Lenten Reading

Now that we are in the fast free week following the Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee, and thus well and truly into the Lenten Triodion, even the most negligent naysayer among us has to start thinking about Lenten reading. The season is, of course, one that demands that we read something edifying and spiritual. My usual practice is to read The Ladder by St. John Climacus. A fine choice, and one that never fails to have me checking the preface to find out when he died, since so much of the book (at least the parts describing what not to do) seems to be written directly about me. I’m sure I’ll pick it up sometime before Pascha, but I think I’ll start with something else, something a bit unexpected.

My choice is Father Seraphim Rose, by Hiermonk Damascene, a book I first read in California last summer. As Lenten reading, it may seem more than a little odd. Father Seraphim, who reposed in 1982, is a highly controversial figure in American Orthodoxy. Many of his writings have been attacked by others in the Church. For purposes of this Lent, however, it is not his theology — whether right or wrong — that interests me. Instead, it is his life, which bears some parallels to my own, if not in the details, then in the environment that forms us.

Father Seraphim was a product of the same America that produced so many of us in the United States. He was raised in a solidly middle class home, where he attended — somewhat haphazardly — the local Methodist church. He went to college, where he abandoned Methodism, and threw himself into intellectual pursuits, experimenting with lifestyles and trying to find himself. In broad outline, that is the story of a great many of us. Our particular experimentations may vary, and our commitment to intellectual pursuits may not have been as fervent, but essentially his path was our path. Most of us, however, return to the broad path. We pursue careers, we become enmeshed in the world — we join society.

But not Eugene Rose, the future Father Seraphim. In 1963 he took the (at the time) unheard of step of converting to Orthodoxy, and in time became an author and speaker whose influence extends to our own day. In the early 1970s, he and a friend established St. Herman’s Monastery near Platina, California. When I visited there last summer, I found conditions primitive. There was no electricity, no running water, beds in the guesthouse were plywood boards covered with a foam egg crate. Yet by all accounts the conditions I found were vastly more luxurious then what Father Seraphim lived under. When he and Father Herman moved onto the property, there was only a hunter’s lean-to. Later, they built very small cells in which to live.

The cell, as I saw it last summer, was tiny — perhaps six feet wide by 12 feet long. It contains a board bed, a small desk, and icons hung on the walls. Hieromonk Damascene, the author of the book, lives there now, if memory serves. This evening, walking the dog, I eyed a shed of about the same size in our garden. I could not imagine living in it, winter and summer, sleeping on a couple of boards.

That is all very nice, you might say, but how does that link to Lenten reading?

In this fashion: How does someone, with an early life more or less similar to my own, find within himself the discipline and daring and (if I may say it) love necessary to wholly abandon the world? How does such a man live a life that is so wholly and radically different from that of his contemporaries? Father Seraphim — already canonized on a local level in Romania, and very likely to be eventually canonized in this country — represents a diverging path so different from my own life that it merits study.

Of course, I am long past the “death to the world” road Father Seraphim trod. I am married, with children, and I am sloppy and lazy. But I wonder, as we edge our way into Lent, if there is not some part of me, deeply buried at the moment, that might not be revealed? Some untapped vein of love?

It reminds me of something Father Seraphim wrote about another person in the church, St. Augustine of Hippo. Augustine has also been widely villified because of teachings that do not agree with that of the Church as a whole, such as pre-destination. Father Seraphim defended him, on the grounds that even if his theology was suspect, his life was a model of love. Writing to a friend in 1976, he said:

“Anyone who has read Blessed Augustine’s Confessions will not readily want to “throw him out of the calendar” — for he will see in this book precisely that fiery zeal and love which is precisely what is so lacking in our Orthodoxy today!”

The same could be said about Father Seraphim. Love or hate his writings, love or hate him: he is still the first middle class WASP American who strode down the path of self denial without looking back. Others are following him. At Lent, it is worth pondering the love that drives the heart of one who takes that lonely road.

My next law suit

It’s almost that day again. Valentine’s Day. I have to confess to a deep and abiding suspicion of the day, an uneasiness that I cannot shake. It is not love that makes me uneasy, it is the nature of the holiday. Like Christmas, what was once a fairly quiet day of a positive (or at least benign) nature has become a monster, a commercial Godzilla eating souls and hearts.

Mind you, I observe Valentine’s Day. I am married to a beautiful woman, a genuine soul mate, and I enjoy any opportunity to celebrate that relationship. I value love, and relationship. What I hate is the commercialization of love.

The problem is that Valentine’s Day, as it has evolved, has become the celebration of perfect love; or at least perfect as it is now defined by popular culture. From that point of view, love is always passionate, it is always mountain top. If you, God forbid, are not in a relationship, then the implied message is that you are unworthy in some fashion. If you are in a relationship which is not at the moment at a mountain top stage, the implied message is that you are not in the right relationship, that your real soulmate is out there and you need to start looking for him or her.

As to the former, I see the sadness all too often. People are lonely. Valentines Day accentuates that loneliness by sending a message that grand and explosive love is the norm, the status quo. Even though I was not an overly angsty person when I was younger, I clearly remember a Valentine’s evening that I spent walking through the snow in the Capitol Hill neighborhood in Washington, DC, thinking that my lack of a girlfriend must mean that there was something wrong with me. Of course, I actually am a bit off kilter, but you get my drift.

As for the former, I see it in my office all of the time. Our culture, through advertisements and all kinds of media, consistently emphasizes the notion that a relationship with a soulmate will always be a state of bliss. That is plainly foolishness — true love requires constant tending and constant sacrifice, sometimes to an enormous degree. My wife, having to put up with me, is Exhibit A for that fact. Often, I see people in my office who have left (or been left) not because the relationship was intrinsically bad, but because it was no longer thrilling.

There is also a consistent linkage of romantic bliss in love with material goods. Advertisements clearly link the act of giving jewelry, flowers and lingerie on Valentine’s Day as a necessary prerequisite for love. It sends a not so subtle message that love is a commercial transaction. Obviously, gifts can be a good thing, and are a fine way to surprise a lover. But they should be special, they should be heart felt. They should not be considered as mandatory.

So, I’ve started drawing a class action suit against the commercialization of love. Why not? We have class actions for everything else, and this cause is vastly more important than most of the suits I’ve seen. Here’s a rough draft:

United States District Court

Western District of

JOHN SMITH, JANE DOE and all
others similarly situated,
Plaintiffs,

v.

GREEDY COMMERCIALIZERS
OF EMOTION AND LOVE,
Defendants.
____________________________________

COMPLAINT FOR DAMAGES AND INJUNCTIVE RELIEF

NOW COME the Plaintiffs, by and through Seraphim, and complain of the Defendants as follows:

1. The Plaintiffs, numbering some five billion all told, are men and women of all ages, socio-economic classes, races and religions. They are, in turn, single, divorced, married and widowed. They reside in all fifty states and in each and every country on earth.

2. The Defendants are retailers, manufacturers, advertisers, credit card companies and all others engaged in the commercialization and pandering of the holiday known as Valentine’s Day.

3. The Defendants have knowingly, willfully and with intent to do harm taken an obscure holiday of dubious but benign origin and have reconstructed it in such a fashion that the Plaintiffs, individually and collectively, are made to believe that if he or she is not found in a state of amorous bliss on February 14 of each year then he or she is a defective individual, devoid of happiness, worth and, indeed, not fit to live upon the planet.

4. Specifically, the Defendants willfully impose upon the Plaintiffs the following states of mind:

a. For those who are single but not engaged in a romantic relationship, feelings of despair and unhappiness, resulting in angst and feelings of personal inadequacy. Perfectly decent men and women are made to feel lonely, afflicted and unloved on February 14 if they are not involved in a passionate relationship on said day.

b. For those who are married or otherwise engaged in relationships, but who for various reasons are engaged in real life, including the raising of children, payment of mortgages and various other activities that may cause day to day conflict with the significant other, are inflicted feelings of dissatisfaction and anomie, despite the existence of a perfectly sound and loving relationship, under the theory that it lacks a purportedly mandatory level of excitement and passion.

C. For all plaintiffs, by the instilling of a common belief that true love is marked by precious and semi-precious stones, large quantities of candy, masses of flowers, edible panties of sundry flavors, inedible but diaphanous lingerie, substantial outlays of money, unfailingly fabulous sex and the complete absence of conflict, worry and problems, and that any relationship not so characterized by those things at all times is not worthy of the name love.

5. The Plaintiffs are entitled to a judgment stripping the Defendants of all of their profits gained from Valentines Day related activities, and their humble, contrite and highly public admission (preferably made in humiliating postures and costumes) that:

a. Love comes when it comes, and if it has not come for an individual it does not mean that there is something wrong with that person; that it is perfectly acceptable to wait patiently upon love.

b. That once love comes, it is wonderful only so long as both parties thereto take it seriously, nurture it, and understand fully that it will not at all times burn fiercely, but will sometimes be ineffable and at other times will require work.

c. That while tokens and gestures of love are appreciated and worthwhile, love is not dependent on the magnificence of the gesture, or upon the amount of money paid for it.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m asking too much. I’m blessed with love and a strong marriage. Cultural expectations surrounding Valentine’s Day don’t affect me personally. But I remember what it was like, and I see the sadness around me every year, on the day that supposedly celebrates love.

ADDED: As soon as I posted this, I got a link from Olga that captures the entire conundrum. Visit here and send an anti-valentine’s day card.

Why can’t we be passionate?

I’ve gotta tell you — I’m beat. Just exhausted. I don’t know how they do it — the people in the Middle East I mean. I’ve been watching the news for the last week or so, and have been fascinated by the passion with which Muslims have responded to that cartoon — you know, the one so obviously penned by Satan himself. When I saw it on the net, I caught the faint whiff of sulfur.

I love passion. I mean, passion is like a passion of mine, so when I saw grown men whip themselves into a rock-throwing, embassy burning frenzy, the first thought in my head was “I have got to get some of whatever it is they’ve got”. I bet everybody thought that. We get so bogged down in this routine of work and family and worship that we just can’t build up a good head of steam anymore. Maybe that’s what is wrong with western civilization, I thought. Passion. That’s the ticket.

So I got up this morning resolved to try to reform my life. I was going to be passionate. If somebody stepped on what I held near and dear, by golly, we’d be having a barbecue. At least. What I discovered, though, is that I may not really have the spark that I thought I had.

It started out OK. On my way into work I heard a story on the news about a man in Italy that sued someone else in order to prove that Christ never existed. I was furious! I wasn’t sure what to lash out at, but then I remembered that we have an Italian restaurant near by. Perfect! I put the car into high gear, and rushed over there, where I found the beginnings of a mob already assembled. I started throwing rocks immediately, and struck up a conversation with the guy next to me. He was setting a car on fire.

“Where you from, brother?” I asked.

“I’m with the Lions Club,” he shouted. “We’ve had just about enough of this, so we’re taking action!”

“Praise God,” I hollered, as I nailed an employee on her way into work. I noted with satisfaction that she bled pretty good. Man, it felt wonderful. I felt like I had really chalked one up for piety.

After a while, the police came along and dispersed us. I decided I should go on into work, but I pocketed a few rocks. Just in case.

I hadn’t been at work long when a friend of mine rushed in. “Did you hear about the new Madonna album?” he cried. “She makes fun of Christ on it!”

Boy, I was steamed! We ran down the street to the record store and let them have it. By the time the police got there, it was pretty crispy, if you know what I mean, and we had all gone back to work. It wasn’t yet ten in the morning, and I was already tired. I was justified and righteous, of course, but kind of tired. Still, I knew my fatigue had come from doing the right thing.

I got a little work in, and then at lunch went out for a cheeseburger. While I was there I heard that in the Middle East they had burned an American flag and called us The Great Satan! The nerve! There was a falafel stand down the street, and I made tracks in that direction. There was already a good crowd there. As I joined in, I couldn’t help but notice that there was a woman there throwing rocks. Now I honor and respect women, but I thought her skirt was kind of short. I was really conflicted. On the one hand, I had just come within a hair of hitting the owner’s turban, but somebody had to deal with this woman.

“Look,” I said. “I honor and respect my Christian sisters, but if you don’t get a long skirt on, I’m going to have to beat you within an inch of your life.” She looked at me, kind of startled, but then she broke a shop window and grabbed some fabric and wrapped it around herself. That was gratifying. I felt like I had made a real difference in her spiritual life. It was pretty cool.

I’m back at work now, but I have heard rumors that the Episcopalians down the street have denied the divinity of Christ, and also that the Baptists have said disrespectful things about the Virgin Mary. If I can catch my breath, I’m on it. We just can’t take these things sitting down anymore.

The Meeting of the Lord

This may very well say more about me than anything else, but the feast we celebrate today, the Meeting of the Lord at the Temple, never really appeared on my radar before becoming Orthodox. Sure, we knew the story from Luke 2:22-38: Joseph and the Virgin took the infant Jesus to the Temple, in accordance with the Law, to present Him to the Lord. While there, the Righteous Symeon and the prophetess Anna both knew Jesus for who He was, and both said some interesting things. Nice story, but I never considered it seriously as anything other than a coda to the Christmas story. It was certainly never ascribed an importance that anybody could think of as a feast. Yet here it is, one of the twelve major feasts of the Lord.

There is a lot of theology packed into it. Some of it foreshadows the wonderful irony of the Theophany, where the sinless One is baptized. Here, Jesus is presented to…well, Himself really. Yet this is consistent with His entire life. At no point did He not do something which everybody else was expected to do.

Yet while there is more than enough in that department to fill a hundred blog entries, my favorite in the story is the Righteous Simeon. Tradition tells us that Simeon was some 270 years old. He had been one of the 70 translators of the Septuagint. We are told that when he — along with the other 69 — translated the passage from Isaiah that declares that “a virgin shall conceive”, he scoffed and declared it impossible. He was visited then by an angel, who told him that he would not die until he had seen the child of the Virgin. So it was that he lingered, and then lingered some more until that fateful day in the Temple.

Lesson number one: Watch the scoffing.

We are told that he immediately recognized Christ for who He was. His hymn of praise is inspired, and continues to move us today. In fact, in my parish, it is a favorite thing for the choir to sing at the end of Liturgy as people venerate the Cross. In reading it, one’s initial impression is that Simeon is ready to depart not only because his desire to see the Messiah has been satisfied, but also because he’s pretty darn old, and just ready. St. Athanasios the Great, however, writing in the fourth century, added a new perspective on the issue. Simeon, he said, wished to depart so he could be the first to Hades with the glad news. He knew of the soon-to-occur slaughter of the innocents. St. Athanasios says that Simeon, being old and halt, knew that the innocents were young and nimble, and thus wanted a head start in spreading the news.

Lesson number two: You just don’t get that kind of detail anywhere else, eh?

Yet what resonates most strongly in the heart are Simeon’s words of warning to the Theotokos. “A sword,” he told the young woman, “shall pierce through thy own soul.”

Glimpses such as this into the heart of the Virgin are scattered through the Gospels, and Tradition gives us many more. She is an extraordinary person, yet that did not shield her from fear and pain as she watched her Son. To those who ask why God does not shield us from hurt, we need only look to the Theotokos for assurance that there is no personal enmity against us in dealing with the hazards of our own lives. We suffer pain because we live in an imperfect world. It is an imperfect world because of us, because of the way in which we and our ancestors exercise free will. Certainly there will come a time when there is no sorrow, but until that time we can only emulate Mary. We must ponder these things in our heart, rely upon the grace of God, and look to that day when we are ushered into that “serene and tranquil” place.

The God Daughter

He had been unusually nervous. He knew he had run afoul of the head of the family, and nothing but trouble ever came of that. Still, he had hoped that he would escape unscathed. Now, though…now… he knew his luck was about to run out. Something — something terrifying — awoke him from sleep. There was something at the end of the bed. He buried his head in the pillow. Please! Please! Let it be gone. Let it be nothing!

It stirred.

He raised his head and looked. There, at the foot of the bed, was what he feared. The God Daughter.

“I would consider it a personal favor,” she said, “if you would get me more apple juice.”

This week has been very neat. We have had the pleasure of hosting my wife’s God-daughter. Not quite two years old, she is staying with us for a week while her baby brother is being ushered into the world. With our kids now fully grown, it has been a great pleasure to have a toddler roaming the house again.

There is nothing as much fun as a toddler. Not only is she cute and nice smelling, her presence also allows me to watch cartoons without guilt. We’re both big Winnie the Pooh fans.

Aside from Pooh, what are her favorite things? She likes to color and play with a calculator.  She has developed a bit of a hero worship complex for 17 year old Marina.  She likes evening prayers, she likes to kiss icons and she likes to play. She can say her alphabet and count to twenty — although she lingers on 14, which is my favorite number too.  She is a wonderful kid, and we’re impressed by her.

This weekend we’ll return her to her parents.  Both she and they will be happy to be re-united, but she has a standing invitation to return anytime she likes.  We’re always up for a bit of fun!