11.30.08
Father Seraphim Rose, Charles Dickens, and dominant women
From Father Seraphim Rose, His Life and Works, by Hieromonk Damascene.
Eugene [Father Seraphim's birth name] began reading the works of Charles Dickens at a young age. He especially loved the Pickwick Papers, the book that had once brought Dickens overnight fame. His mother later remembered him laughing aloud while reading it. When it came time for him to go to sleep she would barge into his room and turn off the light. Later, she would be awakened by the sound of giggling. Returning to her sons’s room to see what was going on, she would discover him under the blankets with a flashlight, continuing to read the book. (p.11)
The Fr. Seraphim/Dickens connection is closer than I expected when I wrote two posts ago.
On to more specific issues, Wikipedia and other sources have revealed that Father Seraphim struggled with homosexuality in his younger years. I haven’t gotten to that in this book, but it seems to me that Hieromonk Damascene is setting the stage for why in the way he describes his parents. I have heard of the stereotype of the dominant mother and absent or passive father, and this scenario is brought out in the book. I don’t know if his mother read this (there are some quotes from her but they could be second hand), but I don’t think she would like how she was described, such as by the word “barge” in the above. She apparently did not respect her children’s privacy, as it says that she would search their drawers and read their letters (p.6). However I believe it is the parents’ responsibility to know what their children are up to and the nature of their relationships. I think privacy should be more respected in regards to bodily modesty, but not so much about what they are doing. I don’t think children should be allowed to have private stashes of magazines, unsupervised time on the internet, or be allowed to be alone with other children too much. They can’t handle the responsibility of supervising themselves, and I think they would appreciate being stopped before something develops into deviant behavior. Apparently she was not sneaky about her “invasions”, as I think that would be wrong. But mothers do go in children’s rooms and discover things, which is not a crime. Parents are responsible for what goes on in the house. [edit: I just read that it was these letters discovered by his mother that lead to his "coming out" or "being outed", so that could explain some of Hieromonk Damascene's inferred defensiveness.]
Back to dominant mothers,
Frank’s docility, together with Esther’s strong-willed personality, made it inevitable that the natural order of the family would be reversed in the Rose home. This was the only truly unfortunate factor in Eugene’s upbringing. Yet, in all fairness, it must be said that Frank was not simply a doormat. If one looked hard enough, one could see hidden strength in him. He displayed that shy, dogged integrity, that deeply loving nature which is embarrassed to express itself, characteristic of the common man who (so the populist books and movies of the period claimed) could become a hero if placed in the right circumstances. In his later years, there would even be times – although few and far between – when he would stand up to his wife or at lest express disagreement with her, especially when he felt this was needed for the sake of his son Eugene. Eugene would one day remember these rare incidents with gratitude. (p. 7)
I expect his mother was grateful too. I don’t think strong women really want to be the strongest. Not that we want to be dominated either. Why does it have to be either/or? What is right should be first priority, and the woman needs to trust that the man will take care of what is right, and will listen to her opinions too. If a woman has grown with the experience of a failed system, such as Esther’s childhood forced frugality and when her children were young, the stock market crash, then she can’t just surrender the reigns to someone who hasn’t demonstrated strength in that area. Some women do, but I need to think about that more. Frank had tried a few business ventures with candy and ice cream, which both failed (p. 4,5).
It seems that Frank had little choice but to be dominated. When Esther expressed her strong opinions – which was not infrequently – Frank listened attentively and generally responded with nought but silence and a smile. He scrupulously avoided conflicts and usually expressed assent by saying “Betcha!” He rarely if ever harbored bitterness or ill will toward anyone.
Like his father, Eugene responded to his mother’s will without complaint. From his father’s example he learned to listen attentively but silently to Mother. She set the standard for the family, and Eugene did his best to live up to it. He was remembered in the family as the “perfect son,” the proverbial dutiful child. “If there was a favorite child,” Eileen recalls, “it was Eugene, because he always tried hard to do what was expected and did not cross Mother.”
To me, Hieromonk Damascene is inserting more bitterness into the situation than was actually there. Neither Eugene nor his father appear to have resented his mother, nor she them,
“Eugene was a joy,” Esther [his mother] said in later years. “His father thought the sun rose on him.”
According to his wife, Frank was “satisfied with a little bit. His interest was to be at home with me; he was happy just to be at home and take care of the yard. He was a contented man, having no need of outside interests. He always took a lesser job, and never told Eugene what to be in life or pushed him to make money.”
“Frank was not a practical man,” Esther affirmed. “He was the ‘intelligentsia,’ and I was the ‘practical one.’” (p.6,7)
So maybe it’s my own bias, but I fault his father, not his mother’s (understandable) control issues, with being so passive. Another connection with Dickens, when I saw W.C. Fields in David Copperfield, I was very upset at how impractical he was, yet so sweet and charming, which landed him in the poor house and his family destitute. What good is sweetness if you’re starving to death? It’s very childish in my opinion, which is how the photos of Frank look. He has a very sappy look on his face. His mother looks very alert and watchful. I think, so far in the book, that Eugene did a good job of learning what parts of his parents to adopt and how to apply them. I don’t think I know how to analyze sexual preference though. I don’t think it is a healthy situation to have the woman be the strongest, most supervisory one. I think she can raise impressive children, provided she doesn’t have other extreme issues, but they will be vulnerable to unhealthy attractions, not that they can’t be overcome and patterns reversed with determination. Also, hormones and other environmental variables can contribute. I do tend, as does Hieromonk Damascene, to place a large responsibility on the parents’ choices and actions though. It was Esther who took the children to church, though she did seem to have some problems (how justified is not disclosed) with trusting even pastoral authority evidenced by the fact that they switched churches so often.
Together with his uncommonly loving nature, the young Eugene had strong religious inclinations. His mother, a church going Protestant Christian, was the one to encourage this interest. His father had dropped out of the Catholic Church at age eighteen. No one talked about this, and no one knew why. Although Frank Rose was not like his father in being anti-religious (Frank was not anti-anything, for that matter), he never showed any incentive to going to church. In later years he attended a Protestant church, but according to Esther this was only to please her.
“As children,” Eileen [Eugene's sister] remembers, “we went with Mother to various Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches, where Mother always sang in the choir. We usually changed churches because she had some disagreement with the minister.”
As a young boy, Eugene went to a Bible class at a Presbyterian church near his home. He often surprised his parents with his knowledge of the Scriptures, which he quoted to them from memory. According to his mother, the Old Testament books of Esther and Samuel left a deep impression on him. When he was in the eighth grade he went – entirely on his own initiative – to be baptized and confirmed as a Christian in a Methodist church.
I believe the next unexplained sentence is the real reason for why he may have chosen the wrong lifestyle.
In high school Eugene ceased to pursue an interest in religion. “Eugene was not religious at all,” recalls his best friend from that period, Walter Pomeroy [who is mentioned in the "coming out" part of the Wikipedia article]. (p.11)
Perhaps though, his parent’s failings did cause him to be disillusioned with religion (meaning corporate practice and creed, not one’s personal relationship with God). Sometimes inconsistent witnesses, whether from parents or the church one goes to, can tip the balance away from pursuing church and its values, when other issues or influences also come up. Not that that is a worthy excuse. I always wonder what would have happened in my life (like if I would have had a failed marriage) if I’d been Orthodox from the beginning. But cradle Orthodox obviously also struggle too. Lord have mercy. I do however believe that the Orthodox Church shows us the most healthy way to turn from our sins, if we will apply these measures, as did Eugene when he converted to Orthodoxy later.
I am finding this biography fascinating, and I very much appreciate Hieromonk Damascene’s diligent research, opinions, and sharing of Father Seraphim Rose’s life with us.
11.29.08
The End of That Hideous Strength
As when I read War and Peace in high school, I found the peace parts of THS more engaging than the war parts, but with this book I read both sides. I very much enjoyed Lewis’ entering into the life of women, including how we shop for clothes! If he can endure that, then I will try to be patient with the business world, especially since he wrote critically of it. It is nice to read the thoughts of someone about women who really seems to respect and appreciate them, and I mostly felt, understands them. I admit I found some of the appreciation over the top, but I hope that is my problem and not his. It was also nice to have the women kept in a lovely manor at St. Anne’s, rather than at the battle scene. At least Jane got to participate in the fight against evil by sharing her visions and getting to look for Merlin.
(The following is for those who have already read the book.) At the battle scene though, I was a bit bothered by the idea of people being possessed and losing control of their actions. I was more comfortable with the idea of how the bad guys voluntarily surrendered to evil, letting their true humanity retreat into the background. I’m not sure that the scattering at the Tower of Babel was about people not knowing what even they themselves were saying. Again I was reminded of Steve Carell (who I mentioned in my post on Perelandra that he must have read it) in Bruce Almighty (skip the monkey scene) where Bruce confuses his speech. Both were pretty funny. Also the apocalyptic scene was a bit Old Testament. I don’t know, maybe God still gets rid of people that way.I was very conscious that WWI&II England was a very near reality for Lewis. I felt better though when he described how Frost refused salvation, which gave more legitimization of free will than I thought the conversion of Jane did. Lewis’ background as an atheist offers insight to that point of view.
Like the clockwork figure he had chosen to be, his stiff body, now terribly cold, walked back into the Objective Room, poured out the petrol and threw a lighted match into the pile. Not till then did his controllers allow him to suspect that death itself might not after all cure the illusion of being a soul – nay, might prove the entry into a world where that illusion raged infinite and unchecked. Escape for the soul, if not for the body, was offered him. He became able to know (and simultaneously refused the knowledge) that he had been wrong from the beginning, that souls and personal responsibility existed. He half saw: he wholly hated. The physical torture of the burning was not fiercer than his hatred of that. With one supreme effort he flung himself back into his illusion. In that attitude eternity overtook him as sunrise in old tales overtakes and turns them into unchangeable stone.
11.28.08
Father Seraphim Rose, Dickens, Chesterton, Belloc, and Lewis
I still haven’t finished That Hideous Strength, but I’m getting excited about what I want to pick up next. 
Namely, my copy of Father Seraphim Rose, His Life and Works has been calling me, and then, or simultaneously, I think I’ll try David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens for two reasons. I have previously not been able to clear the hurdle to read Dickens after seeing the 40’s movie of DC, which was heavy on the emotional angst and exaggerated caricature side. How could it not be with W.C. Fields? Plus the assignment of Great Expectations in High School yielded mixed reviews. I don’t mind the wordiness so much as how depressing it was. I don’t remember that much of Dickens’ style, but for some reason I was more motivated to read other 19th C writers, probably because the romances were more satisfying. Dickens’ characters seemed in even gloomier circumstances with not as much emotional relief. On to my reasons why I do want to read him, which actually may be three in number. Or more. When I was converting to Orthodoxy, I read that an Athonite monk recommended David Copperfield to a novice for basic Christian teaching. That started my warming to the idea. But more recently, since having the occasion to spend a couple of hours at a stretch driving my son to college when George doesn’t go in to his office, I have been in the mood to hear words instead of songs. This is the circumstance for my listening to the podcasts I’ve mentioned in posts previous. At home I don’t listen to my pod for some reason. Wednesday I happened to think of listening to David Copperfield which is available for free on iTunes from Librivox. The guy who read chapter one, “I Was Born”, was pretty good, but chapter two’s lady, though possessing an interesting Cockneyish accent, read groups. of three words. at a time. in the exact. same. way. But still, Dickens’s humor, wit and charm show through, unlike in the movie.
The last (maybe, maybe not) reason is more convoluted. A few weeks back, on “Second Terrace” there was a post on Chesterbelloc. At the time, I wondered, which I don’t think was explained, if this word in the title was a combination of G.K. Chesteron’s (whom I woefully also haven’t read, and who was influential in C.S. Lewis’ conversion) name and someone else’s. But I shelved my curiosity in the back of my head. Then yesterday and this morning, my About.com daily classic poem email sent me a couple by Hilaire Belloc called “The Big Baboon”,
The Big Baboon is found upon
The plains of Cariboo:
He goes about with nothing on
(A shocking thing to do).
But if he dressed up respectably
And let his whiskers grow,
How like this Big Baboon would be
To Mister So-and-so!
and “The Birds”,
When Jesus Christ was four years old
The angels brought Him toys of gold,
Which no man ever had bought or sold.
And yet with these He would not play.
He made Him small fowl out of clay,
And blessed them till they flew away:
Tu creasti Domine
Jesus Christ, Thou child so wise,
Bless mine hands and fill mine eyes,
And bring my soul to Paradise.
Eureka! The other half of the combined Chesterbelloc! So I googled that combo to find the relation, and read this fine article about the two artists. This is the last paragraph,
Chesterton said that the world of Charles Dickens was the best of all impossible worlds, and something similar is often thought of his. After all, he was an optimist, he wrote a rollicking prose that often runs away from sense to become a music that mystifies and delights. He can seem so innocent, almost prelapsarian. I suspect that this is one of his greatest accomplishments.
All this (the truly last reason) is under the unfolding umbrella of the nature of this blog, which I’m seeing as being an inquiry into what to do with one’s western roots when becoming Eastern Orthodox. I currently say, make them proud.
11.26.08
That Hideous Strength, probably second to last
I have about 30 pages to go before I finish, but I wanted to stop by and write something before I go on. I assume most people have already read C.S. Lewis’ space trilogy, so I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by including this excerpt of when nonreligious Mark has been told by the bad guy to stamp on the image of Christ on the Cross.
“Well, if so, what is their objective about stamping on the face? Isn’t it just as subjective to spit on a thing like this as to worship it? I mean – [...] – if it’s only a bit of wood, why do anything about it?”
[...] Mark himself was surprised at the emotions he was undergoing. He did not regard the image with anything at all like a religious feeling. Most emphatically it did not belong to that idea of the Straight or Normal or Wholesome which had, for the last few days, been his support against what he now knew of the innermost circle at Belbury. The horrible vigour of its realism was, indeed, in its own way as remote from that Idea as anything else in the room. That was one source of his reluctance. to insult even a carved image of such agony seemed an abominable act.* But it was not the only source. With the introduction of this Christian symbol the whole situation had somehow altered. The thing was becoming incalculable. His simple antithesis of the Normal and the Diseased had obviously failed to take something into account. Why was the crucifix there? Why were more than half the poison-pictures religious? He had the sense of new parties to the conflict – potential allies and enemies which he had not suspected before. “If I take a step in any direction,” he thought, “I may step over a precipice.”
[...] He himself, he felt, as helpless as the wooden Christ. As he thought this, he found himself looking at the crucifix in a new way – neither as a piece of wood nor a monument of superstition but as a bit of history. Christianity was nonsense, but one did not doubt that the man had lived and had been executed thus by the Belbury of those days. And that, as he suddenly saw, explained why this image, thought not itself an image of the Straight or Normal, was yet in opposition to the crooked Belbury. It was a picture of what the Crooked did to the Straight – what it would do to him if he remained straight. It was, in a more emphatic sense than he had yet understood, a cross.
[...] It would be ridiculous to die for a religion one did not believe. This Man himself, on that very cross, had discovered it to be a fable, and had died complaining that the God in whom he trusted had forsaken him – had, in fact, found the universe a cheat. But this raised a question that Mark had never thought of before. Was that the moment at which to turn against the Man? If the universe was a cheat, was that a good reason for joining its side? Supposing the Straight was utterly powerless, always and everywhere certain to be mocked, tortured, and finally killed by the Crooked, what then? Why not go down with the ship? (P. 332-334)
*I think his first argument was more about iconoclasm than about making a choice for Christ, which may have been intended. There is the saint story of the monk Stephanus (p.60) making a point under iconoclastic persecution by throwing a coin with a depiction of the emperor on the ground and stepping on it instead of defacing an icon. His being imprisoned shows us how connected we all are to representations. For some reason we are pretty open to substitutes, surrogates, and ambassadors, and treat them as their prototypes pretty naturally, though icons are more than that. I think Mark would have had feelings along those lines if the image had been of Jane, or someone else suffering, as he indicated. A question popped into my mind about what would you be willing to trample underfoot – I’m presently at a point where I think anything created should not be trampled upon with anger, disrespect or disgust, or even mindlessness. We should be mindful of God’s presence in everything, and we should pray for all crooked things to be made straight.
My other thought about this crossroads, other than being glad for it, is that Christ’s divinity seems neglected, but we can’t say everything all at once.
11.24.08
“On the Soul and the Resurrection” VIII – The End or The End of Fallenness
St. Macrina wonderfully and respectfully explains how we are not our sins, and that the resulting damages caused by our passions will be washed away when we are purged.
But in that form of life, of which God Himself was the Creator, it is reasonable to believe that there was neither age nor infancy nor any of the sufferings arising from our present various infirmities, nor any kind of bodily affliction whatever. It is reasonable, I say, to believe that God was the Creator of none of these things, but that man was a thing divine before his humanity got within reach of the assault of evil; that then, however, with the inroad of evil, all these afflictions also broke in upon him. Accordingly a life that is free from evil is under no necessity whatever of being passed amidst the things that result from evil. It follows that when a man travels through ice he must get his body chilled; or when he walks in a very hot sun that he must get his skin darkened; but if he has kept clear of the one or the other, he escapes these results entirely, both the darkening and the chilling; no one, in fact, when a particular cause was removed, would be justified in looking for the effect of that particular cause. Just so our nature, becoming passional, had to encounter all the necessary results of a life of passion: but when it shall have started back to that state of passionless blessedness, it will no longer encounter the inevitable results of evil tendencies. Seeing, then, that all the infusions of the life of the brute into our nature were not in us before our humanity descended through the touch of evil into passions, most certainly, when we abandon those passions, we shall abandon all their visible results. No one, therefore, will be justified in seeking in that other life for the consequences in us of any passion. Just as if a man, who, clad in a ragged tunic, has divested himself of the garb, feels no 124more its disgrace upon him, so we too, when we have cast off that dead unsightly tunic made from the skins of brutes and put upon us (for I take the “coats of skins” to mean that conformation belonging to a brute nature with which we were clothed when we became familiar with passionate indulgence), shall, along with the casting off of that tunic, fling from us all the belongings that were round us of that skin of a brute;
Though she believes that this purging and restoration of our original state will happen to everyone, I believe that the horrid details with which she described such purging earlier on separate her “universalism” from the “A loving God won’t let anyone suffer in the life to come” associations of some. I hope that eventually everyone will be cleansed of evil and selfish ways, but I’m very sure it would be better to undergo it now rather than later.
Psalm 50. Have mercy on me, O God, according to Thy great mercy; and according to the multitude of Thy compassions blot out my transgression. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know mine iniquity, and my sin is ever before me. Against Thee only have I sinned and done this evil before Thee, that Thou mightest be justified in Thy words, and prevail when Thou art judged. For behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother bear me. For behold, Thou hast loved truth; the hidden and secret things of Thy wisdom hast Thou made manifest unto me. Thou shalt sprinkle me with hyssop, and I shall be made clean; Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow. Thou shalt make me to hear joy and gladness; the bones that be humbled, they shall rejoice. Turn Thy face away from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from Thy presence, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation, and with Thy governing Spirit establish me. I shall teach transgressors Thy ways, and the ungodly shall turn back unto Thee. Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, Thou God of my salvation; my tongue shall rejoice in Thy righteousness. O Lord, Thou shalt open my lips, and my mouth shall declare Thy praise. For if Thou hadst desired sacrifice, I had given it; with whole-burnt offerings Thou shalt not be pleased. A sacrifice unto God is a broken spirit; a heart that is broken and humbled God will not despise. Do good, O Lord, in Thy good pleasure unto Sion, and let the walls of Jerusalem be builded. Then shalt Thou be pleased with a sacrifice of righteousness, with oblation and whole-burnt offerings. Then shall they offer bullocks upon Thine altar.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, Both now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia: Glory to Thee, O God. (Three times). Lord, have mercy. (Three times).
- from The Dynamic Horologion
And for what do we leave our passionate afflictions behind?
The Divine power, in the superabundance of Omnipotence, does not only restore you that body once dissolved, but makes great and splendid additions to it, whereby the human being is furnished in a manner still more magnificent. “It is sown,” he says, “in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: it is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.” The grain of wheat, after its dissolution in the soil, leaves behind the slightness of its bulk and the peculiar quality of its shape, and yet it has not left and lost itself, but, still self-centred, grows into the ear, though in many points it has made an advance upon itself, viz. in size, in splendour, in complexity, in form. In the same fashion the human being deposits in death all those peculiar surroundings which it has acquired from passionate propensities; dishonour, I mean, and corruption and weakness and characteristics of age; and yet the human being does not lose itself. It changes into an ear of corn as it were; into incorruption, that is, and glory and honour and power and absolute perfection;
11.21.08
Reading the Lives of the Saints is Beneficial
Especially in combination with counseling with one’s Priest. I read the following from the life of St. Paisius, whom I’d only heard about peripherally, this morning after talking to my priest last night about my sadness over Isaac (related most recently two posts ago, now unpublished). He said I retreat into a hole when I get like that, of which I was not aware.
At first, he went to Kiev, where he happened to meet his sister-in-law, the widow of his older brother Archpriest John. She informed him of his mother’s sorrow when he left Kiev, and her mind seemed to be affected by her grief. Then one day an angel appeared to her and told her that instead of loving the Creator with her whole heart and soul, she loved His creation (her son) more.
I am going to try to not keep sinking into it, God helping me. Today, the Feastday of the Theotokos entering into the Temple, is much better.
H/T to Benedict Seraphim.
11.20.08
“On the Soul and the Resurrection” VII
On when the soul joins with the body,
For if we were to grant that the soul has lived previous to its body in some place of resort peculiar to itself, then we cannot avoid seeing some force in all that fantastic teaching lately discussed, which would explain the soul’s habitation of the body as a consequence of some vice. Again, on the other hand, no one who can reflect will imagine an after-birth of the soul, i.e. that it is younger than the moulding of the body; for every one can see for himself that not one amongst all the things that are inanimate or 118 soulless possesses any power of motion or of growth; whereas there is no question about that which is bred in the uterus both growing and moving from place to place. It remains therefore that we must think that the point of commencement of existence is one and the same for body and soul.
Next St. Macrina opines about why new generations proceed.
The reason for our race having some day to come to a standstill is as follows, in our opinion: since every intellectual reality is fixed in a plenitude of its own, it is reasonable to expect that humanity also will arrive at a goal (for in this respect also humanity is not to be parted from the intellectual world so that we are to believe that it will not be visible for ever only in defect, as it is now: for this continual addition of after generations indicates that there is something deficient in our race. Whenever, then, humanity shall have reached the plenitude that belongs to it, this on-streaming movement of production will altogether cease; it will have touched its destined bourn, and a new order of things quite distinct from the present precession of births and deaths will carry on the life of humanity.
One theory for why generations continue is that we are waiting for a deliverer. This is an explanation for how Mary was born in the fulness of time with all the generations before her being necessary to bring about one as she to be fit to be the Mother of God. But now that God has become Incarnate, why does the Lord tarry before the Second Coming? Indeed the earliest Christians thought they were enough, and that He would come in their lifetime.
Back to the deliverer theory, in That Hideous Strength Jane is severely chastised by a certain person who said that if she had not used birth control, an important person would have been born who would have established peace on earth. I have also heard people condemning abortion by saying that by today’s standards, Beethoven, for instance, would not have been allowed to be born. Something seems amiss by this line of reasoning, imo. It seems too utilitarian, and that it places some people as more important than others; that some people are expendable. Not that all things are equal, but is there anything more that needs to be done for the salvation of mankind by anyone? I think not or else it would not have been possible for anyone thus far to become Saints in union with God through Christ. I thank God for great men who do important things that benefit mankind, but again, did people before Edison really need electric bulbs to be saved? As much as I love the Moonlight Sonata, could I have been as happy with just Claire de Lune? I would not have made Beethoven suffer all he did just so that I could have that piece of music, well maybe for the Emperor Concerto. Doubtless many would-be criminals have probably been prevented by abortion as well, so there must be some other reason to keep producing new life, regardless of the person’s utilitarian benefit to society.
My first thought is that God wills abundance. This is why we have so many eggs and seeds in the animal and plant world. Way more than it is practical to raise to maturity. Many end up as food or compost, which is a utilitarian way to look at it too. Mostly I think it is God’s generosity and abundance of love for a multitude of objects of His affection. The number of objects speaks to the boundlessness of His ability to love. I like the idea of people as love objects better than as servants of humanity. This way human benefactors are seen as overflowing cups, spilling out the abundance of what God has given in an almost automatic way, not prey for deficient, needy vultures or leeches. So if one feels like a turnip whose blood is required, there is something wrong. The Fall for one thing. Getting to a state of blessed abundance so that one can assist in the maturation of one’s children, biological or otherwise, is the goal. It seems Orthodox to me to say that one must be fed from another overflowing person to get to this state, and be willing to share, or perhaps better, unable not to share, what one is given. Beethoven did not invent classical music by himself, but his increase in joy at producing it helps fill our cups, which hopefully, together with the other abundances graciously available, will overflow into the cups of others.
11.19.08
“On the Soul and the Resurrection” V
The next section relates the fate of the souls and atoms of the departed. St. Macrina through an explanation I’ll not relate, makes distinctions between our perception of “up”, “down” and “under” and where the soul and invisible beings reside. Hades is “down” because of the quality of those in it, rather than because it is physically below us. Same with heaven being “above” us. She also points out that God encloses all of existence, likening it to atmosphere surrounding the earth, so that what is down for one side of the earth, is actually in the middle of the sphere. Therefore a soul does not depart existence.
She then explains that the soul will remember which atoms composed her body, and be able to reassemble them upon the resurrection. She doesn’t seem to take into account (yet) the possibility of the atoms migrating into another person, then whose is it? This also doesn’t take into account that we are constantly shedding our atoms and cells and making new ones out of what we eat and drink. So it’s really more about DNA than specific atoms. However I like the focus on how our bodies come from the earth and return to it. (As an aside, this connection to the earth reminds me of the movie, “Sweet Land” which the Ochlophobist recommended. I really enjoyed it.)
St. Macrina then explains the nature of the Rich Man’s and Lazarus’ modes of existence. The former spent his short life on pleasure, and the latter in pain, and thus each inherited the opposite for eternity. She puts in the realm of choice though. I don’t remember Lazarus choosing poverty and sores, but maybe those resulted from making decisions for integrity.
This is the reason, I think, that the name of Abraham’s bosom is given to that good situation of the soul in which Scripture makes the athlete of endurance repose. For it is related of this patriarch first, of all up to that time born, that he exchanged the enjoyment of the present for the hope of the future; he was stripped of all the surroundings in which his life at first was passed, and resided amongst foreigners, and thus purchased by present annoyance future blessedness. As then figuratively we call a particular circuit of the ocean a “bosom,” so does Scripture seem to me to express the idea of those measureless blessings above by the word “bosom,” meaning a place into which all virtuous voyagers of this life are, when they have put in from hence, brought to anchor in the waveless harbour of that gulf of blessings.
She next makes an interesting point about fleshly attachments. It seems “nice” that the Rich Man is concerned about his relatives, but St. Macrina categorizes this worry as fleshly feeling as well. And that Lazarus had no such care or anxiety for things, people, or feelings of the material world, but left all behind for the “unpalpable”. Perhaps blessedness is not a feeling, and Abraham’s comfort is higher than what we with limited experience can relate to. She makes a distinction between desire and attainment. After attainment is reached, desire is no longer present, then only enjoyment and lack of want. It will dwell in perfect love.
To get to this state though, painful purging of fleshly attachments must take place, but, “Then it seems, I said, that it is not punishment chiefly and principally that the Deity, as Judge, afflicts sinners with; but He operates, as your argument has shown, only to get the good separated from the evil and to attract it into the communion of blessedness.”
The description of the painful process of purging can put the fear of God in a person. That it is impossible for any selfishness or sin to be compatible with the divine life and will prevent one from entering into it. How often are we convinced that we are cute enough even with our “little sins”? How much should we tolerate in ourselves and our environment? Is monastic single mindedness absolutely required for God to be all in us? Then all these overwhelming details can overcome one’s consciousness in contemplating possible contaminants on TV, uncharitable attitudes, what food to eat, and other ways we let ourselves escape and get distracted from God. And how much to expect of our children?
This is getting long, so I’ll continue later.
The End of the Bulgakov Conference and Beyond
Speaking of finishing things, I’ve finally gotten around to reading the last two installments of the Bulgakov Conference on The Land of Unlikeness. I am not qualified to offer a detailed scholarly analysis, but I would like to jot down some impressions. When I initially read Joshua Delpech-Ramey’s report (see my previous posts under the Sergius Bulgakov Category to the right), I was thinking he was going in the right direction, and without reviewing why I thought that, I’ll go on to say that I think he veered off course in his latest post. I would have agreed more with him a year or two ago. He seems to speak of transcending our personhood into Absolute Divine Simplicity while simultaneously recovering the magic dormant in the created universe. And while my previous impression of Janet Leslie Blumberg was of Augustinian defensiveness, I found her to tweak Joshua’s point a bit to a more personalized, humbly Derridian (whom I am inclined to interpret gently), respect for the amazing cosmos, while maintaining her own personhood in a desire for union with God, but perhaps along a too deterministic path.
So my ignorant, less informed view which is probably based on misinterpretation, is that they are right to open themselves to union with God which will lead to transcending fallen humanity, but their method seems to be alchemistic – seeking to combine physical properties in the right combination to do this. Maybe Janet redeems the goal by saying it should be done by embracing tradition rather than leaving it behind, and I am not sure if she is talking about Credal Christian tradition only, or Sacramental Tradition, which is how we find God in the elements. And maybe her determinism is about uncovering the logos in everything, which is predetermined in Christ, rather than the over-riding of free will.
And as I brought out at the end of my last post on the Conference, I am becoming more sensitive to the off-balanced method of putting the ideas “transcendence”, “Cosmic union”, “latent power” before Person. We are not to throw ourselves into the abyss of ideas expecting an explosion of power and awareness (gnosticism), though perhaps I am neglecting a proper understanding of apophaticism. Instead we are to focus on the Person of Christ, and how He reveals Himself and ourselves to us. I have enjoyed the positive attitude conveyed in works like the above, and think there is merit to it. We are to be joined to love and awareness, but I am beginning to think it will be more concrete than how it came across. I’m thinking a hierarchy of God in Trinitarian relation (which Bulgakov has some valuable things to say about), repentant man, the powers, and material creation will keep us from going off the deep end.
Which brings me to the latest post, Revolution, Paradox, and the Christian Tradition: A Chestertonian debate between John Milbank and Slavoj Zizek, which may make the corrections, or maybe just clarifications, I have begun to intuit. I also value the scholarship in the above posts as I am coming to appreciate reading a wide range of bright people, even if we don’t have the same order of idealogical priorities. I also find their dispassionate and calm relating of atheists’ points very refreshing.
11.18.08
“On the Soul and the Resurrection” IV
There are so many things I’ve started and not finished yet. The other day in the Aristotle post I mentioned that life, unlike fiction, is open ended. Later I had the thought that fiction provides completion, and even though our lives will never reach an end, there is a beginning, middle, and end to our tasks. A well-woven tapestry must be completed and bound, a meal isn’t over until the dishes are cleaned and put away, and our children must be tucked in each night, warmed and filled. It is important to finish things, so I will try to finish St. Gregory of Nyssa’s “On the Soul and the Resurrection“, Plato’s Republic, and C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength before I move on to something else.
I believe I last left off (if the posts under the category “St. Gregory of Nyssa” are filed correctly) about three-eighths through with St. Macrina saying that passions are not the soul, but are like a wart on top of it. She described how our rational faculties are needed to keep the passions at bay and to use our fears and other feelings appropriately, “Thus too, with ourselves, if these instincts are not turned by reasoning into the right direction, and if our feelings get the mastery of our mind, the man is changed from a reasoning into an unreasoning being, and from godlike intelligence sinks by the force of these passions to the level of the brute.”
She then illustrates further the nature of the source of passions with the parable of the wheat and the tares. The wheat and tares are our desires for Beauty (the Good) and for impassioned pleasure. (If desired, read the more complete explanation in the part before this section,)
on account of this the wise Husbandman leaves this growth that has been introduced amongst his seed to remain there, so as to secure our not being altogether stripped of better hopes by desire having been rooted out along with that good-for-nothing growth. If our nature suffered such a mutilation, what will there be to lift us up to grasp the heavenly delights? If love is taken from us, how shall we be united to God? If anger is to be extinguished, what arms shall we possess against the adversary? Therefore the Husbandman leaves those bastard seeds within us, not for them always to overwhelm the more precious crop, but in order that the land itself (for so, in his allegory, he calls the heart) by its native inherent power, which is that of reasoning, may wither up the one growth and may render the other fruitful and abundant: but if that is not done, then he commissions the fire to mark the distinction in the crops. If, then, a man indulges these affections in a due proportion and holds them in his own power instead of being held in theirs, employing them for an instrument as a king does his subjects’ many hands, then efforts towards excellence more easily succeed for him. But should he become theirs, and, as when any slaves mutiny against their master, get enslaved by those slavish thoughts and ignominiously bow before them; a prey to his natural inferiors, he will be forced to turn to those employments which his imperious masters command. This being so, we shall not pronounce these emotions of the soul, which lie in the power of their possessors for good or ill, to be either virtue or vice. But, whenever their impulse is towards what is noble, then they become matter for praise, as his desire did to Daniel, and his anger to Phineas, and their grief to those who nobly mourn. But if they incline to baseness, then these are, and they are called, bad passions.
Thank the Lord for this merciful approach. If we mistakenly and deludedly follow the wrong object as the fulfillment of our desires, He does not cut out or mutilate our ability to love. How then would we ever love God? What to do while still in the deluded state? We can’t just stop loving something. I think we have to be convinced of a more worthy object, or way of loving first. Love seeks perfection and fulfillment. We may rationally realize that God can only provide this fulfilment, but our emotional experience may tell us otherwise, until we have a better experience with Him. Or we may have rotating experiences of pleasure with God, then pleasure with something else, then pleasure with God again, depending on the circumstances. We may feel that this is not right, but during the attraction to something else, it feels like you have to cut out your heart completely and go numb. It feels like death, and it is depressing. Also with this is the thought that cutting ones self off completely from the enjoyment of created things is a gnostic, creation-vilifying error. God made and loves the thing that gives us joy and pleasure. So then it seems a matter of the use of the thing. Is there a way to love and enjoy it while not breaking commandments? One should not idolize, lie, steal, covet, murder, or dishonor others while interacting with it. One should be in obedience to God through prayer, with appropriate fasting in order to keep mindful of His presence which should instruct one’s conscience. But still we are prone to delusion, so one must keep open with one’s priest if there is doubt whether one is indulging in the passions instead of rejoicing with thankfulness in God’s creation. It is very difficult for me to comprehend the distinct energies of God active in creation. It seems an either/or situation, which causes opposition and conflict that results in mutilation of ones desire-er, or the object, in order to stay true to God. This is the nature of iconoclasm, I think. Instead, all of creation can be seen as an icon of Christ. The Orthodox Church shows us how to venerate icons, but they are sanctified and holy in the Church…
I’m glad to get back to St. Gregory and his sister St. Macrina, and to learn from the example of their relationship. They do a conscience good.
