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I promise not to make a habit out of this. In fact, I have been thinking about the meaning of a t-shirt I saw today worn by a man awaiting his turn in criminal court, which read “Real Men Pray Everyday”. It has caused me to think in a superficial fashion about gender and modern religion, and I will edify everyone with that soon. But not today — the day is hectic, and tonight we will celebrate a vesperal liturgy for SS. Peter and Paul. Later.
But I did read a bit of Anna Akhmatova’s poetry as I ate lunch, and was struck forcefully by some of it. I am not a person who is capable of true analysis of poetry. Instead, I experience it on a more visceral level, as words and rhythm combine to stir the heart. When I read this one, I wondered: What part of love is empathy? What part of empathy is love? The two questions, I think, have different answers:
Lot’s Wife
And the just man trailed God’s shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:
“It’s not too late, you can still look back
at the red towers of your native Sodom,
the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows set in the tall house
where sons and daughters blessed your marriage bed.”
A single glance: a sudden dart of pain
stitching her eyes before she made a sound…
Her body flaked into transparent salt,
and her swift legs rooted to the ground.
Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for our concern?
Yet in my heart I will never deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.
From Poems of Akhmatova, translated by Stanley Kunitz, Mariner Books, 1973.
I was in court in a neighboring county this morning, establishing my presence in a termination of parental rights case. It is late in the game, and I have been inserted as someone else limps off the field. World Cup analogies abound these days. But today was my first appearance, and I wandered back into chambers where a discussion was taking place about scheduling the thing for trial.
While it is true that more than a little arm twisting takes place in chambers, this particular gathering was relaxed. There was her honor, along with the attorneys for the Department of Social Services and the Guardian ad litem program and a couple of people I was unfamiliar with. I represent the Mom, who I had met for the first time a few minutes earlier. Despite my rookie-ness, as it were, the case is old and needs to be tried. We all figure it will take two days.
The judge starts the discussion. “How about August 1 and 2?” she suggests. I dissent. If I am going to thrash about effectively, I need a little more time to prepare. She frowns, but nods in agreement. Everybody pulls out their pocket calendars, except for me. As a matter of principle I refuse to carry either business cards or a calendar. Today I settle for peering over the shoulder of Ellen,the DSS attorney, as she opens her calendar.
Ellen, however, is still puzzling over August 1. According to her calendar, that is on a Monday, and everybody else was saying it was Tuesday. She can’t understand what the problem is until I reach over her and point at the “2005″ on the top of the page. “You’re living in the past,” I point out. Of course, Ellen is living in the past: she has worn Birkenstocks for as long as anyone has known her, a legacy of those wild and crazy days of the summer of love. She laughs and turns the page, but there she discovers a new problem. According to her calendar, July 31 of this year is going to be so entertaining that we will do it twice, on both Sunday and Monday.
“You know,” I suggest helpfully, “you really should invest a couple of bucks and get a real calendar.” She snorts, and puts her calendar up. We turn to the judge’s calendar, and settle on September 20 and 21, after I make sure that that does not include a Friday. “That’s sometimes a travel day for me,” I said, and everyone nods, having read my posting on the local lawyer’s forum about how I spend my time.
Here is a neat thing: since I posted my little essay about why I was cutting short my foray into the judiciary, the judges and my fellow lawyers have been way more than decent. Very few of them know what the Orthodox Church is, but they all understand about choices. As much as I gripe, if you have to practice law, this is the place to do it.
I don’t usually just take material from other people, at least so blatantly, but this poem posted by Father Joseph made my blood run cold. Written by a 20th century Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova, it could be a picture of my own sorry lot:
From the First Notebook [Fragment]
In my room lives a beautiful
Slow black snake;
It is like me, just as lazy,
Just as cold.
In the evening I compose marvelous tales
On the rug by the fire’s red glow,
And with emerald eyes
It gazes at me indifferently.
At night the dead, mute icons hear
Resisting moans …
It’s true, I would desire another
Were it not for the serpent eyes.
But in the morning, submissive once more, I
Melt, like a slender candle …
And then from my bare shoulder
A black ribbon slides.
(1910), pp.621-622.
There is more. Go here and read it. I’m mortified to say that I had been unaware of her, but Amazon will soon take care of that.
It is very good to be focused again, after a brief period of turmoil. When in turmoil I get silly, which to astute observers might suggest that I am always in turmoil. I suppose to some extent that is true, but regardless of that, I am now prepared to buckle down again.
And about time. There is plenty to do. I have made precious little progress on an exam that I have had for a while now, and generally speaking I have had a bit of a dry spell spiritually. Times like that make me feel a genuine kinship with the Presbyterians (the church that brings you the Rock, the Redeemer and the Friend) and the Episcopalians (who are most certainly on a Journey of Discovery). When you let yourself lose focus, that is the kind of thing that can happen. You sit around, wondering where the old spark went, and next thing you know you are coming up with witty euphemisms for the Trinity or exploring new ways to outrage everybody that used to like you.
The odd part is this: when we go through those spells, and begin to thrash around frantically, we almost never say the truth, which is that I am so far from God that I’m just making this up as I go along. That would be a painful thing to acknowledge. So instead, we assign ownership to God Himself, usually in the person of that favorite scapegoat, the Holy Spirit — uh, I mean, the Friend. This foolishness can’t be me, we say, so the only alternative is that it must not be me at all, but the Holy Spirit, leading men and women of God to new heights of holiness. If only St. Gregory of Nyssa had possessed a little common sense. Instead of talking about Moses and the irrational beasts on the mountainside, he could have explored the frontiers of me-Christianity.
Honestly, I’m not just pointing a finger for the fun of it. Been there, done a lot of that. In my own churches fads rolled through periodically: the prayer of Jabez as the key to Godly success, deliverance ministries, that patron saint of intercessory prayer, Dutch Sheets. Yep. The Presbyterians and the Episcopalians have absolutely nothing on me.
Which is why we need to recognize a dry spell for what it is: our own separation. I wasn’t getting closer; I was edging away. If Orthodoxy has taught me anything, it has taught me to exercise awareness over my soul, to reject out of hand anything which would cast God in a light different from what the Fathers have passed on to us. We don’t take responsibility for our own failure to pay attention. “If only God would give us a word,” we sigh. But if we have ears to hear, we will hear that word, if nowhere else than in the ancient bedrock of the faith. Relying upon that ancient knowledge allows us to focus on our souls, and not innovation. On salvation, and not cleverness. On repentance, and not independence.
Its good to be back.
Father Joseph over at Orthodixie had a fine idea, which is to conduct an Orthodox tent revival. I don’t know where you live, but in North Carolina where Father Joseph and I are from, tent revivals are a powerful, powerful draw. In fact, at an abandoned drive in theater only a couple of miles from my house a tent goes up every summer, and does a pretty good business for a week or so. In this culture, tent revivals are a combination religious/entertainment/get out of the house on a hot summer night event. I am pretty taken with the idea. I really am — as Sts. Herman and Innocent showed us, you meet people where they live.
But, having said that, I can’t help but imagine what it might be like. Consider, on a muggy summer evening, the big tent is aglow, and enticing sounds drift out, coming from a bluegrass band. Remember where you are — we’re talking hymns like “I’ll Fly Away” and “Down to the River”. I can even imagine an extra verse tacked on to “I’ll Fly Away” —
One fine morning when my life is done,
I’ll fly away!
Through the tollhouses, I won’t have to pay!
I’ll fly away!
And then a certain subdeacon gets up to introduce the guest evangelist, who we are going to need to refer to as Father Joe:
I can feel the presence of the Lord! Its a powerful presence! Can you feel the presence? Say hallelujah!
I’m here tonight to introduce our evangelist, Father Joe. Right now, Father Joe is riding the range for the Lord in Texas. He is a stranger in a strange land, he is bringing the slaves out of Egypt! But in his heart, Father Joe is still the tarheel he grew up as. Yes, he has left the great North State and gone west, having received a command of the Lord. He is obedient! But his heart has always yearned for home, for the high green hills, for the streams where the trout jump and the woods where the bear roam.
So when the Lord laid it on his heart to come back home, to preach to the brothers and sisters in his home state — why he got down off that horse and got into his pick up truck, and he came back. He came back because he is a tarheel born and bred! He came back because he loves his home! He came back at the command of the Lord to save souls from the grip of the devil, from the lion that roars and goes here and there even in these quiet mountains, looking to devour souls.
I’ve got to tell you a story. When I called Father Joe and asked him to come back and preach this revival for us, he cried “Hallelujah”! Just like that. And then he wept and told me this:
‘Jim-Bob, I’m out here on the plains, and its a fine place, but I always think to myself that if the Lord took a giant iron and ironed down the mountains of the county where you live, why the county would be bigger than Texas! But it is the high ridges and deep hollows that God loves, and not the flat plains! That is what the Lord told me, and that is why I am so excited about coming for this revival.’ (See footnote one)
So here he is, back from Egypt, with a message the Lord has laid on his heart just for us! Father Joe!
I mean, I really like the idea. I know it sounds like I’m being funny, but I’m not really. Meet people where they live. Herman and Innocent and Cyril and Methodius can tell you that much. And after Father Joe talks to them about being catechized and baptised and chrismatized so that they can then be eucharized — well, all of a sudden we just might have a parish.
Footnote #1 – There was once a DA here who started every jury argument pretty much in those words, inserting the proper county name, but insisting that if God ironed it flat it would be bigger than Texas, but that God loves it just the way it is. At the end of one trial, as I got up to take the first argument, Buck had to leave the courtroom for some reason. I seized the moment: “Mr. District Attorney will come back in here in a minute and tell you that you live in God’s country — which we do — and if God took a giant iron and flattened our hills it would be bigger than Texas, but that God loves his mountains! That He does, but the real reason he doesn’t flatten this county is because He loves his people here, people who have learned common sense in these hills and hollers. No sir — its not about mountains, its about common sense…”and then I was off, just as Buck walked back in. Unaware of what I had done, he started his ironing the county bit, and the jury started giggling at him. He never could figure out what had happened.
This coming Sunday will be very sad. On that day, we will bid our choir director and her family farewell. They are moving back to Pennsylvania for reasons that mystify the rest of us — something having to do with family and that sort of thing — and this Sunday will be their last day. TK and Debbie and their brood are not just fine and talented parish members, they are friends.
My history with Debbie is closely tied to my history with the choir. When we entered the Church, Debbie became the sponsor/godmother for Olga, so that as soon as we were really Orthodox Olga was spirited away by the cool choir people and installed in the soprano section. I had sang before, but was leery of the choir. It seemed oddly intimidating — all of those really cool people, it was just too much. One Sunday, however, as I was settling in for liturgy, there was a tug on my arm. It was Debbie. “Olga says you sing,” she whispered. “Come with me.”
I docilely went along, and the result was a Sunday known even today as The Sunday That The New Guy Butchered Everything. It was not pretty. My fellow basses were looking at me with horror, and an alto standing nearby kept edging further and further away, a hand cupped over her ear. It was memorable, to say the least,
Debbie, however, was not a woman to be discouraged by such a simple matter as utter lack of talent. She recognized, I think, that I had my own special musical system consisting of 47.89 tones, all of which were secret and known only to me. She told me to come to choir practice the next week.
I arrived, still a bit intimidated, and sat next to my fellow basses. We were practicing in the living room of the rectory, and Debbie knelt on the carpet in the middle of the room. We had not been going very long when she suddenly grabbed her hair and bounced up and down on her knees. I was alarmed to say the least. I whispered to the bass next to me, “Should we do anything?” Oddly, he was laughing.
“Choir director freak out.” he said. “She gets three of them per practice.” I looked around. Nobody was paying any attention to it, and after a bit Debbie stopped bouncing and said, as if nothing had happened, “That was pretty good. Let’s try it again, but this time…”
So began my career in the choir. The best part about the choir was that Debbie liberally dispensed demerits to choir members. Our priest, Father Paul, of course, was the undisputed demerit champion, but I found I had a certain talent for accumulating them, and I began to dream of the day when I would have enough to trade them in for a toaster oven. I don’t know what Father was saving for, but he was already at a level where he was eligible for a cruise, at the very least.
In all seriousness, Debbie ran an excellent choir. On a reasonably good day, it was one of the best choirs I had ever heard. It is very exciting to be a part of such a thing, even if you are the weakest link in the chain. Still, in time I was kicked out of the choir. I don’t blame Debbie for that though. It was Boris’ fault.
Boris joined the choir after I did. A fellow bass, he quickly picked up on the demerit game. He knew that he could never match Father Paul, but he figured that if he could get rid of me he could garner all of the remaining demerits. To this day I believe that he is trying to collect enough demerits for a used Pinto. Boris had a plan. It wasn’t long until I was told to pack my cassock and report to the altar. That toaster oven, so tantalizingly close, would never be mine. Curses!
But this is about Debbie, and I remember her most fondly as an encouraging person, with a great love for our music, who could teach and lead a choir. She was simply beyond compare.
Which is not to say that she did not have a dark side. I saw that, in a terrifying incident involving TK.
TK at the time was at a pivotal point in his life. At coffee hour one Sunday, he and I were having a deep discussion about our hopes and fears. You know — the kind of thing men always talk about when they get together. It had always been his greatest desire, he revealed, to be a part of the PGA tour. He is an excellent golfer, and like all men, has a dream. His dream he now laid out for me.
I am a nurturing kind of guy, and I saw it as my task to make his dream a reality. We would make him a professional golfer, we would make his dream come true, we would turn on the television one day and see Tiger Wood whimpering after yet another humliating defeat imposed by TK. I felt this, I knew this. We had to make it happen. This was more than a career change. This was a Journey of Discovery!
I am a hard as nails litigator. TK is an experienced, seasoned businessman. We got down to brass tacks. First, it was important that TK be on the links every day, working on his game. Second, he needed a caddy – the right caddy. I had been considering a career change, and we immediately recognized that I was the right choice to caddy the next champ. In a nod to our background, we decided that I should caddy in my cassock. In addition, in order to maintain a worshipful tone to the proceedings, we decided that at select moments during the competition — say during crucial putts by opponents — we would intone Psalm 136, especially those portions about dashing the little ones against the stones. In this way we would contribute to the spiritual development of fellow golfers and those in the gallery as well. Our excitement grew as we planned strategy. There was only one small fly in the ointment — until TK got established Debbie might have to work two, maybe three at the most, jobs. This realization seemed to sober TK. I knew, though, that Debbie was a trooper, a pal, a make it happen kind of girl. I told TK I would talk to her and take care of it.
I found Debbie refilling her coffee cup. “Hey Debbie!”, I exclaimed. “TK-is-going-to-be-a-professional-golfer-and-I-will-be-his-caddy-and he’ll-make-a-million-bucks-and-all-you-have-to-do-is-work-three-jobs -for-two-or-three-or-four-years-ok?”
“No,” she said, and walked away.
I was dumbfounded. I chased her. “But why not?” I cried.
“Because,” she said. “Now go away, Mr. Caddy in a Cassock.”
That was the side of Debbie I had never seen. The crusher of cherished hopes. The destroyer of dreams. It wasn’t pretty.
But what the hey.
This the true fact of the matter: anytime somebody leaves a parish, there is a hole that is left behind. Worse, when that hole is left by cherished friends and people we love, the hole is huge. Oh, the choir is fine. An angelic alto has assumed the tuning fork, and as the choir adjusts they are again showing flashes of brilliance. Its not that the music will suffer. It is that the heart, the affection we all have for TK and Debbie, will be left saddened. It is saying goodbye to those we love that is most difficult.
This Sunday Debbie will take the choir one last time, and afterwards we will all try to say farewell. Some Orthodox church in northeast Pennsylvania is about to get very, very lucky. Olga in particular is bereft. She is still in Bulgaria and will not get a chance to say farewell in person to her god-mother, who she loves very much.
We love you, TK and Debbie and all the kids. God be with you and bless you. We will always be praying for you, and keeping you in our hearts.
A note: if you find yourself in the neighborhood of North Atlanta this Sunday with time on your hands, come by at 10:15 for liturgy. I can pretty much guarantee that the choir will give Debbie everything they’ve got. It should be a wonderful Liturgy. If you want directions, drop me a line.
I hate it when it gets like this: a situation which demonstrates the utter independence of offspring and the complete inability of Dad to do…well, anything, actually.
Today was a travel day for Olga. Actually yesterday began it, when she took a bus from the town where her aunt lives into London. There she had booked a room at the hip and happening Globetrotter Inn, a hostel of some sort. The plan, already wince inducing in its format, was this: up at 4:00 a.m., onto the subway at 5:00 a.m., ride to Gatwick, catch a 7:30 am flight to Sofia. Nobody’s subway at 5:00 a.m. makes a Dad happy, but that was the plan.
Olga called us last night as we were going to bed, fairly irritable. It was 4:00 a.m. in London, time to get up, but as it turned out she had never gotten to sleep. The hostel was full of teenagers who were shrieking up and down the halls, helpfully precluding sleep for anybody else. On top of that, contrary to what the website said, the hostel did not offer towels. Nothing is grumpier than a young woman with no sleep and an inability to take a shower. One of her friends suggested an air spin dry after a shower, but Olga was in no mood for spin drying.
So there we left it. She should be in Sofia by now — as I write this, it should be shortly after 4:00 pm there. But until I hear word, the Dad instinct keeps me pacing. So, if you have young kids, watch out! The anxiety never ends.
Olga, if you read this send up a flare or something.
On the bright side, my wife and I celebrated our wedding anniversary last night. Now comfortably into our third decade of marriage, I’m happy to report that it just keeps getting better. A surprising report to make in this day and age, but a very true one.
Like the fabled alignment of the heavenly bodies, this week promises great things. For starters, of course, it is the week of the Holy Spirit. Pentecost is here, and that means a fast free week, the last until Christmas. Indeed, it marks the effective end to the Paschal season, one last foray into extraordinary joy before we settle into the Apostles Fast and the balance of the liturgical year. There is, you might divine, a reason why from here on out Sundays are identified by their distance from Pentecost.
But that is not all that is joyous. The judges are all out of town, gone to the beach for the annual week long judges’ conference. I sometimes try to picture it: dozens and dozens of yer honors, flapping around in the surf. I can only imagine life for the servers in the bar: “Margarita, and make it snappy! That’s an order of the court!” The table dissolves in laughter, and the barmaid walks away, rolling her eyes in that special sign of respect that we see so often. That’s OK. As long as its not me hearing the order. I like you guys and everything, but I’m as happy to see you all leave town for a week as you are to leave me — which is to say, pretty close to delirious.
Indeed, the week of the disappearance of the the honorables and the week of descent of the Holy Spirit will often coincide with other good things. It does not always do so perfectly: Little/Middle Folk School, for example, the annual event at the Folk School for kids, doesn’t begin this year until next week. For years, our kids and various special guest kids from out of town have used our house for a base of operations to go spend a week learning to knit, weave, throw pots, paint or any of a kazillion other arts. My kids have aged out, but we will still be hosting a niece and her friend, here to experience the mountains and learn something.
Little/Middle week is also the time when the school offers its annual Dance Callers Week. The Folk School is deeply involved in folk dance — insanely garish Morris dancing, whatever that thing is that is done by women bearing garlands of flowers over their heads, and especially contra dancing. Contra dancing is vaguely similar to square dancing, but is higher energy — not just in moves, but rhythm, in a way square dancers don’t quite get. It is also cooler, being an older, more celtic forebearer of the squares. It is a favorite around here, and the school hosts dances every other weekend on Saturday night. Mostly locals attend, but whoever may be around the place also shows up. They are very casual affairs. People wear everything from jeans and overalls to those skirts that fly when the wearer moves. Indeed, some people dance barefoot, which I still think is the most dangerous act possible in a dance hall.
One year, when the girls were much younger, I resolved to attend the dance callers class that week. I thought I might like to try my hand at the art. I backed out, though, because of my shyness. I know — I hear mad guffawing. This blog isn’t shy, and people who attend my parish would raise an eyebrow, but for most of my life I have been dogged by intense shyness. Since then, however, my kids dragged me into community theater, then I became Methodist clergy and finally the Orthodox subdeacon. Now I’m just introverted. But shyness slayed me that week, and I didn’t attend the classes.
That didn’t stop us from going to the dances though, culminating with Saturday night’s grand affair. The community dances are always events. Our community is full of artists — weavers, potters, blacksmiths, what have you — and the whole crowd turns out for a big dance. That particular week there had been a film crew from Nippon television on the campus, and they came with their cameras. There were the parents of the Little/Middle kids, and not a few teenagers. We all congregated in the community room at Keith House, a cozy, un-air conditioned hall. It was a warm evening in mid-June, and although a slight breeze wafted in through the screen doors it wouldn’t be long before the place would be very hot, in every sense of the word.
They always start slowly, so that people that have never done contra dancing can learn how to do it, but as the evening wore on the band and the caller moved things along, and the floor was full of whirling couples, moving up and down the hall. There are highly skilled dancers, but no prima donnas: there is an air of whimsy and humor. Even in the gypsy — a move in which the couple circles each other, eyes locked — there is less smoldering passion than snorting humor. We know each other too well.
Finally there came the last dance. My wife and I take our spot, and the band launched into the song. It was highly energetic, and we flash and swirl, changing partners frequently. I start with my wife, but a succession of others pass through: a weaver; a woman from down the street who creates delicate copper sculpture; the teen aged daughter of a family in the neighborhood, her braces glinting as she laughs while being swung; a woman with the Japanese film crew — what will they say when she talks about this back in Tokyo?, one wonders; a woman I have never seen before, but so strong that I sense she could throw me through the window if she took the notion — a steady stream, and the dance continues in riotous motion, the joy so intense that our smiles threaten to split our faces, until finally my wife returns to me, and I enfold her familiar form in my arms as we swing. The music ends, and we collapse into each other, laughing and sweaty and exhausted. It is time to go home, and we hold hands as we walk out into the darkness.
This week is like that. The judges are at the beach and the Holy Spirit has descended. We come to the end of our joyous Pascha season, happy and sated and ready to walk, hand in hand, into the evening of the rest of the year.
Ancient Church 