the opals and the array of petals that comprised – if you squinted your eyes just right in the silver sun against the azure sky – a fresh-cut peach, with its pink flesh exterior and crimson depths.

These were the timeless roses. I wondered, in melancholy reverie, just how many angels it’d take to wrap their arms around the titan trunk of the century elm to make it stand for a hundred years. The undulating waves of the finely sculptured boxwoods, framing the archetypal frame of the Jubilee main house, reminded me of the wild romance of Capability Brown at England’s Stowe.

“Hey David.” 

“Hey Jonathan. You might have heard.”

“Yes.”

“I could have announced this on Facebook. Like ‘You won’t believe what happened to me today.’ Just think: I would have gotten a thousand likes.”

“Sheesh, Dave.”

“I know, I know, it would have been in bad taste.”

David and I had styled ourselves as Statler and Waldorf on the Muppet Show, plagued by upstart whippersnappers who execute new programming and what-not and are afflicted with the unfortunate sense that the world had been waiting for just their generation to solve all its problems. When we saw these newly ordained clerics walk by, who were always getting younger and increasingly less responsive to our clever allusions to the Beatles and to Shakespeare, we shook our heads and muttered darkly about the state of education these days.

I took him with me to Jubilee, which is a deeply Old Testament name, chockful of time and redemption. “Things change, David, but the beautiful things remain.”

“Da, brati,” his baritone uttered, “Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.” The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or, in a more hopeful key, the longer the memory, the more beauty, goodness, and truth, remain and obtain.

Marcel Proust, in “Swann’s Way,” wrote that the ancient Celts believed that the souls of the departed lingered in a stone, a leaf, or a flower, until you passed by and looked deeply into that pool of memory. Then the living soul of your friend would speak then, in a lyric deeper than rational thought, in chthonic sonorities that plumb the depths of the heavenly spheres.

We carry the dead with us into the roses, the fragrance and the petals, the leaves of Eden whispering in the wind, hoping to meet the Risen Gardener.

We carry, these days, so many dead. So many children and the innocent.

So I wandered out into the symmetrical garden of my friends, Russ and Elizabeth at the Skinner-Paxton House, and communed with the roses. As expected, my dad was there, who in his preacherly peregrinations all his life ever cherished the rose, his ever present but ever elusive aspiration, standing at my side.

“This is a most excellent rose garden,” he said with satisfaction. “Look, son.”

On the borderlands of the Sound and sky, that metaxological threshold between the pastel turquoise firmament and the slate and indigo Albemarle, there he was. David, my old friend.

“Hey.”

“Hey, Dave. You’re like, on the horizon.”

“Cool. Yeah, I’m unstoppable now. It’s okay.”

Gardens and paintings, in their constant flirtation with mystic beauty, are perilous realms. They are haunting. There are ghosts indeed. Terrifying, even, but they are sweet and saving.

More than any other place, a garden is a vestibule of earth and sky, a sacred liminal space of memory rooted and blooming into art and memory. At Mary Ann and Jack's garden, I rejoiced to hear Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right” – utter perfection as we wended our way through the matriarchal primrose, the artichokes and fennel, the roses. And of course, the still and silent copper burnished angels, sculpted, hovering, silent.

Then we fared our way to Deanne and David’s place.

There she was, statuesque in a quiet shaded corner, crowned in May wreath, choired in antiphonal glory by the Madonna Lily. Bowered from the blazing sun, sheltered in timeless coolness, under the veil.

It’s all right, she said. It’s okay. “Mother Mary comes to me speaking words of wisdom. Let it be. And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me. Speaking words of wisdom. Let it be.”

That’s what the flowers said. Memory and the rose.