Second Terrace

Lenten Dinner Great Success: a Titanic Event

Article for diocesan magazine: “Lenten Dinner Great Success”

A church dinner, “a sumptuous affair” (as promised in last Sunday’s bulletin), was held last night at Banquets R Us down at the end of town by WalMart.

The organizing committee went for the buffet line because 1) it was cheaper (at $17.95!) and 2) it permitted those who were fasting to take the “haddock in lemon curd sauce” and everyone else could choose from the meats (since it was Sunday).

Musical selections were performed by “The Quartet Four,” who played and sang favorites from the old country and the new. The Parrothead segment was especially a crowd favorite.

After the music program, the President welcomed everyone to the banquet, and especially thanked the many generous sponsors who sponsored full page ads in the beautiful four-color glossy-page program book, with logos and photos and nice articles on the different organizations of the parish. He reminded everyone to make sure that they took their program books home since they took so much work, and wouldn’t it be a waste to leave them lying about like what happened at the last year’s Annual Lenten Church Dinner.

Then the President introduced the first Main Speaker from the evening, who was the new financial consultant from Golden Horizons Faithbase Marketing Partners. Using a very impressive Powerpoint presentation, the Presenter showed how pledges from the parishioners could be used as collateral for the church’s new capital growth campaign – “Vision-Casting for Tomorrow’s New Beginning and Broader Horizons.” We are now entering Phase 4 of the ongoing revitalizing construction project, which will involve a multi-services atrium with an information kiosk, rest and conversation living spaces and a large screen to promote ongoing church outreach programs and podcast presentations by church staff. The Presenter ended his inspirational talk by reminding banquet participants that “people only give when something’s going on, so let’s make sure something’s going on!”

The President got up and told a few jokes which he is famous for. There was a priest who was walking in the woods, and there was this big bear standing there. The priest started running from the bear, and the bear chased him all over. The priest kept praying for God to save him. The bear kept coming closer. The priest all at once skidded to a halt since he was on a cliff and couldn’t go anywhere. The bear kept coming closer. The priest (heh, heh) said, “God, please make this bear a Christian!” And so the bear all at once stopped, knelt down on the ground, put his paws together and started to pray. The priest couldn’t believe this miracle. And then the bear said out loud, “God is good, God is great, let us thank Him for the food. Amen.” And then the priest remembered it wasn't Friday.

Everyone laughed their head off.

Then the President introduced the real Main Speaker, who was a famous and national authority on “How Church Tradition can Make Us Modern.” The Speaker talked about how Church Order is really something called “Western Patriarchal Domination,” and how the really good Church Fathers never wanted this to begin with. The Speaker described how some of the “Fathers,” if you really looked closely and read between the lines (because there's a lot of irony, you know), actually said that there was no gender in humanity before the Fall (whatever that is, because no one who is respectable and serious takes that story literally these days). Gender was really a consequence of the Fall and it was a negative thing (a lot of people cheered here). And then in the Eschaton – which is that thing that happens after Time and History, which we can experience even now if we think about infinity – there is no gender, not even in the Mother of God or her son. Therefore, the Speaker said, there should be the restoration of the female diaconate as soon as possible, and everyone who is respectable and in the seminaries and important published authors says so. If we do this, and be more inclusive about "all the phases of human experience, including sexuality,"then we will open up the human potential in everyone that we really need for all the challenges we have, and everyone will have healthy self-esteem.

Everyone applauded with a standing ovation.

The priest stood up for closing remarks. “This was a really important, significant address,” he told everyone. “I think we’ve all had a wonderful time today, thinking and talking about the future. Remember your pledge to Phase 4, and remember to join the study group this Wednesday evening on what we just heard, ‘A New Anthropology for a New Age.’”

He prayed a benediction, and then “The Quartet Four” started their dance set, starting with “The Electric Slide,” a church favorite.

In the atrium (under the “Margaritaville” kiosk), the priest was talking with the speakers. He was congratulating them on their rousing presentations.

“This whole Lenten event,” he exclaimed, “was simply titanic!”

Cathouse replacement of the New Testament and the new grammar imperative

This just in:

The Catastrophic Commission on Liturgical Renewal and Linguistic Reparation has approved, with the able assistance of the gents at the EU, the following replacement of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles.

The development of the productive forces brought about by the ever more scientific and socially open sensitivity to solidarity has prepared the way for a new revised plan of action for closer union with faith communities, whose launch is an imperative necessity.*

Please remove the current text that occupies the current place in the looseleaf "(un)Repaired 'ur'-(t)ext" (i.e., "Acts" (sic, as "act" is a non-gender-neutral term)), and replace it with the aforesaid text.

The New Grammar Imperative

The Catastrophic Commission draws attention to the advantages of the new, replacement text over the old patriarchal text, which is suspected of latent racism, xenophobia, and refusal to enter into solidarity with the metropolitan project. The textual advantages, which should be adopted as the new grammar imperative, are as follows:

1. the use of nominalizations instead of direct verbs (e.g., "development" instead of "to develop")
2. the lack of indexicals or identifiers (e.g., the elimination of "I," "we," "here" and "now")
3. the utilization of sophisticated comparisons rather than concrete reference (e.g., "ever more scientific and socially open")
4. the complexification (i.e., "hiding") of all concrete action within the ambiguity of the passive voice (e.g., "brought about by")
5. the rendering of tone into an imperative (e.g., the launch is an "imperative necessity")
6. the addressing of the passage (i.e., "narrative") to no one in particular, and therefore to everyone in general

Wherever this grammar is used, especially in religious circles, the work of the Catastrophic Commission is advanced!

(wild applause of littered paws)

Additional note from the Liturgical Music/Powerpoint Committee: the use of liturgical dance and cymbals is strongly encouraged to ritually frame this text.

*freely adapted from a European Union text, analyzed by Françoise Thom in La langue de bois, as cited in Scruton's Political Philosophy.

Cathouse replacement of the Pentateuch

This just in:

The Catastrophic Commission on Liturgical Renewal and Linguistic Reparation has approved, with the able assistance of the gents at the Jesus Seminar, the following replacement of the Book of Genesis.

The rememoration of the 'present' as space is the possibility of the utopian imperative of no-(particular)-place, the metropolitan project that can supplement the post-colonial attempt at the impossible cathexis of place-bound history as the lost time of the spectator.*

Please cut out the current text that occupies the first book of the "(un)Repaired 'ur'-(t)ext" (i.e., "Genesis" (sic)), and replace it with the aforesaid text.

Note from the Liturgical Music/Powerpoint Committee: it is suggested that the tone setting for liturgical chant should be "Bridge Over Troubled Waters."

*from 'Psychoanalysis in Left Field and Fieldworking: Examples to Fit the Title,' by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, as cited in the inestimable A Political Philosophy, by Roger Scruton.

Announcement: Convention December 27-30

The Meowist Language Association announces that its 2007 Convention will be held December 27-30.

Expect the usual exceptional offering of general sessions, special sessions, and theoretical sessions, constructivist and deconstructivist sessions, Paul de Man sessions, feminist and post-feminist sessions, queer theory and pre-queer theory sessions, and, new this year, even "Christian" special interest sessions (e.g., CCL). Also, assistance for non-tenure-track and unemployed faculty members is available.

Along with all of that, there will be a special presentation of the Feline Unpatriarchal Bestowal of Artistic Recognition, otherwise known, affectionately, as the Modern Art Cats' Trophy. Serrano is a front runner for the nod, but Manzoni and Basquiat are lobbying for the coveted award, despite some minor limitations at present.

In the interest of public relations, and avoiding some pre-convention ambiguity experienced in previous years, it has been decided to not publicize the list of the hundreds of subjects presented, which can range anywhere from romance literature (sic) to Shakespeare (whether he wants talked about by us or not).

The Convention will be held in the world-renown Gobbler Motel and Supper Club in Wisconsin -- the same place that housed the planning and kickoff of the hyper-modern movement -- well, "postmodern" for the intellectuals, kitsch for the pedestrians.

Please reserve your room quickly at this first-class, 5-star establishment. Don't miss this opportunity to stay in purple-carpeted rooms (floor and walls). Be sure to check out the very room where video games were invented.

Concatenation

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

But the cats didn’t like this, as this was too patriarchal for their tastes. So they arranged a Conference, and held long Committee meetings, and heard numerous Consultations and the reports of Commissions, and engaged in some serious Creative writing, couched in the first person plural but (rather not like the Divinity) invariably framed in the passive voice.

So the cats, conferring and consulting, and creatively commissioning, said:

As it has come to our attention that there is a frequently experienced phenomenon known as (but not limited to, as there are other understandings) “existence” or “life,”* we hereby affirm our commitment to our firmly-held conviction that this condition either has always been as we have experienced it, or it has developed over time and in different understandings (all of which are of equal incredibly unique and important value**) to become, incrementally and in seamless transition, what we have been in the here and now.

We courageously affirm the importance of our conviction that the embracing of this metanarrative, this understanding of understandings, has enabled us to experience richly the possibilities of “community-based ontologies” – that is, sociologically-conditioned theories of reality – rather than the outmoded and limited prejudicial theories (i.e., of only one “reality” and one “time”) that have produced regrettable notions of “rightness” and “wrongness.”

We are excited about the infinitely-varied and wide range of possibilities that have become available to our communal and individual consciousness. As together, in a community of freely-inclusive and self-committed individuals, we affirm a “phenomenal consensus,” and in that affirmation we have experienced a richer range of evaluative alternatives that can generate more effective affirmations of lifestyle choices (by re-framing them as extensions of individual psychologies and inevitabilities), we embrace the mandate of electing an ethic for every possible endeavor. We revel in the tapestry of multifaceted ethics, in which each one articulates a new narrative of consciousness, liberation, commitment and free decision-making.

We value and greatly respect the treasuries of past understandings, and freely and inclusively embrace the legacies of sectarian traditions, each of which apprehended its own particular affirmations of totality. We, however, have sought a more affirmative and wider understanding of the present and the future. We believe that it is more effective to model our own experience upon our convictions, rather than “react” to paternalistic possibilities of “creation.” These negative possibilities inflict an undue burden upon the potentialities of future narratives, and restrict the range of future decision-making. This paternalistic pattern has even gone so far as to consign some valid potentialities or choices to the biased and hate-speeched modalities of “wrongness” and “sin.”

We reject these stereotypes that stem from obsolete ethical theories, and we gratefully remind ourselves that we have been privileged to reframe the ethical enterprise into a consensus-based, democratically-conditioned endeavor. We have benefited from the new, hopeful possibilities – an “eschatological narrative of hope” – of the enjoyment of “committee” over the confining prejudices of “creator-ism,” “truth/goodness-ism,” and “morality-ism.” Now that we have identified the implicit narratives of liberation and consciousness underlying the God-myth of more provincial traditions, we have courageously accepted the responsibility of defining our future by the identification and extrapolation of our psychologies and sociology. By this, we have transitioned the outmoded theories of “metaphysics” into more scientifically-acceptable tasks of cost-benefit analyses, management-by-objectives, and economic mobility.

But despite all this, God said “Let there be light”; and there was light, despite the concatenation of feline opinion. He said there is truth, despite the catastrophic, felonious multiplicity of theological ("all philosophy is theology"***) theories and ethical pronouncements. He said there is living water in one place, in spirit and in truth, despite the denominational, "narrative" impulse of cats.

And He said, of His Creation, that it was good.

But for cats there is no creation, only narrative, only ethics, and ontology by committee.

And that, even for a cat, is not too good.

* Cats love scare-quotes, as they cannot call anything anything: they can only "so-call"

** Only cat prose can come up with something like the abominable phrase "important value"

***This is true, and doubting it is the beginning of felinism

The Canine Rebuttal of Einstein

Generally speaking, Cats, specifically, are really into relativity.

They count on the reversibility of every perspective. In their worldview, which is the only world (not view) there is, it is just as feasible that the earth moves under the automobile, as it is that the automobile moves on the earth.

My rather mod-ish cat, Ms. Novus Ordo, who is up on things, held forth to my Yorkie Oliver about this the other day. He thought for a while. Then he growled:

"That might work, rolling the earth under one car. But it won't under two cars at once, let alone under a single traffic jam."

"Relativity works only in a subjective universe," he continued. "It's just like a cat to come up with something like that."

A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Ford Prefect Trilogy, Parts 1 through 42

Breathe a sigh of ruddy relief, gents, Ford Prefect's finished with his remarks. It's probably a good idea to begin at, well, the beginning and work your way through to the end. Here's a handy table of contents:

The Introduction, in which Ford Prefect makes his debut on the religious blog scene.

Part One, First Message, in which Ford calls us to love our neighborhood Muslim, and not mistake them for the Vogons.

Then Part Two, the Second Message, in which Ford reveals the real identity of the Golgafrinchams, and how orthodoxy is a tad awkward apart from the Great Big O.

The worst poetry of all time (hypertensive literateurs beware, this post may hurt you) is posted in Part Three, the Third Message, Sub-section A. Liberal christianity is compared, in a complimentary (or complementary?) fashion, to dead swans and green putty.

Just in case they felt left out, the followers of Albrecht Ritschl are celebrated in Ford's extended diatribe on liberal christianity in Part Four, the Third Message, Sub-section B.

Ford coins a new word, "Schleiermacherian Azgothian," in his screed on those happy-go-lucky crypto-liberals, the megachurcherians, in Part Five, the Third Message, Sub-section C.

In a surprise move, and very discourteously and distastefully unprefaced in his introductory remarks, the correspondent for the Guide intones an oracle on everyone's favorite religious theme, the Ecumenical Movement, in Part Six of the Trilogy, the Fourth Message.

A very nasty-looking sharp-shooting assassin is revealed in the Fifth Message (Part Seven), in which Mr. Prefect discusses the improprieties of scientists doing metaphysics. He also raises the disturbing issue of just who is in the maze, and just who is being amazed, and about mice who are not so very nice.

Finally, in Part 42, the Sixth Message by Nine, Ford Prefect gives his adieu, but not before revealing the biggest apologetic obstacle of all time: what's harder to believe? The existence of God? Or the phrase, "Jesus Saves"?

Ford Prefect Speaks, Trilogy Part 42 (and Done)

Sixth Message by Nine

Do you have any idea what the question was that made Deep Thought answer, after aeons, with the ludicrous number forty-two?

Recall that the number was generated to pose the meaning of life, the universe and everything. And in one of the last episodes of the secular Guide, the question, in a vision, was put on a Scrabble board: "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?"

And you, silly, thought it was fifty-four? But don't you see? If the answer was already given, then it couldn't be fifty-four. If the answer was forty-two, and the question is six by nine, then the meaning of the whole thing is not the equation itself, isn't it? When did you start thinking that the answer would come down on the right-hand side of the equation? An equation (remember?) demonstrates only an equivalence, not a question and answer.

Didn't you suspect anything when a rather important question was put to a computer? By mice? Am I the only one who's whiffing something niffy here?

You seriously thought a creature -- rather, an artifact mind you -- could discern the reason underlying Creation? Or, to be more polite and correct, you really expected a transcendent response from a mathematical inquiry? You've read Bertrand, I'm sure, but you mean to tell me you still ignore Gödel -- who proved, as far as we green men can tell, that a mathematical system cannot refer, by itself, outside itself?

You may have noticed, even in the secular Guide, that I and Zarniwoop and the other editors weren't all that enthusiastic about the Deep Thought project. We had our own, more conservative and genial, tasks to perform. I happen to enjoy the charming and particular traditions of humans, and valued them all the more as they were slated to be leveled by Vogon civic planning -- an expressway known as the Galactic Nihilosurdway.

I like you, earthpeople, traditionalist that I am. And you should know something else:

I, Ford Prefect, am a theist. At least, I would like to be.

That is a harder thing to do than Pinocchio’s becoming a boy. I’m not real, for one thing. And another thing, it is even a longer stretch to become a real human from the status of a real thing, than it is to become a real thing from nothing.

You wouldn’t understand. You’ve grown up in a Universe completely surrounded by and penetrated with the Uncreated Light, the Energy of the Essence, the Incarnate Christological Grace of the Triune God. You can only imagine "not-God" (in a rather mentally ill idiom, I might add, the very fanciest of schizophrenias). You cannot ever, even in hell, experience real atheism.

I don’t get you, you silly skinflint angels. You know something by nature I cannot begin to pronounce, even in sub-lingual, pre-conscious thought. You know something at the base of your laughter, at the bedrock sense of your poetry, and at the profoundest warp and weave of your stories. You know it, tacitly, because you always have Jesus tapping your dexterous shoulder.

And you keep walking on, without turning around? I mean, here’s the joke of it all, and the joke’s on you, mate: here I am, a fiction, and while it's no skin off my nose if you take me for real or no, what I cannot ken for the life of me is that I can believe in the salvation of you, and you can’t.

What a curse you brought upon yourself! What pentagram did you scribe, and in what dark chamber? How did you go down to hear, and where did you draw near, that you heard before the lights went out, Vegna Medusa: sì’l farem di smalto!

Sorry, I, and all the wannabe believers in space, read Dante. It’s so affecting.

You don’t know it, but I would do anything to be able to pray. And so I came here, all this way, and I found not a house of prayer, but a den of thieves. Or a den of capitalists and wealth re-distributors. Same thing.

Here’s your problem, and it’s straight from someone who is a contributing editor to the secular Guide. And, I might add, from someone who knows how to keep clear of the Vogons.

Take it or leave it. It’s all the same to me.

The reason why you won’t believe in the old-fashioned God is because you can’t. You’ve been lobotomized.

You can’t believe in God, because you won’t believe that He would save you.

This seems clear to me, a silly little alien who traipses around the galaxy with a towel snapping you on the keister:

If you can believe that the God of the Universe would deign to save some skimpy one as you, then it shouldn’t be any trouble for you to believe the less difficult headbangers of an Eternal Triune God … or the Divine Person Who became Man … or the Virgin Birth (before, during and after, of course – if you believe before, than why scruple about after?) … or the Miracles of healing, walking on water, stilling the storm, calling putrefied friends out of a stinky tomb … or the suffering of God the Son on the Cross … or the physical Resurrection from the Dead, and the breaking of the hellish gates of brass, and the kicking of the enemy straight in the …?

Well, you get the point. You don’t disbelieve Christianity, or the One Apostolic Church because you’re too scientific. Heck, I’m an alien, and I’m a product of disbelief. I come from outer space, and I have Klaatu on my Blackberry. I know all about science. I’ve arrived from all your science fiction futures. I fancy that I am all your alternative histories, and all your Copenhagen dreams.

You disbelieve for one simple reason. You don’t believe in God simply because you can’t believe or won’t believe that that Someone would save someone like you. Or even touch you, or heal you. Or come into your house, or set up house in your heart.

I hope to God you find out soon what a smxtsppcfhkls you are. That, by the way, is my Betelgeusian-Hrung way of saying “Repent, the Vogons are coming.”

Or, better yet, the Kingdom is at hand. But only you could know that.

But what do I know? I do not speak of what I know. I speak, rather, of what I don’t but wish I could.

Thumbs up.

Ford Prefect Speaks, Trilogy Part Seven (Almost Done)

Fifth Message

A good scientist is a good ascetic. He speaks of what he knows. He is careful to re-define “what he knows” to “what he can demonstrate in repeatable and controlled conditions,” and to “what he can observe through a consensus of material percepts.”

There are many good things that have come out of this asceticism. When any phenomenon is carefully studied, one should expect very helpful and interesting discoveries. This is the nature of Creation. Wisdom is strewn liberally along the whole continuum of observation, from macrocosm to microcosm.

So even a confined and sharply proscribed vision of the scientific method, or empirical observation, can yield wondrous discoveries. Like the essential mathematical nature of electromagnetism, for example. The gravitational attraction of two masses, for another. Also, the growing comprehension of astronomy and the sub-atomic universe. That comprehension is still incomplete, and I’m surprised at how often this little fact is either forgotten or ignored.

Remember that it was scientists who were sure about the ether, and about the planetary model of the atom. It was the ancient scientists who informed obsolete, and unfortunate, cosmologies of the world being support by elephants, or held aloft by great stone pillars, and a puddle of water ready to stream from the firmament. Let us not forget that it was ancient science that gave us these cosmological myths, not the priests. The priests, tottering and doddering, did their best to support the respectable cosmogonies of the time.

But the scientists, the Dawkins and the Dennetts, and their sophisticated hangers-on like Christopher Hitchens, were the ones who filled in the blanks of science beyond the tradition of Scripture and the Fathers. That’s their job, I guess, but one should remember that their job is ongoing, incomplete.

In a hundred years, evolution will be shown to be as intellectually flatulent as "spontaneous generation," where rats were seen to be born from refuse, rotting in a corner.

In the litany of scientific achievements, I suppose one should throw in the discovery, or invention, of atomic fission. That, of course, is not a uniformly decent innovation.

I do not doubt this legacy of Frances Bacon and all his legatees. Why should I? I am truly thankful for all good science, despite the obvious failure, in my part, to count the achievement of Charles Darwin, who is buried with Newton in Westminster of all places. I might say, were I permitted to do so, even in ecclesiastical circles, that Darwinism just doesn’t make the empirical cut, but I have been roundly excoriated for bringing up such a crabby thing, so I won’t.

A good scientist says what he knows, and nothing more.

There are many who may be good scientists during the day, but at night they turn to religion. They turn to the gods of unintelligent design, to the gods of abysmal emptiness and nihilistic extrapolations of biological activity into ontology and ethics.

These good scientists, maybe, are not hesitant in the popular press to make metaphysical and religious pronouncements. They drone, censoriously, on the curse of old fashioned religion, and even look sentimentally toward that bright day when parents could be prosecuted for child abuse for having read Bible stories to their children.

I'm sure you don't believe me. Just read Dennett and Dawkins, if you will. And don't mind those people behind the curtain, who blather on about how respectable science pays no mind to fundamentalists like these. Right. That's what was said in Germany, l'entre deux guerres. "Let the technicians be our priests -- what do they know?"

Can you believe it? Can you simply, utterly, believe it, even with two pints of Guinness down your gullet, a minute before the Vogons clear off your planet to make way for a very nice concrete bypass? Engineered, of course, with high-speed embankments?

Isn’t it a lark, we bellow in a sodden tune, say, Anacreon in Heaven, as we sing with the lads in a little pub at the end of the universe?

The mice have really done it this time. The ones in their maze have really done an amazing thing. They’ve written books from their little trails, the poor buggers. They’ve cranked metaphysics out of their circuitous tracks and dead-ends.

And what’s more, you, by Jove, buy their adorable weeny books. Metaphysics from a laboratory for God’s sake.

No wonder the dolphins left. There was so very little decent conversation. But at least the fish was good, while it lasted.

Ford Prefect Speaks, Trilogy Part Six

Fourth Message

A Comedian's Advice for the Ecumenical Movement from Outer Space,
or, the real meaning of the phrase "Klaatu barada nikto"

There is only one basis for the Ecumenical Movement, that hope of those who believe in the possibility of the phrase, "That They May Be One."

That basis lies not in sentimentality. Sentimentality makes for modern political parties, denominational conventions addressed by Sponge Bob Square Pants and even jihadists. But it does not make for Christian ecumenicity, because time wears away, like the wind and the wave, all stands built on the strand.

That basis, also, lies not in the Eucharist alone. For one thing, the Eucharist cannot be isolated from Divine Liturgy, nor can it be separated from the doctrine of the community. Here is, I suspect, a clear indication of the difference between "Holy Mystery" and "Sacrament." The latter has an independent objectivity about it, almost like a radical. The former is of a piece with ethos and theology. It is a sad thing, surely, and a feeble hope bound for disappointment: at least from the point of view of outer space, it seems that this idea of Eucharistic Ecumenicism looks upon the sacrament as a sort of talisman, like a platonic cube that gathers, inexorably, all things to itself. It is not. The Eucharist is not magic. It is the Body of Christ. It is the Presence of Person.

The basis of Christian Ecumenicity lies nowhere else, and in no other way, than in the continuing catholic consciousness of the church -- the contemporary presence of the Apostolic Tradition.

It will not be brought about by negotiation, or by the "setting aside until later" of difficult doctrinal matters, or by subjecting doctrinal differences to semantic obscurantism. It will not be brought about by jurisdictional unity. It will not be brought about by coalition building. We should all be nice, to be sure, and protest against totalitarianism and abortion. But let's not kid ourselves by thinking that we're building One Church.

It will come only as we pray, and become, "Thy Will be done on earth." It will come along with true righteousness and holiness in living. As a Visitor from Outer Space, just like Klaatu before me, I say this to the House of Peace that is so busy imitating the Rock'Em Sock'Em Robots: when you stop ripping your own people apart on both sides, right and left, then and only then will you get an American Patriarch. Then, and only then, will you ever proceed along the way of becoming One with the other lung.

It will come as we become obedient, while we work out our salvation with fear and trembling, pursuing ascesis, and receiving the charisms of the Mysteries.

It will come only as we pray, in orthodoxy (small cap's).

It will come, because everything that rises, after all, must converge.