When Did We See You?

"When did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and come to you?" (Matt. 25:37)
The rest of Steven Robinson's post is over here.

And I love that icon.

- V.

Inchoate Musings on Orthopraxy

As I have mentioned elsewhere (here and here also), orthopraxy is of some importance to me. As a convert to Orthodoxy, I have all the theology, but little knowledge (and less experience) of the practice. And what merit a man if he gain all knowledge but losing his soul for failing to practice it? This is the path of the Devil and his minions. Faith without works is dead, and I will show thee my faith by my works.

And yet there is a core ... there is praxis that is of less import and there is praxis that is the heart of our religion. Modest dress, headscarves, Lent: these things and their like are not the be-all and end-all of Orthodoxy. Granted, as Christ said to the right practice of the Pharisees, that they should have done the weightier matters of the Law (justice, mercy, and faith) while not to have left the other undone.

What evidence can I give as to this core? The Law and the Prophets are summed thus: love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind, and love your neighbour as yourself. The three activities Christ mentions in the Sermon on the Mount are prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Elsewhere He identifies action done to the sick, the stranger, the widowed, the orphan, and the imprisoned as being done to Him. And St. James says that pure religion to visit the orphan and the widow in their distress, and keep oneself unspotted from the world.

Over and over, the message is this: it is essential to care for the needy, the hurting, the least among you. And so in Christ's Church the heart of our orthopraxy is still the same - caring for our fellow man, and in our care demonstrating our love for God Himself and by our works showing our faith.

It is interesting to note that there is little in Scripture about mastering a catechism, little about church attendance, little about following a prayer rule. The Church has identified these as valuable, and so they are. But the foundation of our praxis lies in our treatment of our neighbours.

The To-Do List

• almsgiving
• hospitality
• visiting the institutionalized (the old, sick, and the gaoled)
• loaning without repayment (a.k.a. giving)
• caring for the homeless
• remembering the single mother, the man who relies on Salvation Army clothing, and the girl who works at Walmart
• caring also for the foreigner and the immigrant
  

All these things have been said before ... but it is too easy to rely on governmental social aids (like Canada's health care system, like the Children's Aid Society, like food stamps and welfare) to do the work for us. It is too easy to leave the work to large impersonal charities [the conscientious will only give to charities with low overhead and minimal administrative fees], instead of personally, where there is never any overhead and a direct, immediate, and personal relationship is forged. It is too easy to loan money to the poor (whether with interest or no).

And in a world where even the Church sends away the poor, even the Church spends her riches on the temporal, it is left to the individual to care for the hurting, to invest in eternity, to be Christ to them, that they might be Christ to us. Face-to-face, icon of Christ to icon of Christ, a glimpse of eternity, a reflection of the Divine, an acting out of the mystery of the Incarnation, a sharing in the Passion, grace overflowing upon grace in the economy of Heaven.

- V.

Hard Words from St. Luke

Vox clamanti continues to explore the serious side of life...

Gnosticism

First, Vic has expressed some concerns about possible gnostic leanings in my last post (under "Two Thoughts on Evolution"). We take heresy very seriously over here, so after I have consulted with Orthodox authorities, I will be sure to clarify what I have written, and any error will be be corrected. Stay tuned.

Hard Words from St. Luke

I grew up Protestant, where Scripture reading and memorization are a way of life. And I have read through the Gospels multiple times, both before and after my conversion to Orthodoxy. Imagine, then, my astonishment and considerable consternation when I read a passage last Saturday that I have never read before. Not only that, but I encountered it again today on the Internet, exceedingly hard words from the mouth of Christ, as recorded by St. Luke:

"Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, 'Come here at once and take your place at the table'? Would you not rather say to him, 'Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink'? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, 'We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we aught to have done!' " (Lk.17:7-10, NRSV)

It seems to me that we - or at least I - have this attitude that in doing what is right we somehow merit praise. God should be praising us for not cheating, not stealing, not fornicating, not lying, not looking at a woman with lust, etc. In fact, the marriage supper of the Lamb becomes a celebration about us, with Christ beaming at us with pleasure, saying, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." (cf. Mt.25:21, KJV) And divine revelry ensues.

I don't think that we have a very good conception as to how difficult it is to be a "good and faithful" servant (or slave), not if doing all that the Scriptures command (and they command a lot, to a degree the Mosaic Law never reached) is simply what we must do, and not meritorious in the least.

Think of it ... the Saints were they that fulfilled the commands of the Lord. The ones that lived the New Testament life to the full, who trod on asps, spoke with the angels, gave abundantly to the poor, lived free from the passions ... and yet, they only did what they were told to do. They only did what we have been told to do.

Hard words indeed.

- V.

Seek, and ye shall find

Shortly after my last post on Orthopraxy, I found a site that actually wrote on the topic.

Orthodox Info has a reputation for offering a conservative, traditionalist mindset on all things Orthodox - some would go so far as to say too conservative, too traditionalist. Some would find their anti-ecumenical stance schismatic ... I know that while [over the years] I have enjoyed reading some of the articles on Orthodox Info, I have avoided spending too much time there as I worried about becoming extreme in my beliefs or my behaviours, about drifting into the wild and woolly frontiers of the monastery-going, parish-hopping, Bartholomew-bashing, holier-than-thou Superschismatics. I've known a few, and while some are genuinely nice people, many display nothing more than emotional and relational fragility, with all the erratic and irrational actions that that would entail.

All the same, if mainstream North American Orthodoxy does not bother to teach its children how to live the tenets, doctrines, and dogmas that they do teach, one must go to those who will bother. Muhammad must go to the mountain if the mountain will not come to Muhammad. And so I resolved to go digging on Orthodox Info's website for something of what I sought, figuring that if anyone would care about the old-time traditions, those behind this site would.

Ironically, I didn't have to search far at all.

Two clicks, in fact. The sidebar "Living an Orthodox Life" and then the drop-down menu ... and presto! I found praxis. First I read an article by Fr. Seraphim Rose. While that was stirring enough, I opened this article (followed by chapters 1, 2, and 3), entitled A Guide to Orthodox Life, by Fr. David and Presbytera Julianna Cownie, and I have been reading it ever since.

Many of the practices are not new to me, but I am astounded by how much is, and I am deeply appreciative that the Cownies have collated all these practices in one place. I don't know where this journey is taking me, but it is exciting, exhilarating, frightening.

For those who have been reading (or checking) this blog regularly or even semi-regularly, my apologies - I haven't had much time to blog. In my spare time I have read and processed and digested, and read some more.

It is entirely within the realm of possibility that I will be sharing my thoughts and my digestions [there's an image to keep you up at night] at some later interval. But for now it is enough to let you know where the search is taking me.

Hristos voskrese!

- V.

Orthopraxy, Not Orthodoxy

It turns out that what I am seeking is orthopraxy, not orthodoxy. As a member of the Eastern Orthodox Church, I am confident that that which is taught and that which I believe is orthodox as well as Orthodox.

Orthodoxia: Right belief. Right praise.

What I seek is right practice.

I don't think I am alone in this search. My brother, a Baptist pastor, is devouring books on the holiness movement of the Puritans, on the theologian John Owen ... and this is part of the same need, I think. He wants to be holy, and he wants to know how to get there. We live in a culture where moral absolutes are dead, where the Church (or church) can and will no longer teach us how to live. It wouldn't dare.

This theme is not going to disappear lightly. I have been thinking about this for months, if not years, and I am dissatisfied. [At the end of this post I will offer a solution, but it is a weak one.] I know too many converts who glory in their knowledge and in their Orthodox Christian wisdom, and too few that actually desire to embrace Holy Tradition and live a radically Orthodox life, not merely a Protestant or Catholic one in Orthodox vestments. And I know too many priests who are unwilling to tell people how to live their lives ... too gentle? too pastoral?

Sheep are herded away from danger, away from the wolf and cliff, back into the flock. Even they have an orthopraxis, if you will. Where is the small dog yapping at my heels and nipping my flank to keep me from danger, to show me the right path to walk?

In the weeks since I posted on this theme, I have heard from and I have talked with numerous people.

Les of Whippleshire tells me that I should become the book I seek, the book that teaches this aforementioned orthopraxy. This is well and good, but it hardly serves to help me here and now. Another friend asked me if my discernment wasn't good enough. Well, no. It took Israel from the time of Moses to the time of John Forerunner to prepare itself culturally for the reception of Christ. It took Rome and Greece untold thousands of martyrs for the land to become fruitful enough to embrace Christianity. It took Russia hundreds of years to become fully Orthodox, to establish a working orthopraxy for tsar, boyar, peasant and serf. Can I replicate 3000 years of history in the 50 years or so I have left to live? Can I suffer deep enough, pray powerfully enough, read thoroughly enough, understand myself and God well enough, and yet remain humble enough to gain the wisdom of the Church in one short lifetime? Again, no.

I don't mind becoming the book I seek, but I want the Church to be the hand that writes the pages.

Les, whose thoughts I always appreciate, then takes the issue over to his own blog, where he too wrestles with it. He gives it a uniquely Catholic spin, and points the finger at the unfortunate tragedy of the post-industrialized hyper-technological anti-pastoral rat-race that is modern "civilization". True enough, but tangential. More pertinently, he writes:

But this is the paradox, is it not? We know we are saved by grace yet we find comfort in parameters. Even the “free” Evangelical falls into this practical way of living often without even realizing it. It is natural for us to desire freedom and at the same time we desire authoritative boundaries. The problem with boundaries is that if we don’t set them ourselves, sooner or later we will see them as someone else’s boundaries and begin to chafe against them. In the Protestant world this usually results in a new denomination. Dissension and fragmentation has been raised to an art form, if not a virtue. Yet in practice, the layman defers to an authority, despite the fact that ultimately his theological position is that the Scripture is his only authority.

We need more than an open field. We need to have some parameters. I am not a "free Evangelical" like my brother, but I see him struggling with the same pastoral landscape without a pastor to pastor us.

Les makes the intriguing claim that part of our problem in trying to live rightly is that our culture is post-Christian as well as post-lapsarian. That orthopraxy stumbles upon the scandal of a world that displays banner-like the tattered remnants of Christendom but is militantly and aggressively anti. The problem with this diagnosis is that, accurate as it is (and it is woefully so), the Orthodoxy that I know has no orthopraxy to stumble with. That I struggle to find the border between field and forest, that my co-religionists and I are confused between canine and lupine, between the flank-nipping safety of what is right and the moral confusion of all that is secular and predatory.

We need catechesis.

Happily, I found this, which is part of a larger series by Fr. Jonathan Tobias [thanks, Lifespark, for the reference] - I urge one and all to read the entire series, and this article in its entirety:

[...] In the most important ways, the Christian ethos typified by the Beatitudes is the adult culture into which our youth must be assimilated. That maturational process of spiritual assimilation is precisely the catechetical work of what is known as “youth ministry.” At least, it should be.

But there are other concerns and “folk-ways” that are not addressed explicitly by the Beatitudes, the Apostolic Witness, or the corpus of Holy Tradition. I am thinking here, in particular, of what a common culture really ought to offer – concerns that are as basic as what to wear and what (and how) to eat … how to celebrate feasts and how to observe the fasts … how to celebrate truly happy events and how to mourn at tragedies … how to become an adult, and make the transition from passionate teenage to wise adult. Moreover, a common "adult" culture ought to identify who should lead, and how they ought to be followed.

[...] Our memories (whether accurate or not) of the Byzantine Empire or Tsarist Russia do not contain the DNA by which we can clone an alternative to pop culture. Neither can the monastery be used as a model for such an alternative culture: many well-meaning Christians attempt this, but it is not right. Monastic spirituality is for all of us, but not its typicon. I hate to bring up this disappointing news, and I’m sure there will be some who will take umbrage, if not offense. But the fact remains that these ideas are not “real cultures” – they are romantic ideals, but they do not provide what a culture needs to provide.

And yet, at the very moment I dismiss the ghosts of Great Empire and contravene the appeal of the skete, I immediately hasten to suggest that there is a providential reason why God brought to America the great mass of Orthodox people when He did.

One can argue that after a thousand years of uninterrupted progress, the advance of Western Civilization lurched to a grinding halt in 1914, right before the Great War. [...] It was the time when the adult culture of the West all but disappeared, and wisdom fled into ivory towers, old wives’ tales, and little houses.

It was in this season, in these decades, that God brought to America the Orthodox people who were not only Orthodox, but were people from intact adult cultures – cultures that still knew how to fast and feast, how to mourn together and dance in groups, how to marry and embrace adulthood and old age as a good and not regrettable thing.

I suggest here, in not so many words, that God brought these same people not only to bring Orthodoxy to America, but also to bring their culture.

So for us “youth ministers,” I suggest these things [...]:

1. We must catechize simply and clearly from doctrine.
2. We must criticize culture sharply, while encouraging youth to enter adulthood.
3. We must utilize our own ethnic culture as a Divine gift – even for those of us transplants who are “grafted in” to these ethnicities – which can replace and complete that which is lacking in today’s pop culture. It will have to be an ethnic culture as transmitted primarily in English, for that is the only way in America that an ethnic culture should survive.

For myself, this means that I look to the Carpatho-Rusin culture as a providential storehouse of wisdom and folkways for my parochial young. For others, that would mean the use of Greek culture, or Russian, or Serbian, or Syrian, or Ukrainian.

[...]

Youth ministry requires an Orthodoxy unashamed, and an embrace of the ways of naši ludi ["our people" --- V].

What Fr. Tobias tells us in one of the omitted portions is that we are all youth, that our culture is youth enshrined, and that this catechesis is necessary for one and all.

A catechesis from doctrine - excellent.

A sharp criticism of our culture - I think our Churches are terribly weak on this point.

A plundering of the storehouse of wisdom and folkways from ethnic culture to replace and complete pop culture - and here I mourn. Here, at the crux, the climax of his post, I realize that I am still without a tutor.

Here is the solution, but it is a weak one (at least for me, as I must needs re-personalize this post). For it requires second- or third-generation Orthodox immigrants who are still practising their culture and their Orthodoxy and it requires access to these people. Where I live, the second generation threw off their Orthodoxy and became Protestant or non-practising and there is no third generation.

[Still to come, Boutique Orthodoxy.]

- V.

Ochlophobist

I just stumbled across a very intriguing Orthodox blogger who goes by the name of Ochlophobist. The article I read first was this one, called "The Uberfromm, Snuggling Up to the Gates of Hell, Part IV". You may need to scroll down a bit.

I have since read more of his posts, and I have to say that I am impressed by his erudition, his concision, his poetry. Most of the time.

In this first post, however, I see some circular reasoning. I see someone that uses a term - überfromm - the definition of which he seems at times uncertain. I see someone that has lofty ideals for Orthodoxy that may be out of place with reality.

Let me touch on a few points.

He opens his post with a litany of scandals, heresies, and sundry other immoralities that beset the Church at this time. Most of them would be of no surprise to the informed Orthodox, and perhaps my readers (like myself) can think of one or two other abominations in our temples that he hasn't mentioned. Naturally, it grieves my heart to read them, for they shouldn't be. Never mind that scandals have rocked the Church since the day of Pentecost (as he rightly points out), they are a blot on the virgins' white robes and an ongoing tragedy that should cause us to weep. Sackcloth and ashes would not be misplaced either.

That said, I should like to point out that the jury is out on Elder Ephraim, Ochlophist's "Orthodox fundamental who savors all that is pagan in what might best be called Athonite spirituality"; also that the "heterodoxiarch" Seraphim Rose is greatly beloved, widely esteemed as a fully and radically Orthodox Saint, and that "his" tollhouse soteriology is one that existed within the Church before he wrote about it. Suffice it to say that not all Ochlophobist's scandals are obvious ones.

Ochlophobist also betrays some anti-monastic tendencies and inclinations. I believe "Monasticism in Orthodoxy today is a smoke and mirrors farce" argues my case for me. Part of the problem is that his exposure to monasticism appears to be North American, which is notoriously and sadly shallow. (And Elder Ephraim's version of Athonite monasticism, which monasticism would provide a handy counterpoint to the weaknesses of many N. A. monasteries, is controversial at best.) However, the Old World is flourishing. Romania's Moldavian monasteries offer a second Mt. Athos, and Serbia's travails at the hands of Clinton prompted a massive resurgence of monastic life in that beleaguered country. Doubtless there are other places where monasticism is hale, whole, and holy - North America's frailties are not the world's.

Part, too, of Ochlophobist's anti-monasticism seems to be tied with the turn of the millenium (the last one) tension between a non-monastic spiritually - tied to the laity, married clergy, urban dwellers all, and the bishop and cathedral - and monastic spiritually - tied to a monastic clergy, and the abbot and monastery. He says that this non-monastic spirituality was flourishing, and that it is now gone, swallowed by monastic influences in the centuries following the Ottoman conquest. I have heard this argument before, and in fact, I have heard it posited that there were different liturgies to go with the different spiritualities. Frankly, I can't see how the liturgy of the urban church is somehow more meritorious, more lay-appropriate than the liturgy of the monastery. We are not talking the differences between apples and oranges here, but the differences in the length and number of hymns.

...

But all these extraneous points should not take us on a tangent from his central thesis, as I see it. He believes that Orthodox, for all our mouthing of a holistic faith, do not and can not live such a faith outside of the monastery, and that his ubiquitous überfromm are the post-Ottoman invasion poseurs who think that they are doing so by borrowing some monastic trappings. Let me quote:

The spiritual practices that this girl [whose lifestyle is outlined in the previous paragraph --- V.] engages in are thoroughly Eastern monastic, which means that they are practices developed by and encultured in a climate that represents a rejection of this world. Not only that, but the spiritual literature which buttresses these practices, and which our trendy Orthodox girl reads, is quite clear that the whole point of monks leaving "the world" is to get away from environments such as those which our trendy girl inhabits on a regular basis. We are not talking about a fundamentalist fear of dancing and movies here. We are talking about any engagement with the secular and civic worlds that is beyond the minimally necessary. It is impossible to develop an authentic Orthodox culture as long as the Church is a monastic Church. Thus, when a lay Orthodox (or married priest) engages culture, he does so in a necessarily fragmented manner (here, Roman Catholics have a great advantage over us). He has his totalizing monastic bag of devotional tricks in one corner of his life, and then he has the rest of the world that must be fuddled about in manners which are adopted, stylistically, from other sources. I cannot pinpoint a manner of lay life and say of it -- "every aspect of that Basil's life is recognizably Orthodox" (this can only be said of Orthodox monks) in the manner that I can say that "every aspect of Henry's life is recognizably Catholic" or "every aspect of Ed's life is recognizably confessional Presbyterian." There is a cohesive and comprehensive nature to magisterially faithful Catholic and some confessional Protestant modes of life. These styles are rarely totalizing and fragmented. Instead they are embracing of every aspect of human nature (especially Catholicism). When Henry drinks beer, he does so in a manner that, well, seems Catholic (Catholics have an articulated theology of food and drink, and temperance with regard to them). When he watches movies, he does so in Catholic fashion (Catholics have an articulated theology of the purpose and telos of modern forms of media). When Henry has sex, he does so as a Catholic (his Church teaches him exactly what is and is not permitted within the bounds of marriage, and informs him of the purpose and telos of the sexual act -- ask 10 different Orthodox about sexual matters, i.e. contraception, the relation of sex to fasting, etc., and you will get 15 different answers). There can be recognizable Catholic and confessional Protestant styles of life because they are surrounded by enough definition and boundary to work on a comprehensible art of living. The lay Orthodox on the other hand must always revert back to a monastic style of life which is not really his and which he can never live up to. This distortion is hidden by the abstract (in the art sense of the word) uses of non-definition and active non-clarification. In the Orthodox Church, the whole ethos of the realm of personal holiness (righteousness) and a personal style of living is something like a cross between a Quaker meeting and the French Theatre of the Absurd. On the one hand, I find refreshing the Orthodox aversion to cookie-cutter Christian moralism. On the other hand, humans being the mimetic creatures that they are, the former moralism is often replaced with cookie-cutter ritualism (prayer ropes, beards, etc.), even if this is done on a very limited basis by busy, worldly laymen.

And this is where my interest really picks up. For here I agree with him, or at least, I see the same or a similar problem. A couple posts ago I wrote about it, albeit not as fluidly or fluently. I wanted to know how as a working man I could keep the Fast, how to be fully Orthodox and yet fully functional in my very physical work. Surely the Fast is not just for the intelligentsia, for the urban elite? I intuited a need for a model and a way of life that would allow me to live in a cohesively and comprehensively Orthodox manner, and yet not be outside my reach. I am not in a monastery, and I can't live like I am in one. Live ascetically, perhaps, but I need to know how.

How to integrate asceticism and the world.

I have also expressed a wish for a book entitled Practical Orthodoxy For Converts: How to Live a Life You Weren't Raised In. Again, I did not express myself as well as I could have or should have, but what I wanted was the one thing I have not received - a model of Orthodox living [for the non-monastic]. Is Orthodoxy holistic? Well, then, show me how. I don't want to have to read all of St. John Chrysostom's sermons or Alexander Schmemann's journals to acquire this knowledge. I want to read it in one place, or perhaps one person.

I am a bibliophile by nature. I love books, and I have devoured libraries of them. When I first converted to Orthodoxy, I consumed them by the barrow-load. I could debate Arianism or discuss the sociological tensions that led to Egypt's embracing of Monophysitism. I still have a half-completed thesis paper on comparative diachronic monasticism kicking about. I also wrote about the unity and cohesion of what I believed, and I reveled in my Orthodoxy and in my wisdom.

Then one day it occurred to me that I knew lots and lots, but couldn't live the Orthodoxy I "knew", didn't know how to. And I still don't.

Now I just need to find someone, or somebook, that does.

- V.

A Lenten Question ...

We're already halfway through Lent, and it has been an interesting Lent for me, as it was last year.

I have a Lenten question for my Orthodox readers...

As some of you may know, I work with my hands for a living, often doing very heavy physical labour. Because of this, I can't function without four meals a day. Heavy meals, heavy on protein, heavy on starches.

If I don't eat enough, my legs get wobbly, and I feel faint and dizzy. And I am afraid that beans just don't cut it.

Now, I am sure that I am not the first Orthodox to face heavy labour and Lent at the same time... however, I have no "working man" models of Orthodox piety in my immediate circles. My parish consists almost solely of intelligentsia, with the occasional service industry worker thrown in.

So what do labourers do in other parts of the Orthodox world? What did Orthodox do in Holy Russia? in 19th century Greece, Serbia, etc.?

I am truly curious.

- V.