Guaranteed happiness

by Andrea Elizabeth

In Bleak House by Charles Dickens, Esther is a young woman who was unloved in her younger life. It is natural that she would crave love as a result. Her character is such that she doesn’t solicit it, however. She focuses more on loving others. When love is expressed, though, this is her reaction, “Well! It was only their love for me, I know very well, and it is a long time ago. I must write it even if I rub it out again, because it gives me so much pleasure. They said there could be no east wind [John Jarndyce's term for bad feelings] where Somebody was; they said that wherever Dame Durden [their pet name for Esther] went, there was sunshine and summer air.”

What does love mean? That you will always be enough for someone and they will never need anything else? That you will save each other? The way the story plays out indicates that this is not the case. Only the characters who have consistently exhibited strength of character have happy endings. It is not their strength alone that saves them, but it seems a belief in cosmic karma guarantees that they will get the help they need eventually. I have read that Dickens was a universalist. I don’t know how that plays into his pattern of bad characters getting knocked off.

This is somewhat related in my mind to Whitney Houston’s funeral. I was impressed with T.D. Jakes’ sermon about universal resurrection. It is true that all the dead will be raised. But no one talked about Judgment Day. The last sermon, at the end of the 3 hours, given by an Atlanta pastor who was Whitney’s last, I believe, only addressed the prosperity doctrine. I cannot understand what it has to do with her death or the afterlife. I could stretch it into some universalist belief, I suppose, that God only wants everyone eternally happy and well-fed. This is true, but it takes something on our part. How much and when are the universal questions. The Sinner’s Prayer? Another chance after death of intellectual acceptance of Jesus as personal savior with a guaranteed result? Or only upon repentance and constant vigilance in this life, with some trials still to go though after death?

I was so hopeful for T.D. Jakes being on to something that I looked him up yesterday. Oh yes, he’s in nearby Dallas. Oh, he’s into the prosperity doctrine too. Nevermind.

Essence and energies, fatherhood and baseball

by Andrea Elizabeth

I have explored the idea that the essence/energies distinction enables multiple objects to co-exist. One thing doesn’t get totally absorbed or annihilated in union with another. One popular way of self-preservation is to place oneself as preeminent. This has the effect of annihilating the other instead. Or one can disappear, so to speak, in order to let the other have a place. But is this spoiling the other? Or does it place too great a burden on the other to take turns so that they don’t feel selfish. Ideally both feel fulfilled in relationship. This is where needs are met without selfishness. Is a child selfish when it is receiving food and shelter from its parents? They shouldn’t feel that way. Parents seem to hold that over their head as a manipulative tool though when they imply that the children owe them for it. When someone is in need, we owe them to help fulfill it. To not do so is neglect. To do so doesn’t mean that more is owed back. “Each according to their need” is provided by the Father with human cooperation. To not cooperate is to be in a person’s debt. “Forgive us our debts,” in Orthodox teaching, is about when we don’t give to others according to their need when it was ours to fulfill it, not necessarily for a breach of voluntary contract. Selfishness is when needs are met in sinful ways. When we take things that aren’t ours.

I just saw a PBS documentary about a sperm donor and his “children”, who as older teenagers have sought him out after he revealed his donor number. He is basically a beach hippie who had been an “exotic dancer” and was also somewhat of a philosopher. He believed most things weren’t real and wouldn’t last (annihilation), but also in “I”ness (everything but me will be annihilated). He also had an icon of Mary who he considered the cosmic mother, and he regularly prayed for and blessed, after he smoked something out of a pop bottle contraption, the mothers and all the countless souls that had emanated from him. Four of the donor siblings (a fifth didn’t want to go) said they felt a positive energy after they arranged a reunion with him. And they also knew not to expect anything from him (except honesty), but felt good that he was there, nice spirited, if paranoid about conspiracy theories, and not some disembodied liquid in a frozen test tube. If he believed in the I-ness of himself and other souls and animals, it seems he did not believe in cosmic re-absorption. Maybe he believed in the beatific vision of essences that does not share energies. Regarding other things being of limited existence, he may have somewhat of a point. The children that he spawned are eternal beings whom he helped bring into the world. They have grown up with the physical gap of the lack of his presence, but did seem to have somewhat of his spirit about them, which they commented on. The California donor facility also played a part in their conception, including the rooms with the visual aids. I tried to observe any affect that had on the kids, and it’s hard to sort out if the way the girls dressed was a result of that or because almost all available clothing is of that type these days. Yet to have that be such an exaggerated aspect of their origination must do something. However, I got the sense that 20 years later, it had been diluted, if not annihilated altogether.

Regarding the mothers, they had entered into an agreed-upon contract with him to preserve his anonymity with no expectations, and desired no continued involvement. All but one, the one whose daughter had initiated the reunions, appeared at least hesitant about their children’s curiosity and subsequent actions. That same daughter was the most open to subsequent involvement while the others kept a safe, “oh, so that’s who he is” attitude.

I didn’t post this the other day when I wrote it, and now, after watching the exhausting game 6 of the World Series, I’ll tie this post into baseball. The pitcher is like the father. The best ones put a lot of action on the ball. It is not a piece of trash that they are getting rid of and don’t care about after it leaves their possession. Some pray over it, some talk to it, but all have a committed interest in how it leaves their hand and how what they do to it will affect its future. The batter is like the mother, very tuned into the pitcher and how they can best receive and also guide the ball. The outfielders are like the community who want the ball properly placed and guided back to the pitcher. Homeruns, well I guess they go to heaven. In the world, that would be that they are able to transcend all obstacles and reach new heights of achievement. It’s sad that the pitcher and batter are often on different teams. That could be like divorce or even the situation above. Teams oppose each other because of the fall and ultimately the battle with demons. Both those in your own team and those in the other’s. Either way, nothing is annihilated. Everything has eternal significance in that it influences the course of the game, even if some things are forgotten, or are very distant, for now.

death and taxes

by Andrea Elizabeth

It was jolting when after KERA’s sensitive documentary on people’s spiritual journeys after 9/11, they immediately air a show on finance. They had talked about how people got in touch with the importance of love and kindness over materialism, then, money starts floating through the air to promote the next show. Yuck.

I remember being told as a teenager after Christian summer camp that it’s hard to go back to the world after these mountain-top, spiritual experiences. Being confronted with death isn’t exactly a mountain-top experience, but it is a very spiritual one. Our culture tells us that we have to put these things behind us and re-engage with the world’s concerns. Materialism and entertainment seem to be at the top of this list. The family members interviewed on NBC last night demonstrated slightly different degrees of separation from 9/11. What happened 10 years ago was still very vivid to all of them, but one lady in particular seemed to be having a hard time coping. She has remained immersed in the sadness of it.

I wonder if there is a way to not despair and to not get distracted by the world’s concerns at the same time. The Fathers tell us to keep death in our minds at all times. Not a morbid fascination, but an awareness that this present circumstance has more dimensions to it than the one we often get caught up in. Somehow death can illuminate these other dimensions. In remembering those who have passed on, hopefully we can see clearer those who are still with us.

One of the most touching reflections on the KERA show was about the people who jumped out of the windows to escape the fire. How their holding hands with others on the way out was a picture of how humans can connect and find love and support amidst the most desperate circumstances. Another person said their leaving the fire in that manner demonstrated a choice to be placed in the hands of God instead of the fire.

There was also a discussion on religious tolerance. One priest generated controversy by wanting to share the pulpit with other religious leaders. I don’t agree with sharing the pulpit in Church, but I do believe God cares for everyone and that he will probably save, or at least give more people the opportunity to be saved than our exclusive claims can suggest. I think at least Orthodoxy best explains and contextualizes what is more commonly experienced. 9/11 brought people in touch with death in a unique, attention-getting way. People felt more connected with the departed in their efforts to save, rescue, and recover people they cared about more that day than they realized. Now, how to remain in that awareness.

Of course we can’t totally forget about money, and even happier thoughts. Perhaps the re-designers of Ground Zero are finding the right balance. It looks like they are keeping the original craters where the twin towers stood empty with water curtains on the basement walls. People describe those sites as sacred and I agree that it shouldn’t be covered up. But they are building an even taller office building right next to it. This is an act of defiance that I agree with. It seems resurrectional to me. As did the two beams of light where the towers once stood that they displayed at the original memorial service. There is a proper way to think about money in context with love for others, but mostly I think finances are way too talked about. Lord have mercy.

I walk alone

by Andrea Elizabeth

My middle children’s video of their friend’s Winter Retreat’s New Years talent contribution of Pat Donahue’s silly rewrite of the song, “Sukiyaki”, to “Sushi Yucky”, inspired me to get back in touch with the only Japanese language song to hit #1 on the American music charts. This youtube rendition of the original Sukiyaki includes an English translation and information about the singer, Kyu Sakamoto.

From this I found out that he was a Japanese actor and singer, and that he “worked hard for young, old, and handicapped.” Then it gets really sad, as if the lyrics aren’t surprisingly sad enough given the peppiness of the music. “In 1985, Sakamoto was one of 520 killed in the crash of Japan airlines 123. Thirty-two minutes elapsed from the time the bulkhead failed to the time of the crash. Long enough for Sakamoto to scribble a shaky farewell to his wife.”

I don’t remember hearing about this crash, but I missed a lot during those years as I worked 3-11 shift and missed the news. Wikipedia gives even sadder details of the botched rescue after it talks about the technical reasons for the crash.

Delayed rescue operation

United States Air Force controllers at Yokota Air Force base situated near the flight path of Flight 123 had been monitoring the distressed aircraft’s calls for help. They maintained contact throughout the ordeal with Japanese flight control officials and made their landing strip available to the airplane. After losing track on radar, a U.S. Air Force C-130 from the 345 TAS was asked to search for the missing plane. The C-130 crew was the first to spot the crash site 20 minutes after impact, while it was still daylight. The crew radioed Yokota Air Base to alert them and directed an USAF Huey helicopter from Yokota to the crash site. Rescue teams were assembled in preparation to lower Marines down for rescues by helicopter tow line. The offers by American forces of help to guide Japanese forces immediately to the crash site and of rescue assistance were rejected by Japanese officials. Instead, Japanese government representatives ordered the U.S. crew to keep away from the crash site and return to Yokota Air Base, stating the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) were going to handle the entire rescue alone.

Although a JSDF helicopter eventually spotted the wreck during the night, poor visibility and the difficult mountainous terrain prevented it from landing at the site. The pilot of the JSDF helicopter reported from the air that there were no signs of survivors. Based on this report, JSDF ground personnel did not set out to the actual site the night of the crash. Instead, they were dispatched to spend the night at a makeshift village erecting tents, constructing helicopter landing ramps and in other preparations, all some 63 kilometers from the wreck. JSDF did not set out for the actual crash site until the following morning. Medical staff later found a number of passengers’ bodies whose injuries indicated that they had survived the crash only to die from shock or exposure overnight in the mountains while awaiting rescue.^[5] One doctor said “If the discovery had come ten hours earlier, we could have found more survivors.” ^[12]

Yumi Ochiai, one of the four survivors out of 524 passengers and crew, recounted from her hospital bed that she recalled bright lights and the sound of helicopter rotors shortly after she awoke amid the wreckage, and while she could hear screaming and moaning from other survivors, these sounds gradually died away during the night.

May their memory be eternal.

In thinking about this and yesterday’s post about not caring anymore, firstly, I like the Orthodox habit of remembering the dead. It is not in a hopeless or angry way. One could get caught up in blaming those who could have prevented the crash and the rescue of more injured people, but I’d rather remember the departed and lend their cries and scared last minutes a listening ear. I want to learn to listen in silent understanding. I think that’s what victims need more than outrage and pity. I haven’t heard that the Theotokos berated the Romans or the Jews or demanded vengeance or a law suit. She silently witnessed what happened to her son and understood as much as she could what his life and death meant. One needs to understand how the Orthodox view Christ’s and others’ deaths to gain the right perspective and response.

About the song, it doesn’t seem all that self-pitying to me, but a brave attempt to not wallow in it and to seek understanding from the stars and the moon and the seasons.

My heart will go on (I like the song anyway)

by Andrea Elizabeth

Yesterday, after about nine years, I went back to an Arlington doctor. He was one of the doctors that I knew from my days in Arlington Memorial Hospital.

Arlington Memorial Hospital is in some ways more home to me than my parents house was. When I was 12 and my elbow was crushed by a horse that loved the barn more than me, that hospital received me and kept me for almost a month and with subsequent surgery and rehab, fixed it, well enough. When I graduated from high school I went to the Arlington Memorial Hospital School of Vocational Nursing in their basement. When I graduated, I worked for a year in their LVN pool as insurance companies would no longer let them hire LVNs as full time staff nurses. The class after mine was the last before the school closed. After I received my RN license, I worked in their Neonatatal Intensive Care Unit. I met my ex in their parking garage before work one day. I had emergency surgery to remove an ovary there. A few years later I quit working right before my son was born, but I had him there. All five of my children were born there, including the miscarried one by D&C and my stillborn son, Isaac, who was induced. My body doesn’t acknowledge the death of babies and wants to keep them. It’s fine with going into labor with term, live babies.

This doctor was in the same practice as the now moved-on doctor who delivered Rebecca, my last. I had switched doctors after Isaac, who was born two months before Rebecca came along. Still he is connected with my days of dreaming of being a missionary nurse, and with the death of those dreams. I almost cried in the office as I thought of Isaac and how I quit nursing.

Of course there are reasons. The part in Crime and Punishment where Raskolnikov cut through the reasons Sonya was in her current lifestyle and pointed to her fatal choice is now on my mind. Did I quit or was I not cut out for nursing? Did I let Isaac down or was there something I could have done? I’m pretty good at torturing myself, but I think I’ve dealt with the guilt for the most part and made peace with my past. But seeing the Dr. yesterday made me think about what if I had stayed in nursing through it all. My nursing career is another thing I mourn, stressful as it was.

Lately I’ve been considering loss and bonding and wondering what they do to a person. When we bond with something, I think it becomes part of us. When that thing is removed, for whatever reason, I think part of our hearts are removed with it. For someone who has a lost a lot of things (a baby, family members, a marriage, a dream home, a career, the ability to conceive, which I’m facing now, and lost youth), no matter whose fault any of them were and are, this can seem pretty damaging to a heart. Like chunk after chunk of it has been removed. What happens to those chunks, nevermind how one survives on left-over fragments?

Despite dealing with all this sad stuff, and being a three-quarter-time melancholic since my youth, I am also somewhat of an optimist on other days, and am capable of pulling myself out of it. When I want to. Here we go.

If God’s energies are eternal, and if lost people are created and sustained and resurrected by his energies, and even lost aspirations and the love of things like houses are realities because of his energies, then the parts of our hearts given to them are eternal and not gone either. Even though it feels like they are gone today.

The inferiority of changeableness

by Andrea Elizabeth

From Kierkegaard’s exposition on Plato’s Phaedo in The Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates, p. 73:

Now, the soul has the greatest similarity to what is divine, immortal, rational, homogeneous, indissoluble, and is ever self-consistent and invariable; whereas the body has the greatest similarity to that which is human, mortal, irrational, multiform, dissoluble, and never self-consistent (p47). But here we come to an equally abstract view of the existence of the soul and its relation to the body. To be more specific, this view is by no means guilty of tangibly assigning the soul a specific place in the body, but on the other hand it does disregard, and completely, the soul’s relation to the body, and the soul, instead of moving freely in the body produced by it, continually tries to sneak out of the body. [...] That the soul is not compounded is quite admissible, but as long as there is no more explicit answer to the question in what sense it is not compounded and, in another sense, to what extent it is a summary of qualifications, the definition of the soul naturally becomes totally negative, and its immortality becomes just as langweilig (boring) as the eternal number one.

Here I assume he is comparing the soul to Absolute Divine Simplicity or the One. Earlier he talked about all the virtues being many but ultimately one, but I’ll leave that for now, except that it is relevant to the discussion in Phaedo about how one’s acquisition of the virtues affects one’s afterlife. There is a part at the end of Phaedo that talks about the unvirtuous soul, though remaining a fully intact soul, is pretty much shunned in the afterlife. The idea that an individual soul can be shunned by other souls seems to place the soul more in the realm of the particular, or diverse, or many, than the universal one. Perhaps the virtuous souls are absorbed by the abstract, and as Kierkegaard surmises, the negative One, and the unvirtuous ones are left to their diverse independence. I can see the appeal of licentiousness in that case.

The problem with the ever shrinking amount of abstract forms in the ascent of the hierarchy to the One is that it has trouble reconciling and maintaining the many. In the essence/energy distinction, the many are retained, but in order to do this the proper Ordo Theologiae must be assumed. Instead of going from essence to activity to person, person is the starting point who determines activities according to nature, unoriginate in the Father’s case, created in ours. A person is many and one. A person has a vast amount of energies which enable him to eat, think, gaze, etc. all at once. There is one human nature, which Yannaras explains in the link, and I think says is more about how we are and do the many things in a personal way. An individual is one person who has a human will to choose the different activities, good or bad. If God is seen as an essence first, then reducing His component parts into one poses problems, the first being boredom to Søren and me. His essence, beyond beingly being as Dr. Jones says (see the St. Dionisius category), is the mode in which He personally moves, but stays immovable, which gets us back to Kierkegaard.

The supposed superiority of the soul is due to its immutability compared to the body’s being subject to change. Likewise a soul that is governed by a passionate body harnesses itself to changeableness and does not achieve a good end in the afterlife, even if it of itself does not change, however that may be. St. Maximus says that it must attain a habit of virtue – virtue achieved not only internally, but through the body. A properly governed body positively affects the everlasting stable soul. Thus it can be said that in some respect, in that case, the body shares in the soul’s stability. This is the point in unGnostic theosis. The body comes to partake of unchangeableness. This is why many bodies of the Saints remain incorrupt.

In the above I am borrowing the idea of the immutable soul from Plato. While I believe the soul has a beginning, I agree it doesn’t have an end. The above doesn’t depend on the idea of a stable soul that doesn’t change and which is not in and of itself affected by the body, but can also be applied to the notion that a person – body, soul and spirit or whatever three parts you want to say make up a human person – was created to achieve a state of unchangeableness. “Ever moving rest” as St. Maximus calls it. Adam in the Garden was yet to attain it in that he was immature and needed to develop stable maturity even before he sinned. He had a gnomic will that had to deliberate in a less than omniscient state. God, even as Incarnate Son, does not have a gnomic will, in that He is omniscient and doesn’t have to blindly choose between good and bad options. He knows all the good options for sure. In partaking of His nature by grace (we will always have a human nature but can be joined to God’s divine nature through His communicating energies), we can attain a conscious stability which extends to our human bodies as illustrated above.

If one does not achieve theosis in this life, then their body at the final resurrection, I suppose, will be unused to being joined to a dispassionate soul, or at least to God’s kingdom. Even if the soul is not dispassionate, contrary to Plato, I think that with the removal of sinful options that one is accustomed to will cause torment in the soul and the body. This lack of options is not due to their being none but One, but due to there being no sin in heaven. This has been explained as the existential state of hell by some. I have heard from western sources that there is sin in their idea of a physical hell, but how that brings suffering I’d have to look more into.

As far as the soul seeking to go in and out of the body, before death there is a demonic way that can occur, but there is also a Christian way. Many saints while still living have trans-located, but their appearance in other places was not disembodied. I do not know the nature of their being in another place at the same time other than that. It appears though that we are created to partake of a certain amount of divine omnipresence.

Death and Dying

by Andrea Elizabeth

How sad the death of Socrates. He passively received perceived deliverance from his earthly bonds by power of the authority of the state. To continue the contrast that was begun in the comments of this post:

A person who dies a “natural death” at old age hopefully has lived a holy life in communion with God so as to receive eternal blessedness. Though his body be weary, I believe he will still anxiously await reunion with it in the final glorious resurrection.

A person who suffers an early death by disease, accident, or murder to me is given an extra grace due to their not having the opportunity, through no fault of their own, to develop and practice the habit of repentance and holiness throughout the usual length of days, which for some reason is enough. One should learn obedience through all seasons of life, even old age.

A person who suffers an early death through a mistaken notion that escape from earthly, bodily struggle will bring relief will have a much harder time of it in the afterlife. I don’t know enough about toll-houses or hell to comment further on this. Nevertheless, may God have mercy on their souls.

A person who suffers death at the hands of the state or even an individual for crimes truly committed hopefully can find enough remorse and repentance before they die to be like the wise thief who was crucified with Christ.

I usually consider that my death will be described in the first two statements. Perhaps humility is learning to have the fear of the third and to consider myself deserving of the first part and conformed to the last part of the fourth.

Why we die

by Andrea Elizabeth

Though distracted by life, the Olympics and Pysanky, still in my mind is finding the source for the idea that we now die, not because of sin, but because Christ died. From today’s Scripture reading I came across the following, but it seems to point to Christians, and not all mankind.

2 Cor. 4:8 We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair;
9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed-
10 always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.
11 For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
12 So then death is working in us, but life in you.
13 And since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, “I believed and therefore I spoke,” we also believe and therefore speak,
14 knowing that He who raised up the Lord Jesus will also raise us up with Jesus, and will present us with you.
15 For all things are for your sakes, that grace, having spread through the many, may cause thanksgiving to abound to the glory of God.

______

Even so, all are raised because of Christ (I wont say in Christ, even though I think to some extent it is true), but not all attain His likeness or as St. Maximus says, achieve ever well being.

Still hoping to find more in Olivier Clement.

Nodar is not forgotten

by Andrea Elizabeth

It’s been a week since Nodar Kumaritashvilli died on the luge course. He went home to Georgia Wednesday and will be buried tomorrow. I read in Owen’s comments that he was an Orthodox Christian. I respect those who think the luge should have been closed down in honor of his death, as well as those who went on to compete in his name and in a spirit of the games must go on. His teammate chose not to compete, and indeed was too distraught to compete. The Olympics these days require that athletes must dedicate their whole life to their sport and they should not have someone force them to give that up. I remember the 1980 Summer Olympics where the Americans weren’t allowed by President Carter to compete in Russia. I thought that was a bad decision to take the goal of a life’s extremely dedicated preparation away from those athletes. His decision punished the athletes more than it did those Communists.

The luge had an air of somberness during the following competitions. The athletes could not revel in their gold, and I don’t think they wanted to. Everyone was affected. I sensed the stages of grief immediately following, shock, then the next day anger and bargaining – the safety measures were bargaining. Then there was more determination and anger to not let the course defeat the athletes. They were competing against turn 16 more than each other. They beat it for Nodar.

Three bodily states

by Andrea Elizabeth

I’ve mourned a weird amount of deaths when bodies were still alive. I’ll not list them here. I’ve mourned a death and buried the body. I’ve celebrated resurrection while bodies were still alive and still dead. The first state of the three feels the most incomplete and least justified, but can still leave one hopelessly cold and chilled. Till then.