What’s in the closet?

by Andrea Elizabeth

While driving my daughter to community college, I listened to part of the Diane Rehm show where pannelists were discussing what is being done with all the information that is being gathered about us nowadays from our smartphones and debit cards. While giving us new access to each other, information, goods and services, these things give sellers and other information aggregators access to our habits and activities. It is a two edged sword. The people who called in worried about privacy issues were kindly dismissed as conspiracy theorists, and told that this information gathering is also used to save the lives of soldiers and lost children. This reminds me of the story of St Kilda island where medical care for dying children made the inhabitants give up their ancient way of life. I hear that even the Amish use modern medicine’s technologies. With x-rays, MRI’s and DNA interpretation, there isn’t much privacy left. Yet somehow with all this, we still can’t peek into God or the true nature of ourselves. This takes grace.

Winter’s Bone

by Andrea Elizabeth

Winter’s Bone is another look at female submission. Middlemarch (see post below) provided the traditional British perspective, this movie is set in the Ozarks. I’ve been thinking lately about my affinity for British traditional culture. Winter’s Bone brings home my affinity with the South. 3/4 of my grandparents are from the South, with their ancestors hailing from Arkansas and Mississippi. (The other one was the son of a German immigrant) A couple of centuries before that they came from England and Scotland, hence the aforementioned affinity, I suppose. I’ve also heard that British culture is more mirrored in the south than in the north. There are differences, however. Lording it over a person has a different character in England than in the southern backwoods. Southern aggression is less verbal and more violent.

Winter’s Bone redeems this aggression somewhat, however. Ree, the female lead, has to come to terms with the worst in southern culture, but she ends up somehow making me feel good about it. Lately, for example, I’ve worried about the effect on the Appalacian trees, not to mention the Sequoia’s in California, that air polluting older vehicles have. Winter’s Bone makes having a nice, new, clean, fuel efficient car look like a sell-out of one’s soul.

Dreaming 2

by Andrea Elizabeth

Without traffic, it is an hour and 10 minutes to St. Maximus the Confessor Orthodox Church in America. Each time I’ve attended, I’ve felt it very much worth the drive to Denton County. However, there are other things to consider when one would thinks they would like to attend two services a day. One of these considerations is that Parker County, where I live, which is the county to the west of Tarrant, which is the one west of Dallas County, doesn’t have an Orthodox Church. Last fall I shared this dream of a semi-monastic community in my neighborhood. Problem is, the residents would have to have a job, and the jobs are in Tarrant County. The property I described that is in my neighborhood just came up for sale last weekend. The newish, niceish house is 2,600 sq ft, there’s a “bunkhouse” with kitchen and bathroom where the owners lived while they were building, and has 13 acres of mostly cleared dry land, and a little cow pond. The other problem is, it’s listed at $495,000. Seems to me only 4 to 6 single, co-ed adults could segregatedly live in the existing buildings, so at most, that could be over $100,000 a piece to live in pretty shared environs, which is hard to do when one is used to independence. I don’t know how families could work yet. Here’s a wider shot taken last fall, for perspective. I think you can zoom in and see the bunkhouse just to the left of the main house, and to the right of the pump house or whatever that is.

But here’s another idea. On the Parker County/Hood County border to our south, 15 minutes away, is this cute little structure. It’s oldish sign says Temple Hall United Methodist Church, and their internet listing says they meet on Sundays at 11am. I wonder if they’d rent it out during other times. Methodists are open-minded, right? Probly not twice a day, but one has to start somewhere. I wonder if Methodists like icons.

When the pursuit of virtue by society turned to self-preservation

by Andrea Elizabeth

Some of the audio, not to mention the concepts, is a bit hard to understand, but I find the following idea from Leo Strauss’ lecture on “Plato’s Political Philosophy: Apology and Crito,” (h/t Gabriel) the first of the series, enlightening. I hope it is the point he was making.

Apparently Professor Strauss believes that Niccolo Machiavelli ushered in a shift from political or social science being based on virtue to it being based on circumstantial realism/”hedonism”. The virtues became imaginary and unattainable and a more pragmatic approach was adopted. I believe he’s saying that a person’s drive for self-preservation became the goal, not the attainment of the virtuous, ideal telos of all mankind. I like being able to pin this shift on one person and one time in history, which not all agree with Professor Strauss as occurring, but it makes comparing and contrasting, and closure easier.  Even if Machiavelli is being used as a scapegoat, what should he care at this point? The ones who disagree probably don’t think he’s the model citizen either.

I have at times considered that a selfish focus can lead to good. Nice trees and shrubs make people want to shop at certain locations, thus it is profitable for merchants to beautify the polis. However, setting the bar as low as Machiavelli does degrades humanity, and thus stifles it.

On the other hand, idealistic people can become too narrow in what they think the ideal is. The ideal man or woman behaves thus and has a certain kind of appearance. It can get pretty discriminatory and limiting. Louisa May Alcott seems to have suffered from not fitting into an ideal mold in her father’s comparison. He believed his fair hair and mild manners were perfect, whereas her dark looks and passionate manner, being the opposite, must be evil. “What Would Jesus Do” also presumes that a person can imagine the ideal on their own. We can’t completely discount this because our nature is in the divine image. Balancing this with our sinful habits and delusions is the challenge.

Another point Professor Strauss made while talking about how the idea of human nature changed with Machiavelli, was that man began to be seen as an individual and not as a social being. In his desire for self-preservation, he saw after the fact that he needed to be social. I guess this goes along with believing sin is natural. In the Orthodox view, sin is unnatural. Thus, if desiring society is virtuous, then individualism is sinful and not natural. This also fits with the idea of Being as Communion, which I haven’t read.

One can easily idealize and imagine what the perfect society would be like, but its virtuous reality may be far different from that. As long as we strive for it however, by grace we’ll attain it someday – maybe in the next life.

More thoughts on community

by Andrea Elizabeth

Ideally, community is with one’s immediate family, neighbors, and extended family. In the Old Country, this was pretty much one’s only option, though some people did migrate for various reasons. Consider Abraham. In America the pioneers left family behind and were driven west motivated by hunger for more private space. Considering the overcrowding of the cities they came from, I don’t think we should be too hard on them for that, the way they crowded out the Indians notwithstanding. Nevertheless this is the American tradition. Once they had their plot of agricultural land, they banded together with whomever happened to move in the adjoining acreage. This was because they needed each other for survival as was brought up last post where it was also pointed out that today we don’t seem to need these relationships so much. Now we get our necessities more remotely via online shopping at the extreme end of the spectrum. This makes relationships seem more optional. I don’t want to completely vilify this modern development because I think we can romanticize the past arrangements too much. Sometimes people had to flee communities because of dire circumstances, not because they were evil people for not appreciating the ideal clan situation.

Still we are a people of community. With ease of shopping, we can find our community at a distance and according to our individual taste. One can criticize this as being selfish and untraditional, but one can also point to people throughout history who were able to buy imported spices and meet imported people at the market and such. I don’t think anyone ever completely shunned imported things just for being imported. I was surprised to see the Old Believers using plastic laundry baskets in this video series (h/t Gabriel). Speaking of these Old Believers, their community was very selective, and not just based on what was locally available. Sometimes imported elements are needed because they represent one’s past roots, which of course are not all bad. I suppose every Christian who does not live in Jerusalem, Antioch, or maybe Rome has an imported religion, though in Rome some Orthodox Churches are there through more modern importation.

With all this, everyone has to figure out how to live where they are and with what they bring in. What if they are bringing in something that is at odds with what was there before? The American tradition is an enhanced sense of the tension between what the Protestants believe is right, and freedom to choose something else, even the lifestyle the Protestants abandoned in the Industrial Revolution.

Those of other traditions, like Orthodox Jews, often established their own isolated communities to keep their traditional way of life in this country. Others decided to look and act more like Protestant Americans. Of course Protestantism isn’t the complete opposite of Orthodoxy so one has to be careful. Nevertheless, converting to another tradition always places one in a dubious position. Both the cradles and the former community doubt if it should or could be pulled off. Probably not, but we stepchildren exist and have to figure something out.

I have a dream

by Andrea Elizabeth

For the past week I’ve been obsessed by an idea. The possibility of neighboring acreage with a newly built house coming up for sale and what I would do with it has lit me up. Before this, I’ve had my eye on the highest hill around, 6 miles from my house, as being the perfect spot for a traditional Orthodox Church out here, a light shining in the wilderness of ranch-land to the south and Victorian houses to the north. I’ve lived among both, but have been too poor to own either. Now I live among the ranches, one of which through the grapevine I’ve heard is coming up for sale. My current idea is not as traditional as my other one.

It’s actually not my idea. A few years ago a family who used to go to my Church moved back to east Texas where they came from. They would like to purchase some acreage out there, and have a few families live on it and jointly grow their own food. My idea is similar, but a little different. I would like to start a semi-monastic community where people of various backgrounds, but who have monastic leanings, live together either in a multi-dwelling structure to conserve the land for farming, or possibly individual cells. They keep their own finances, cars, and jobs however. Everyone shares the mortgage payment and helps with the garden and the cow. I like the idea of growing towards self-sustainment and being off the grid, but that would not be the main goal. The main purpose is to hopefully have twice daily readers services together in a cool little chapel, possibly like the one above. If everyone lived together, I think they would be more likely to walk together every day to the beautiful little wooden structure and participate. We would still go to our main parish for the less often offered services however. Maybe someday when that Church is more equipped, they could afford to have us get our own priest out here, and then maybe build that traditional Church I mentioned above. Meanwhile I would like for a monastic type person to be able to find a compatible lifestyle, but that strictness would not be required of everyone. There would be some rules however mainly regarding purity and sharing of duties. I’m not sure if married couples or families would live on the property or be encouraged to live in a house close-by like we do. I love the idea of being able to walk to the chapel to pray everyday and help with the grounds, animals, chapel, finances, etc. Other more distant people could commute to the services if they wanted to. There are many people who live in isolating circumstances whom I think would be greatly helped in this type of situation if it were done right.