02.09.10
How much Determinism?
When I first read the following passages from the Iliad a few days ago, my thought was that Calvinists have inherited their views of God’s Sovereignty from ancient Greek (Hellenic) thought.
Agamemnon on offending Achilles:
Often have the Achaeans spoken to me of this matter and upbraided me, but it was not I that did it: Zeus, and Fate, and Erinys that walks in darkness struck me mad when we were assembled on the day that I took from Achilles the meed that had been awarded to him. What could I do? All things are in the hand of heaven, and Folly, eldest daughter of Zeus’ daughters, shuts men’s eyes to their detruction. She walks delicately, not on the solid earth, but hovers over the heads of men to make them stumble or to ensnare them. (p.300)
To Odysseus: “I will swear as you would have me do; I do so of my own free will, neither shall I take the name of heaven in vain.” (p. 302)
Then Achilles also rose and said to the Argives: “Father Zeus, of a truth you blind men’s eyes and bane them. The son of Atreus had not else stirred me to so fierce an anger, nor so stubbornly taken Briseis from me against my will. Surely Zeus must have counseled the destruction of many an Argive.” (p. 304)
But then two of my children who attended Archimandrite Zacharias’ talk to the youth in Dallas Saturday night came home telling me the he said it was God’s will that Rebecca encourage Jacob to trick Isaac by pretending he was Esau. I had been taught differently growing up (not by Calvinists). That Rebecca and Jacob’s counselling together was faithless in God’s ability to make Jacob the heir of Isaac’s blessing legitimately and according to His promise. They disobediently (and against God’s will) resorted to lies because they didn’t wait on God.
When George came home and heard of it, he said that Archimandrite Zacharias spoke according to ancient Rabbinic tradition and that my spin on it was a new-fangled Protestant gloss. Really?
Now I’m confused. I’m hanging on to Agamemnon’s free will in spite of it all though.
02.07.10
Lenten Preparations
With the establishment of a couple of nearby monasteries, plus with the inspiration from some pious ladies, I’ve decided to order a couple of new head coverings. In addition to it being a minority component of my home parish, I have in the past found head scarves uncomfortable, distracting, and non-flattering. Actually, this sermon by Elder Zacharias also convicted me of my pride, another stumbling block. It’s not from this past weekend’s conference, which I unfortunately did not make it to, but of a sermon on Zacchaeus Sunday.*
Most head scarves are too heavy, long or slippery for me to comfortably tie and wear. I did a new search yesterday and found these triangular ones that have shorter ties and do not have to be folded. Hopefully they will be less obtrusive and thus less of a distraction.
Another Lenten preparation has to do with my research into Restless Leg Syndrome, which I believe I sometimes have. Apparently it can be eased by increased iron. Steak is high in iron, but with today being meatfare Sunday, it will not be on the menu for a while. I just found that tahini, a middle eastern paste made with sesame seeds is a very rich source of iron. Additionally:
- Tahini contains a living treasure of amino acids, vitamin and essential acids.
- Tahini is RICHER in protein than milk, yogurt, almonds, cashews, hazel nuts, walnuts, soya, sunflower, wheat germ, legumes and pecan nuts.
- Tahini is one of the richest sources of Methionine (an essential amino acid).
- Tahini also contains natural lecithin, which reduces blood fat levels and provides protection from environmental pollutants such as nicotine.
- Tahini is the best food source of Calcium. Unlike milk, Tahini is NON MUCOUS FORMING. Other important minerals include Potassium, Phosphorus and Magnesium.
- Tahini supplies excellent amounts of vitamin E which slows aging of body cells and helps retain proper focusing of the eyes.
- Tahini is one if the best sources of vitamin T (very few foods are). It improves memory and concentration abilities and in combination with the excellent amount of phosphorous present.
- Tahini provides a potent brain and nerve food. Vitamin T in combination with the mineral Iron develops healthy blood due to it’s purifying abilities.
- Vitamin F is an essential vitamin for our bodies to transfer oxygen.
- It combines protein and cholesterol creating collagen which in turn combats cholesterol particles, leaving you with a cleaner, healthier body.
- Vitamin A is also well supplied in the B group vitamins in particular vitamin B3.
- Tahini can be very easily digested within 30 minutes enabling a quick supply of essential nutrients.
- It also improves Stamina and Endurance to all muscles.
from this site. We’ll see how it tastes. It’s found in humus, but humus is kind of high in carbs. Tahini by itself is low carb, high protein.
My other Lenten activity is making Pysanki for our annual Church Pysanky sale. I use the candle, stylus, beeswax method, but have had a hard time finding replacement stylus nibs. Yesterday I found some at overstock dot com. As soon as all these items come in the mail, I’ll be set! We let Jared take our camera to Rome, so until I can find our old one or we get a new one I’ll not be able to share pics of Pysanky I’ve made this year.
*Most of my family did attend yesterday however. According to George’s account, Archimandrite Zacharias said that one can turn negative reactions to negative treatment into energy to pray, and through that process they can be transfigured into praise and thankfulness. Hopefully the talks will be available online.
02.04.10
Sanctuary
I’m heading out the door, but I want to post a little about John Muir and the wonderful PBS series on National Parks that I caught a little of last night. For those interested in education, this will serve as content and method (maybe not so extreme) if you see the clips on the Muir page.
02.03.10
Reading Geréby’s Peterson
Since Christmas break I have had my attentions more than usually diverted elsewhere, what with getting Jared off to Rome, the clergy conference, a birthday, and a wedding. Now that things have calmed down, I am trying to get back into reading deeper stuff, and am trying to catch up on blogs that require more concentration, as well as on the Iliad which I just picked up again last night. Btw, I find how Achilles’ goddess mother, Thetis, heard his cry of ultimate suffering, (description from Princess Bride) from the depths of the sea very touching.
Yesterday I requested and received from our good Ochlophobist “Political Theology versus Theological Politics:
Erik Peterson and Carl Schmitt by György Geréby”. Today in reading it I renewed my fascination with philosophy and theology (but not in psychology which was renewed by Archimandrite Meletios and explored in more recent posts) albeit of a more political bent than I am usually wont since finding Orthodoxy. I cannot give as detailed and thought out a response as did Gabriel or Ariston, the latter’s I read after writing a few questions which I’ll go ahead and humbly post.
1. Possible themes: Who is God in secular politics: the monarch/title, the idea, or me/individual? Authority vs. Truth
But is there an analogy? Treat the monarch, the idea, or me as god? If not, do we treat them as opposite of God as we would Satan, evil, anti-Christ?
2. “The Roman Empire may have had a transitory providential character in providing peace for the birth of the Redeemer and may have helped spread the Gospel, but it was no political utopia, let alone the realization of the heavenly Jerusalem.” P.16
Here the govt can participate in the energies of God – providing peace and freedom for instance. What about Aquinas’ unity and order though? Can it be an energy of God (conceived differently than in Absolute Divine Simpicity)?
3. If one wants to emphasize the Trinitarian nature of God, then would drawing analogies to the US govts three branches (executive, judicial, and legislative) be too like Schmitt for Peterson?
I am not as trusting in individual rule/Monarcy as Ariston apparently is, but his critique in this statement is very thought provoking: “This seems to me to be claiming a rather impoverished view of the ways in which theology can comment upon politics, even considering Peterson’s conception of the Church itself as a political community.”
[I was going to comment over there, but I tried to edit from the security screen twice and deleted it twice. Some people don't learn. My comment was redundant anyway, so nevermind.]
02.02.10
Elder Zacharias’ last trip to the U.S. this weekend
Another true Spiritual Father coming to the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. What a blessing.
From the Diocese of the South website:
The schedule is as follows:
Saturday, February 6 at St. Seraphim Cathedral
7:00AM Divine Liturgy
8:30AM Light Breakfast
9:30AM First Talk by Elder Zacharias followed by a Question and Answer session.
Lunch will follow and the retreat will conclude at 2:00PM
At St. Sava Church in Allen, TX
5:00PM Great Vespers
6:00PM Elder Zacharias talks with Youth
Sunday, February 7 at St Sava Church in Allen, TX
9:30AM Divine Liturgy
11:30 AM Brunch and Talk by Elder Zacharias
For more contact please contact Priest Seraphim Hipsh who is organizing the retreat.
This is his last trip to the USA, so don’t miss this!”
Many Years Rebecca!
Friday was the ninth birthday of my daughter, Rebecca Rose. A very nice lady at Church made her a beautiful pink Barbie birthday cake with the hooped skirt making up the cake part, around which everyone sang Happy Birthday (Many Years was sung in the Church to all the celebrants of weekly birthdays and namesdays). Saturday she had a lovely time with friends and family at the newly reopened Ft. Worth Museum of Science and History, with an overwhelming amount of hands on exhibits (albeit ones often geared towards maximizing personal creativity with technology, as well as more humanly basic types of things like making rotating sandbox sculptures and wooden tetragrams – or whatever those little parquet wooden pieces are called), a newly excavated, huge Paluxysaurus from the nearby town of Paluxy, multimedia shows, a new digital planetarium, and a wonderful 1500 year global history of horse-riding cowboys in the spherical Imax Omni Theatre. It was quite a day.
(I love this pic of her in the Church kitchen at last year’s Pysanky Sale)
01.30.10
More on giving up on winning
cont. from last post
To give up on winning means that one accepts that they, to paraphrase Stuart Smalley, are not good enough, smart enough, or liked enough to deserve idealized attention. They no longer want to use others for their own personal reconstruction project, to make up for past neglect. They agree to take a back seat and let others be in control. This is a big deal because previously they thought they would disappear and die if they gave up like that. That others would take over and they would be forgotten forever. People with BPD do not have object permanence. If the person gives attention to someone else, the person with BPD disappears. Their therapist is then used to make them feel visible. The person with BPD lacks a sense of identity, and is constantly looking to others to define them. Usually they are very afraid of being alone. Perhaps this is why some people keep the tv on when home alone. Prayer can be scary for what it reveals, and thoughts can lead to a downward spiral.
I watched a movie last night about a woman suffering from post traumatic stress disorder after being a tortured prisoner in the Bosnian war – you don’t find this out until the end, so to give the title would spoil the ending. She was afraid to let people get close because their presence would make her face herself and she just might start crying and not be able to stop and the room would fill up with her tears and she would drown and drag the other person down with her. The idealized man says he will learn to swim – thus conquering his own personal demon. She then lets him close. I was dissatisfied with this because their relationship seemed based on neediness and shared pain. It seems that breaking the silence and letting onesself shed tears was the end goal. Then what? Stuart Smalley also says, “Trace it, face it, and erase it.” The last scene was years later, when she is home alone and can hear her children playing in the yard next door. The little imaginary girl that had comforted her during her years of silence comes back and talks to her for the last time, and she lets her go. Children can sometimes be idealized and used for personal reconstruction too. The person with BPD has a low level of patience with real, constant children though. I’m thinking they need to learn to give up on winning that ideal too. Maybe then they’ll have the patience and accept the letting go required to let the children be themselves.
01.29.10
Borderline Personality Disorder
From reading accounts of people with Borderline Personality Disorder (after hearing it mentioned yesterday), it seems to me that they are trying to find someone to make up for childhood abandonment and abuse. They accumulate people who they first deem as good, and then when they do something bad, they drop them. What makes them bad is usually perceived rejection, or demonstrating that they don’t provide a safe enough environment for people they are responsible for. People with BPD can be seductive as they are hungry for attention, but when people (perhaps the wrong people) get close (perhaps in the wrong way, with the wrong expectations), they panic and run away. When tired of this unconscious pattern, they usually seek help. The person who is supposed to rescue them from their intense feelings of emptiness is supposed to be able to take all their stuff like a man basically. To show stability and commitment and tough love no matter what the person with BPD dishes out, which will be an attempt to drive them away. If the person runs away, there. See? If not, they feel like they’ve won something. Winning is important to the person with BPD.
But what if the person with BPD decides to give up winning? To give up on being understood, validated, and put up with? Maybe this happens when enough of the right people in the right way have finally understood, validated, invited, and stuck around for long enough.
01.27.10
Remembering the Conference
When the audio files are available from last night’s talk, I’ll post a link. In the meantime, I recall a few things that I got from it even though I was in the kitchen for much of the first part.
I believe the Metropolitan introduced Archimandrite Meletios Webber, of imposing stature and charming turn of phrase which British people seem be able to accomplish quite naturally. He emphasized the four vows of monasticism, chastity, poverty, stability and obedience, stating that one should not try this at home because only a monastery can provide a safe enough place to lose one’s ego, and even then one has to be careful where one places onesself. I very much appreciated his wisdom and advice to parish priests and lay people in thinking onesself or seeking a spiritual father. Metropolitan Jonah chimed in on this at the end during the Q&A stating that one does not get a ready-made spiritual father kit upon ordination. Fr. Meletios said that spiritual fatherhood can only come when one is white of beard and long of tooth. His beard still has some red in it, though his hair is white. Metropolitan Jonah said that if your Priest wants to guide you in choosing the color of your car, how many children you should have, and requires his blessing on any other decision, turn and run away as fast as you can, they are in delusion. People laughed at that, but he said he was “dead serious”.
Father Meletios explained that a monastic in a monastery can let himself lose his ego. This is different than humility, which we are all to seek, in that people outside a monastery have to guard and protect themselves somewhat. He recited an Italian bumpersticker, “you toucha my car, I smasha your face”, and we laughed. I very much appreciated this distinction. In the world we cannot just blindly go around offering our cheeks to everyone, though it is what we are made to do. Guarding one’s self and one’s children is a pain.
He also said that giving obediences is not a control thing, but one has to carefully discern what is good for that person to do.
At the end of his talk, there was a panel Q&A with Metropolitan Jonah, Archimandrite Meletios, and to my surprise, Abbot Gerasim, former spiritual son of Fr. Seraphim Rose, from St. Herman monastery. He is currently studying at St. Vladimir’s Seminary in preparation for becoming the new Bishop of the Alaskan Diocese. He is also tall, ascetic looking, with a long thick beard that reminded me of Fr. Seraphim’s. He answered questions mainly about coming to monasteries for spiritual retreat and confession. This morning at the hierarchical Liturgy he gave the homily on enduring in Christ amidst various persecutions and hardships.
That was probably the last talk I’ll hear as the rest of the sessions are closed for clergy only. I will most likely attend Vespers tonight andMatins tomorrow just because it is such a blessing to see and hear a room packed with black cassocked clergy, and of course the elevated hierarchs.
One last observance, this morning before the Hours, there were three monks with their flowing black hats praying together, standing before our royal doors. It was angelic.
