05.30.08
A Developing World-View
I am looking forward to studying the Celts, Gauls and the Anglo Saxons when our curriculum focuses on them year after next. Meanwhile I’d like to write down some of my impressions about roots. My mother’s family has lived in the Deep South since the early 1700’s. Before that they came from England. My father’s mother is of similar lineage, but his father was German whose father had come to America, first Chicago, as a child. So I am 1/4 German and 3/4 British descent with rumored Cherokee blood possibly thrown in.
I have a vague knowledge that during Medieval times Germanic (Frankish, Norman and Slavic) invasion was pervasive in Russia and Eastern and Western Europe. That much conquering is impressive. Even the Anglo Saxons previous to William the Conqueror were Germanic. They and the Romans previous to them pretty much conquered the existing Celts and Gaul. Apparently the Celts weren’t quite as ambitious and had more tribal factions. The Germans must have been more organized. My impression is also that the Germans were more technically advanced and the Celts had more of a soul-ish constitution. Germans more calculating, the Celts were directed more from their hearts.
I need to continue reading Dr. Farrell’s God, History, and Dialectic which is on a computer that the boys generally take over for school and gaming purposes, and which is in another room, to gain more insight into the Christianization of these regions. Jared is further into it than me at present.
England, being one of the more distant outposts of Rome and Normandy, seems to have been, while conquered, harder to manage and thus perhaps maintained more of the Celtic influence that further distant Ireland is known for. I think that is my question because judging from later English colonization and actions during the two World Wars, mainly in the Middle East, perhaps it has more Germanic and Roman tendencies than I’ve been aware of. So far America has had a very similar heart and mind as England, but with the effects of more recent immigrations from other countries, that may be about to change. I also want to understand more how the Asian presence in America, first with the Native Americans, then with mass immigration from China and Japan distinguishes us from the English. Much time has already been spent on the African influence, such as in our music and entertainment and other things of soul.
I am interested in this in light of my evolving sense of God’s sovereignty and providence, and ideas of predestination, and free will as well as ideas of nationalism and the organic or intended unity or diversity of mankind. I also want to understand Germanic and Byzantine influence in Russia, whose Church is my newly adopted religious parent. Like England, Romania also seems a nexus of cultures with latin, greek, and germanic influence. The French identity is a mystery to me. Italy, Greece, and Germany seem to have more singularly influenced personalities, though Dr. Farrell spends a lot of time on the Frankish influence in the Roman Church. Most of my Protestant interests in history were Biblical and focused on the development of the Jewish nation, so when thinking about all the recent clashes in the Middle East as well as the Holocaust, I was loyal to the Jews. I am now rethinking Zionist political policies in the Middle East. But Jewish migration into Europe and Russia should also be considered as influential in the developments in those countries.
05.29.08
‘Teach Your Children Well’
I have read that it was a tactic of the communists in Romania to force people into denying not only God, but every other person they had bonded with be they family or friends. The person, maybe it was Father Roman Braga, said that that is the way to kill a person’s soul. To force him to verbally deny his loyalties.
I’m not an expert on brainwashing, but I do sense the great stress that this can bring. And then if the person is freed from the successful brainwashers or cult, he has to go through another separation from his brainwashed loyalties back to his God, family, and friends. It would probably make one an almost irrecoverable wreck. Princess Ileana described what communism did to people somewhat in her book Hospital of the Queen’s Heart.
Bear with me as I try to work something out. To a lesser extent, or maybe to the same, if we are forced into saying things we don’t mean in more normal circumstances, our souls are likewise being destroyed. This may also apply to being kept silent when we feel we need to speak. I am thinking of when a child is forced to apologize when he feels more the victim, though this is not a blanket statement. It probably depends on how deeply he feels about it. When both are made to apologize, it can be like no fault divorce where they admit to vague incompatibility where their faults are just the wrong, un-fixable combination. Sometimes divorce is both people’s fault, to use an extreme example. Both are immature and selfish and go their separate ways. But sometimes there is a real abuser, or someone with devastating irresponsibility, and a real victim, with faults, but more of a commitment to responsibility. I think it can be devastatingly shattering to make the victim apologize. Not that he or she should feel sorry for themselves because, 1) why did they marry an irresponsible person in the first place, though that person could have decided to mature, 2) God can work all things towards growth in Him. Benedict Seraphim wrote recently about the need for external traumas when we wouldn’t have turned from our faults without them. Sadly true in my case. But if humility is seeing things as they truly are, and one person was abusive and another was mostly innocent, though maybe not saintly, then I think it can force a person into mental gymnastics at best to try to blame themselves for the pain-inducing actions of another. There are certain crimes that are not the victim’s fault. But like I said, there can be cases where both are equally selfish and should both apologize or admit it. Parental discretion is advised.
Even if I am wrong about the above and in God’s eyes the “victim” through being full of sins himself, was equally at fault, and a Saint would know this, then to force him to admit this before he has Saintly eyes to see it, or to guilt and shame him or otherwise coerce through fear of hell-fire into admitting it or even saying he forgives the other person before he actually does, is shattering, imo.
I believe Orthodoxy allows for an organic and natural revelation as to the true nature of things. I think we can let nature take it’s course in most instances while at the same time following the prescriptions of the Church through prayer, fasting, Confession, blessings, and Communion. And slowly and un-forcedly we will gain Christ’s perspective as we become inwardly and genuinely conformed to His image and likeness. I appreciate my Priest’s and husband’s guidance as I continue to heal from real or possibly wrongly perceived offenses. But mostly I need to learn a new way so that my children do not suffer from my failings. Towards their supported and nurtured innocence should my attention be focused, not by withdrawing into a shell of self-pity and bitter blaming, nor by becoming distracted into fixing other people (as if!) that I am not responsible for to the neglect of my own children – not talking about worthy community service, especially service to the Church which is mutually beneficial.
But enough of justifications, ‘provisos and quid pro quos’ (Disney’s Aladdin), all I can do is empty myself before God and seek to be filled by His glorious light, love, beauty, grace, and mercy in His Church.
Regarding teaching/hopefully not brainwashing children, as this quote from Elder Philotheos Zervakos from the blog, Adventures of an Orthodox Mom, says, their mind is a clean slate. It needs to actively be shown what to bond to because re-training and repenting is much harder than establishing correct attachments. Incorrect ones, or ones formed out of neglect, become strong addictions or worse, the inability to bond at all.
05.26.08
Online Horologion
These Reader’s Prayers compiled on St. Jonah’s site, Father John Whiteford’s Church, are adjusted for when a Priest is absent. There are many other services and prayers linked as well.
05.23.08
Liberal arts and/or Science
The following is part of my comment on Maxim’s blog where we are discussing JRR Tolkien’s Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogy and its movie interpretations. It all started over the Harry Potter discussion on the Ochlophobist’s blog a while back, after which I decided to read The Hobbit to my kids. But this part of the comment relates to my pondering the value of a Liberal Arts degrees which I’ve written about on this blog, namely in the post, “Oh, the Humanities” (no disrespect to the victims of the Hindenburg explosion intended, Memory Eternal, and may they rest in peace.
Oh and there’s the issue of people drawn more to sciences than literature. Is that a dialectic opposition or is there room for seeing them as co-habitable distinctions? I’m having a liberal arts vs science debate in my head right now that hasn’t been won. I have been pretty 50/50 in my career, scoring equally in both at school though previously I felt that science was the day job and art for evening and weekends. Though I’m enjoying immensely the blogs of those who chose art as a day job. This is important for me as my son goes to the Catholic and liberal arts oriented University of Dallas and tries to narrow down a major. We’re a little scared of a Lib Arts degree and so he’s leaning towards math which they also offer. Even if he chooses the latter, he will absorb some of the former in their core curriculum which all must take the first year. If he goes toward liberal arts it will be sort of a leap of faith, abandoning trusted sight for our family, who have traditionally been engineers [the men anyway, my mother was an English major] on both sides.
And I just read another clever article by Helen Rittelmeyer entitled Who Needs A College Education on this very same subject. I think the comment by Ploni Almoni, which is currently last, is very insightful and a good response to Ms. Rittelmeyer’s ‘education by Humphrey Bogart and George Jones’ commendations.
I’m still in the process of thinking this through.
I do not cut my kids much slack when it comes to if they “like” English or Math or Science or Music or Art or even PE when it comes to finishing their work in a disciplined way. Each person has their own strengths and weaknesses, so I try to look at them as individuals, at their own levels, but improvement is always possible and I think many problems are a result of undisciplined study, low expectations, and unhealthy habits of thinking like “I’m just not good at this”. I’ve never believed in a “math block” for instance. Studies have shown that even babies know how to count and distinguish between amounts of objects. Walking takes counting too, as does understanding music. I believe everyone can learn to read and comprehend who isn’t severely brain damaged, but none of my kids are so I don’t need to go there. I have a kinesthetic learner though so it’s been more of a struggle with him to recall what he reads, but he has improved tons, though it takes him more time to study. If they don’t do it right the first time, they have to do it again. Giftedness is brought out more in artistic expression, even in science, and extra-curricular activities.
But the most important thing I think they need to learn before graduating is to do what it takes to master the material with mostly A’s and occasional B’s, but a C or consistent B’s is a do-over. I also think they should go to college and do well there and that’s where individual giftedness comes in. Then they can specialize after they have the foundation of a very broad education and good personal study habits beforehand. I think it’s too soon to tell where a child should go before they graduate and sometimes for a few years after. It does him no favors to let him slack off in a particular subject too early if it turns out later that’s what he should specialize in.
But there is the argument that our country emphasizes specialization too much. You’ve got your geeks and your artists who seem polar opposites. I think to even this divide, some amount of progressively more challenging Liberal Arts and other structured disciplines should be continued in one’s whole life. There’s a couple of blogs that I read where they bemoan so many modern people’s inability to think and communicate correctly. In fact “correctness” has gotten a dirty name in a couple of applications, both in the liberal and conservative contexts. But I’m still not sure about majoring in it unless you’re really correct and really talented. And even then I worry about the ability to support a family because success in the arts seems less guaranteed and harder won. Some say mine is too utilitarian a view. Perhaps, and I think I still have gender-based notions on who can safely afford to specialize in Liberal Arts, though I am so thankful for the men who do as well.
Hooray!
I spent hours last night trying to start figuring out which books to purchase and which books were available from the library, and which books I could substitute with other ones available in our library for the Ancient History Curriculum I received in the mail. Then this morning I followed the link on the Mind in the Heart blog in his homeschool section to the Tanglewood Education site and they have the same history focus, but “we have tried to keep our lists short even though there are a lot of ‘living’ history
books in print. Instead of listing a whole slew of books all covering the same
topic, we’ve tried to weed through them for you and offer only what we
consider the best.”
And the selections are all on the other list as well! I’m so relieved.
So far I’ve narrowed down our new history and Latin courses, but will peruse the Tanglewood site to see if I want to substitute any other subjects while weaning from our Abeka curriculum.
Cast all your cares
But when we are worried about something and unable to encounter God in silence, we often try mistakenly to put our worry out of our mind, as if it were a barrier between us and God. We think it wrong that anything else could claim our attention when we are in the presence of God. I think that often we could encounter God by sharing our worry with him instead of trying to push it aside. We ought to present it to God in detail but with precision and sobriety. We should present it as a mother brings a child to a doctor she trusts.
When we have thus offered a person or a situation to God, we should be able to become detached from it. This requires faith and the ease with which we can detach ourselves from a care, is the measure of our faith.
(Courage to Pray p.49-50)
05.22.08
An Historical Compassionate Conservative
Thanks to Mr. Roach for introducing me to Edmund Burke, a conservative that I think I may be able to vote with on several issues, including respect for diversity and being against revolution.
Burke was strongly anti-change, not merely skeptical or in favor of gradualism. Major change was a last resort. Consider his vivid comparison of the potential costs and benefits of political change:
To avoid, therefore, the evils of inconstancy and versatility, ten thousand times worse than those of obstinacy and the blindest prejudice, we have consecrated the state, that no man should approach to look into its defects or corruptions but with due caution, that he should never dream of beginning its reformation by its subversion, that he should approach to the faults of the state as to the wounds of a father, with pious awe and trembling solicitude. By this wise prejudice we are taught to look with horror on those children of their country who are prompt rashly to hack that aged parent in pieces and put him into the kettle of magicians, in hopes that by their poisonous weeds and wild incantations they may regenerate the paternal constitution and renovate their father’s life.
And I think the article brought out Mr. Larison’s contribution of legitimate authority.
from Mr. Roach’s concluding paragraph,
Conservatism must by necessity vary with time and place. It is chiefly an attitude about change, and what change means depends in part upon how an existing society is structured. But Burkean conservatism does not concede the goals of liberalism, goals which ultimately counsel un-Burkean methods precisely because of liberalism’s uncompromising account of he good. Our modern era is in many ways the heir of the French Revolution and its ugliness. Modern liberalism’s methods and ideals—uniformity, equality, ahistorical liberte, purifying violence, secularism—find echoes in everything from Bolshevik Communism to the forceful imposition of “democratic capitalism” on the ancient peoples of the Middle East. Burke’s defense of gradualism and social diversity have certain merits standing alone. But standing alone, such ideas are not Burkeanism, nor are they sufficient for guiding political action in a society thoroughly suffused with recent revolutionary change. Burke expressed his concerns for gradualism and diversity as part of a unified view in which these intermediate political goals acquired value only in relation to Burke’s substantive concerns for legality, necessary inequality, Christian justice, peace, order, legitimacy, and preserving a known and workable English Christian way of life. Burke’s later writings in favor of counterrevolution and restoration of the French Monarchy give us some insight into how he would address those that would defend gay marriage or affirmative action or some other artifact of modern liberalism in his name.
I’m a little confused on how “gradualism” works with being anti-change however. Perhaps he’s talking about improvement in the leader regarding such qualities as wisdom and discernment, but not in the position of authority itself.
“Look at deified man to understand nature”
To continue with writings on Natural Law, this is from the Ochlophobist’s recent post:
Problems arise when we attempt a natural law in which we look at corruptible nature as we generally see it around us, and from this data attempt to discern things regarding God, salvation, and man’s right place in the cosmos. Such is what virtually all modern natural theologies attempt to do. Corruption then inevitably becomes deified in some fashion. Instead of looking at corrupted nature to understand man, we should look at deified man in order to understand nature. When we look from this perspective, from the vantage point of the revelation of the God-Man, nature may become for us the “second Gospel” of which some of the Fathers and Elders speak. When we follow the cosmological hierarchy which God has established, and deified man is the lens through which we view creation, all of creation is lit up with the presence and holiness of God. When man is first transfigured, all of creation is then aflame with divinity.
This thought combined with the recent post on Energetic Procession about God being all in all tend to a universal, cosmological view. I think I’ll comment over on EP instead.
The Jesus Prayer in French
Seigneur Jesus Christ, Fils de Dieu, Aie pitié de moi
- according to Emmanuel on Christian Forums dot com.
05.21.08
Learning to Live with Silence
I want to note this quote posted on the Mind in the Heart blog today as I think it answers my confusion from my recent post on Continuing in Prayer.
“Very many wish to gain the Kingdom without Labors, without struggles, without sweat; but this is impossible.”
“If you love the glories of men, and desire to be worshipped, and seek comfort, you are going off the path. You must be crucified with the Crucified One, suffer with Him that suffered, that you may be glorified with Him that is glorified.” -St. Macarius of Egypt
One could take this to the extreme of premature over-ascesis that Metropolitan Anthony warns against, but I think I’m too lax with myself and need more self-denial in a couple of areas at present.
On to Courage to Pray,
What we have just said brings us to a problem which is difficult for beginners to solve. This is the problem of effortful prayer, ascesis. It is easy to pray in wonder or in pain. It is much harder to pray on drab ordinary days, when there is nothing within or without us to help us pray. Then we must be able to force ourselves. Why? Because our life of prayer should not only be our spontaneity, but also our firm unalterable conviction…. sometimes we are too tired and feel we cannot feel. Then our affection resides in the will. But the will together with firm conviction is the essential lever of our life. If we force ourselves to do something purely out of social convention, this constraint has a deadly rather than a life-giving effect. When spontaneity and enthusiasm are lacking, we force ourselves to pray. Then we must stand in God’s presence by a pure act of faith; we know that he exists and who he is. We approach him in worship, in the reverent fear due to all that is holy. We make a firm effort to pay the attention due to him. We force ourselves to do this because we want to encounter God not just for the immediate joy but for the longer-lasting joy which will come to us when we have been transformed by this contact with him and we live with God’s life. What we must do, without deceiving ourselves or trying to deceive God, is to stand in his presence and offer him even this unspontaneous prayer with firm intellectual conviction and a determined will.
… to give our blood in order to receive the Spirit…. [Our prayer] should express the reality of its own poverty as well as our firm convictions and desire. This requires a strong effort of detachment. If we use ‘ready made’ prayers… we must be careful not to lie to God under the pretext of offering prayers worthy of him.
This reminds me of St. John of Kronstadt stressing that we need to really mean our prayers and to say them enthusiastically. Met. Anthony goes on to say,
When we feel low and sad, we can still sow the word, and perhaps we are more capable than we think of receiving it and bearing fruit. We should choose scriptural texts which we usually find moving, texts we have often thought about and responded to… because the word of God is powerfully creative, it reaches beyond the depths of our souls, it is life and can give us life, because it is God himself speaking.
If we use prayers made by the saints when we cannot think up our own, it is difficult in these times when we feel dead to know who to pray to… we should talk to ourselves [!] We should treat our soul like a mother taking a naughty child onto our lap and telling him a story. At first the child ignores her then he begins to pay attention. In the same way we should begin by saying each word only for its bare meaning, without reflecting on its weight. First we say the words and simply understand them with our mind, then we offer them to our heart, repeat a phrase or part of a phrase perhaps once, twice, three times, to try and kindle what is still alive in us, under the ashes. We must not straightjacket our will, but let it lie comfortably at rest. For rest is part of ascesis. We should be able to let ourselves go, be supple, not passive but in an attitude of surrender. We should listen intelligently and respond with all that is still alive in us to the familiar words, to words spoken in deserts, by heroes in prayer and the life in God. If we simply listen to these words, without effort, without adding to our weariness and exhaustion, then repeat them, try to savour them and feel their weight, often after a while, perhaps a long while, these words restore us to life, first our heart, then our will, and make us active again, capable of the sublime action of prayer.
… This encounter between God and us in stable prayer always leads to silence. God’s silence [which he talked about earlier] and our own inner silence…. the silence of man, deeper than speech, in closer communion with God than any words. God’s silence to our prayer can last only a short time or it may seem to go on for ever. Christ was silent to the prayers of the Canaanite woman and this led her to gather up all her faith and hope and human love to offer to God so that he might extend the conditions of his kingdom beyond the chosen people. The silence of Christ provoked her to respond, to grow to her capacity. And God may do the same to us with shorter or longer silences to summon our strength and faithfulness and lead us to a deeper relationship with him than would have been possible had it been easy.
…We cannot doubt God’s love for [Christ in Gethsemane when He was silent] and does not Christ himself say that his Father could send twelve legions of angels to deliver him? If Christ is abandoned, that is because God has foreseen something better will come of it for us, at the price of his life…. But when our faith is firmly anchored in him we become capable of sharing his care for the world; we share in his solitude in the face of God’s silence.
An encounter does not become deep and full until the two parties to it are capable of being silent with one another.
Well that’s opposite the message in “Two For the Road“.
As long as we need words and actions, tangible proof, this means we have not reached the depth and fulness we seek. We have not experienced the silence which enfolds two people in common intimacy. It goes down deeper than we knew we were, an inner silence where we encounter God, and with God and in God our neighbor…. And when the silence is deep enough, we can begin to speak from its depths, but carefully and cautiously so as not to break it by the noisy disorder of our words…
(pgs35-43.)
