das Es, das Ich, unt das Über-Ich

by Andrea Elizabeth

Another thing now-Metropolitan Kallistos Ware brought out in The History of Orthodox Christianity is that in today’s world a person’s Orthodoxy is less about the circumstances of one’s birth and more about a conscious “commitment”. Today’s Orthodox Christian needs to know much more about the details of theology and anthropology and to more consciously follow the Tradition. This subject of consciousness is much within my thoughts lately. I wrote in “Problem Solving” of self-consciousness and goal-consciousness, and careless abandon in “Christmas Spirit”. Others’ thoughts about being observant and employing onesself are also circulating.

The problem I have with the lack of goal orientation or problem solving is the problem of unfinished business. We are to run the race, as St. Paul says. Our goal is Christ, and He has worked this into our own individual teloses. I suppose one has to navigate between acquiring notches on one’s belt and only doing things when one feels love or some other motivating feeling in doing things well. And in doing things well, one needs to love the telos of others. This focus on others leads into the idea of abandonment. Careless abandon is reckless and inconsiderate. We are not to lose consciousness, but to remain vigilant and aware on a very deep level. If we are employing ourselves, we are concentrating deeply on an object besides ourselves.

This gets more tricky when one is looking in a mirror. The refectory bathroom at Holy Archangel’s Greek Orthodox Monastery does not have a mirror. I understand the admonition against vanity, but I believe it can be considerate to others to look in a mirror. I am bad at head coverings, which are required there, and had to have a friend rescue me from having a particularly silly arrangement that would be distracting to others for different reasons that not wearing one would be. However, learning to depend on one’s friends may make not having a mirror of greater benefit. But some friends aren’t bothered by spinach and such, so is it vanity to not want others distracted by things that they may not consider bothersome? Maybe so.

Continuous prayer takes great concentration and vigilance. Yet there are moments where it is not supposed to just seem like work. Great caution is mandated in such experiences though. They can easily lead to prelest and emotionalism. Some people cut them off on purpose. It is also interesting to me how personal most of the prayers are. We not only worship who God is in our prayer, but much attention is given to personal confession (the “me, a sinner” part), crossing ourselves (some people call this blessing ourselves), and petitioning Psalm-like things for ourselves. We are not annihilated in our relationship with God.

If I may expand upon a general impression I’ve had converting to Orthodoxy that I am drawn towards. It does have a sort of self-centered focus. This is the criticism many non-Orthodox have about Orthodox monasticism in particular. A person withdraws from the world and others in order to save himself. The outcome of this is supposed to be that one finds union with God and thus becomes automatically (and unselfconsciously) a more effective intercessor for others, either directly in contact with visitors and fellow monastics,  or what can be misunderstood as indirectly.

It is this idea of indirect contact that can almost seem gnostic. I have not worked this out yet. Today in researching Fr. John McGuckin’s film project, Sophia, Secret Wisdom, I find that there haven’t been any updates on the websites since 2008, except for one reference to a name change to Living with God: Mysteries of the Jesus Prayer. I wonder if they came under criticism for any perceived associations with Bulgakovian Sophiology or gnosticism.

One other floating thought about my criticism in my last post of The History of Orthodox Christianity regarding ecumenism. I do sometimes want  to stress the common humanity of people with other faiths, but also worry about compromise or dilution. The Greek Church may be able to navigate those mysterious waters. Many look on nervously while even the Orthodox Church in America’s primate, Metropolitan Jonah, seeks to find common ground with the Anglicans. He is a bit more obvious about stressing several points that wont be compromised, like the ordination of women and homosexuals and Calvinism, but still there is the worry that some of the more subtle differences will be glossed over. Perhaps this worrying is a lack of faith in the cleansing power of the Spirit in the Orthodox Church.

Still, to relate again to the ideas in “Christmas Spirit”, and to discussions of Western Rite Orthodoxy and Celtic Christianity, even if some Christmas Carols are “Orthodox enough”, it seems that the errors that occurred contemporaneously in the communions from whence they came may creep in through the cracked door. My thought on Celtic Christianity is that at the time it was Orthodox, but that much of the context in which those Saints worshiped has been lost (reading their lives would still be as valid and in context as reading eastern Saints lives, imo). There may have been an abiding strain in continuing Anglicanism, but trying to extract it requires unbaking the cake or such microscopic dissection that one is not left with an intact body. Eastern Orthodoxy is still intact, and the fullest expressions have been preserved mainly by monastics who are the most serious about saving themselves.

[update: I was speaking of Christmas Carols not being appropriate for Liturgical, not "secular" settings. I do not discount that realizing the Orthodoxy in one's favorite western carol can be a helpful bridge to Orthodox hymnography however. As I have shared, my first visit to an Orthodox Church was in a Western Rite where they sang Handel's "He Shall Feed His Flock Like a Shepherd" and I felt my first Orthodox feeling of presence while my long nagging cough went away. If I'm not being too polemic, I could justify that Handel's libretto is solely comprised of Scripture verses. It's been a while since I heard the whole thing, but I think there may be an emphasis on substitutionary atonement towards the end though. I'll save comments about western classical style for later, but would meanwhile defer to Father Seraphim Rose, His Life and Works for how to contextualize a love for Bach or Handel. I'll just say I don't think he played it in the Temple.]

Why we can and can’t just be ourselves, but pigs can

by Andrea Elizabeth

Virtue does not mean being “nice” and “proper” in an isolated act or ommission. Virtue means: man’s being “is” right, and this in the supernatural and natural sense. Here we find two dangerous possibilities for perceiving the notion of virtue within the Christian common consciousness itself: first, there is the possibility of moralism, which isolates the action, the “performance”, the “exercise” and makes it independent from the living existence of a vital human being; and second, there is the possibility of supernaturalism, which diminishes the value of the natural well-lived life, of vitality and of natural decency and integrity. Virtue is also, very generally, an essential enhancement of the human person; it is the fulfillment of human potential – in the natural as well as in the supernatural domain. This is how the virtuous man “is”: by the innermost tendency of his being he realizes the good by doing it. (from “A Dead Word?” by Joseph Pieper)

First and foremost, a presupposition must be clarified and then accepted, namely, the belief that a man “ought to”, in other words, that not everything in his action and behavior is well and good just as it is. It makes no sense trying to convince a pig it ought to act and behave “like a real pig”. That the rude line by Gottfried Benn – “The crown of creation: the pig, man” – can be spoken at all and, further, hold true in such terrible ways: this fact alone shows that humanity must still realize the truly human in the domain of lived realities; it means man, as long as he exists, “ought to”. [...] the human being ought to become what he is (and therefore not already (eo ipso :”is”); that one can speak of all other earthly creatures in the indicative, in simple statements, but of man, if one wants to hit upon is actual reality, one can only speak in the imperative – to him who cannot see this or does not want to admit to its truth it would be understandably meaningless to speak at all of an “ought to” and it would make no sense to give instructions on obligations, be it in the form of a teaching on virtue or otherwise. (from “Ought To” by Joseph Pieper)

He speaks against moralism, so to me “is” or being is less action centered and more along the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, and long-suffering. I suppose we still have to prove our love and long-suffering through action, but in transfigurations, the light and warmth of being in communion are what unifies more than unforgotten forms.

What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?

by Andrea Elizabeth

The fascinating comments about how to take modern Orthodox philosophers and theologians on Reading Notes will have to wait until I finish my taxi duties. On my last run I listened to a very good talk given by Mother Gabriella on Acquiring the Virtues, not unrelated to philosophy, and will listen to the next one on Benedict Seraphim’s list of her podcasts here today.

“On the Soul and the Resurrection” V

by Andrea Elizabeth

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.

Allegory of Love 10

by Andrea Elizabeth

Lewis on p.56 then discusses that polytheism is naturally replaced by monothiesm where the One is more powerful than the Many. “The best minds embrace monotheism. What is to be done with the gods of the popular religion?… The gods are to be aspects, manifestations, temporary or partial embodiments of the single power”. Sort of like colors are manifestations of different frequencies of light. “They are, in fact, personifications of the abstracted attributes of the One… They are the necessary stage in the life of ancient religion and the poet in attempting to depict them, is giving expression to the deepest experience of his age. It is [Statius]‘s mythological treatment of Bacchus which is purely literary and derivative in its allegorical treatment of Bacchus and of Mars which is alive.” The One “is the Whole (or God, or Nature, or Cosmus) of the Stoics; the [greek word] of Marcus Aurelius, the Natura of Seneca; the ancestress of Alanus’ Natura and Chaucer’s Kinde.”

The allegorization of the pantheon… depends upon a profound change in the mind of antiquity; but this time it is a change of moral experience rather than of thought… For us moderns the essence of the moral life seems to lie in the antithesis between duty and inclination… All our serious imaginative work, when it touches on morals, paints a conflict: all practical moralists sing to battle or give hints about the appropriate strategy. Take away the concept of ‘temptation’ and nearly all that we say or think about good and evil will vanish into thin air. But when we first opened our Aristotle, we found to our astonishment that this inner conflict was for him so little of the essence of the moral life, that he tended to thrust it into a corner and treat it almost as a special case. The really good man, in Aristotle’s view, is not tempted… the truly temperate man abstains because he likes abstaining. The ease and pleasure with which good acts are done, the absence of moral ‘effort’ is for him the symptom of virtue.

Now when we turn to the moralists who lived under the Roman Empire, all this is changed. I do not know whether they were better or worse than the contemporaries of Aristotle; but they were certainly more conscious of a difficulty in being good. ‘Fight the good fight’ – how oddly the words would sound in the Ethics! Under the Empire, they are on every moralist’s lips. The examples which could be drawn from the writings of St. Paul alone would be enough to prove a far-reaching change. But the phenomenon is by no means a result of Christianity, however much Christianity may have done to deepen and perpetuate it. Here again, as in the case of monotheism, we have to do with a characteristic, not of Christianity alone, but of the whole period from which the Christian empire emerged.

He then gives examples of poets and Stoic philosophers contemporary to the Epistles who emphasize fighting against passions.

If they had not discovered the moral conflict, had at least discovered in it a new importance. They were vividly aware, as the Greeks had not been, of the divided will… But to be thus conscious of the divided will is necessarily to turn the mind in upon itself. Whether it is the introspection which reveals the division, or whether the division, having first revealed itself in the experience of actual moral failure, provokes the introspection, need not here be decided.

Previous to this thought, Lewis distinguished between innocence and virtue. Innocence is yet untried.

Whatever the causal order may be, it is plain that to fight against ‘Temptation’ is also to explore the inner world; and it is scarcely less plain than to do so is to be already on the verge of allegory. We cannot speak, perhaps we can hardly think, of an ‘inner conflict’ without a metaphor; and every metaphor is an allegory in little. And as the conflict becomes more and more important, it is inevitable that these metaphors should expand and coalesce, and finally turn into the full-fledged allegorical poem. It would be a misunderstanding to suggest that there is another and better way of representing that inner world, and that we have found it in the novel and the drama. The gaze turned inward with a moral purpose does not discover character. No man is a ‘character’ to himself, and least of all while he thinks of good and evil. Character is what he has to produce; within he finds only the raw material, the passions and emotions which contend for mastery. That ‘unitary ‘soul’ or ‘personality’ which interests the novelist is for him merely the arena in which the combatants meet: it is to the combatants – those ‘accidents occurring in a substance’

Transubstantiation again.

- that he must attend. Nor will he long attend to them – specially if he has had a Roman training in the schools of rhetoric. For such a man allegory will be no frigid form. It is idle to tell him that something with which he has been at death-grips for the last twenty-four hours is an ‘abstraction’; and if we could be free, for a little, of our own Zeitgeist, we might confess that it is not very much more abstract than that ‘self’ or ‘personality’ on whose rock-bottom unity we rest so secure and of which we would so much rather hear him talk. (p.61)

I believe he’s saying that the novelist is too distracted by these passions whom he has personified. That perhaps Aristotle had it better when he considered passionlessness a more natural state, and thus more bedrock to our personality. I agree that I would rather the novelist had dwelt on that. I wrote a story of an innocent once, but I was told that it lacked conflict, and thus content. I am tired of conflict. I want it to be shown how it is to dwell correctly related to onesself and one’s environment. So many stories end at the defeat of evil, but hardly any show what life is like after that. What’s it like dwelling in the warm, glowing sunset? It’s as if it is too boring to speak of. The death of the story is when the characters actually get together. Stories that go on after that are only barely kept alive by new conflicts, or a new generation of apart people who will eventually come together. I’ll try to get my story ready for display and maybe make a “page” out of it for my header.

My Reckless Mind

by Andrea Elizabeth

(New points added)

This is the first thing I read about Lilla and Derrida:

The Reckless Mind (paperback)

Intellectuals in Politics

By Mark Lilla

European history of the past century is full of examples of philosophers, writers, and jurists who, whether they lived in democratic, communist, or fascist societies, supported and defended totalitarian principles and horrific regimes. But how can intellectuals, who should be alert to the evils of tyranny, betray the ideals of freedom and independent inquiry? How can they take positions that, implicitly or not, endorse oppression and human suffering on a vast scale?

In profiles of Martin Heidegger, Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Alexandre Kojève, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida, Mark Lilla demonstrates how these thinkers were so deluded by the ideologies and convulsions of their times that they closed their eyes to authoritarianism, brutality, and state terror. He shows how intellectuals who fail to master their passions can be driven into a political sphere they scarcely understand, with momentous results for our intellectual and political lives.

1. I confess a selfish use of Derrida for my own personal edification.

2. I do not have a broad understanding of his views about politics and religion. I am using his works as a motivational and rhetorical vehicle to express my own views, as well as a way to think about things I haven’t thought of before, or knew other people ever thought about, but it seems my conclusions still relate to my previous ones so I’m not sure how much I’ve changed. My most recent change was becoming Orthodox, but I think that was actually a realignment of my theology with my pre-existent intuition, which as I’m beginning to believe, Derrida would like – that my intuition was more transcendent than my intellectual and conceptual understanding, though I was influenced by the latter as well.

3. I have a shallow understanding of Marxism and Fascism, though I know Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and Hirohito were bad, ok maybe I’m not quite that simplistic about them, but I’m definitely not an expert.

4. I don’t trust the tone of the above review of Derrida because of his statements in the movie Derrida about how he, a Jew, was marked by Antisemite segregation and marginalization as a child. He said he was in an odd position after he was forced to go to a Jewish school after the segregation. He did not feel a Jewish solidarity. I think he felt more a man without a country. I don’t think he was a nationalist, Algerian or Zionist.

5. I believe there is a common view that the French contribution to Russian Communism corrupted Marxism to a further degree. I’m not a proponent of the French Revolution, and getting less of one of the American Revolution the further I get into Orthodoxy. Bloody revolutions are dialectic to the extreme. Fraternity is mocked when you have to kill your brother to achieve it. Thus I don’t think anti-dialectic Derrida is guilty as charged.

6. All that said, there may be a destructive outcome to naivete, which I’m not ready to accuse Derrida of yet, but the inflamatory nature of the above makes me not want to read Lilla’s The Politics of Jacques Derrida.

7. Back to my own views, there is a dialectic between good and evil, but what’s helping me not totally condemn and want people dead is that, as I have read from Orthodox sources, it is the devil inciting the person to evil deeds. But I believe in free will, so I don’t totally hold the evildoer as a victim. I’ve thought about Hitler in particular in the famous evil person category. I see him as made/marked by his experience in WWI, the history of Germany, the previously allowed boundary/territorial wars that used to be more common, common antisemitism in Europe (which I quit reading Ivanhoe for), a history of dialectics between races, and a previously less mobile time which induced more identity-centered Nationalism. I wont get into Marxism or Mein Kampf as I haven’t studied them. Why he stands out so much amidst this common atmosphere I think has to do with his personal upbringing (I think there were some extreme issues with his father, I forget), and individual talents. Plus as I just wrote in a comment in another post, there is a common trait of at least being half Jewish in these influential, for better or worse, geniuses – Derrida, Hitler, Bobby Fisher, Einstein and The Three Stooges to name a few.

8. I’m still in a transitional state regarding self defense and entering war for defense purposes. I used to be pro-capital punishment and pro-war, but a lot of Orthodox aren’t so I’m not sure the best way to handle when evil forces oppress others. I don’t think this external oppression is quite as devastating as I used to, as is evidenced by our Martyr Saints, so I’m not as scared of it as I used to be. The movie Friendly Persuasion is an interesting discussion on that from a Hollywood Quaker point of view, but I know in western Pennsylvania many Quakers were killed from not defending themselves against the “Indians” even before the Civil War. But wasn’t it an act of aggression and landstealing to settle there in the first place?

9. I do not see Derrida as a slave to his passions. From what I know so far he stayed married to the same woman till his death, not sure about his faithfulness to her, and does not come across as angry or hateful in the least, unlike this characterization of Lilla’s pov.

10. My dialectical relationship with the above review, the Three Stooges, and certain other people in my past may make me a hypocrit in what I’ve said. This is most obvious in the fact that I’m divorced with an A vs. G heading in my divorce papers. I have withdrawn from certain other situations, like watching the Three Stooges and conversations with certain people. I think this speaks more to my relationship with my own heart rather than with these other people. My heart is in a state of feeling traumatized and certain situations make it feel more so. I think the right way to view my withdrawal is that I am sick and in the hospital (not in the strictly literal sense in case that’s unclear) and am not strong enough to transcend the many variables that make dealing with these people more directly too difficult, cop out though that may be. But I believe that there is a certain attainable transcendence that Saints have that make them able to love in the face of opposition or temptation, but even many of them had to flee, and some like St. Nicholas even struck back. There’s room in Orthodoxy for everything. But killing another… Father Hopko says under no circumstances ever have anything to do with weapons, even designing them. I’m not to that point yet.

11. Derrida’s “dialectic”: I believe Derrida challenged and differed from previous thinking, but I see a distinction in that it seems he was looking deeper into the reality of previous philosophers, taking their background and influences into account when considering their works. So I don’t think he considered them wrong so much as incomplete. This sometimes caused offense anyway, which saddened him.

12. Totally irrelevant point, or is it? In Princess Bride when Vizini is considering which goblet to drink from, he was right. He could clearly not choose the goblet in front of himself or Wesley. He should have trusted his instincts.

The Great Divorce

by Andrea Elizabeth

While driving and making Pysanki (not at the same time), I listened to C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce. Despite the disclaimer at the beginning, much of the story rings true to me and fits my understanding of the Orthodox view of heaven and hell. I got a little tired of his descriptions of the people who choose not to move forward to the heights of heaven, but his description of Sarah Smith after her encounter with her earthly husband was very inspiring to me.

I found these clips on another person’s blog,

The Dwarf Ghost argued with the Lady. He talked about being sent back to Hell. “No one sends you back,” she said. “Here is all joy. Everything bids you stay.” Apparently the Dwarf Ghost was the real man, but he was shrinking in size as his countpart, the “Tragedian” was overpowering his personality with negativity and doubt. The Lady begged him, “He is killing you. Let go of that chain. Even now.”

The Lady gets emphatic: “Quick. There is still time. Stop it. Stop it at once.”

“Stop what?”

“Using pity, other people’s pity, in the wrong way. We have all done it on earth, you know. Pity was meant to be a spur that drives joy to help misery. But it can be used the wrong way round. It can be used for a kind of blackmailing. Those who choose misery can hold joy up to ransom, by pity. You see, I know now. Even as a child you did it. Instead of saying you were sorry, you went and sulked in the attic … because you knew that sooner or later one of your sisters would say, ‘I can’t bear to think of him sitting up there alone, crying.’ You used their pity to blackmail them, and they gave in in the end. And afterwards, when we were married … oh, it doesn’t matter, if only you will stop it.”

The Dwarf Ghost disappeared, somehow absorbed by this Tragedian man. She addressed him and told him to come to Love, for she would not step out of this Love she now lived in. He was pretty much completely given over to himself. He would not bend his will and surrender to God. He defied God’s rule. Then he just vanished. I presume he went to Hell.

The Lady was alone, but other Bright Spirits met her and sang songs of joy to her: “The Happy Trinity is her home; nothing can trouble her joy…” Even losing her husband and his stubborn will that opposed His Loving God could steal the joy away from her, for she lived in it. She gave herself over to God and His joy, which buoys her now.

“While it sounds merciful,” he writes, “see what lurks behind it. The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.

“…Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it; or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves.”

Transcendence

by Andrea Elizabeth

If I may borrow from Joseph Patterson’s Mind in the Heart,

Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your nous. (Rom. 12:2)

“…Nous, in particular, is a very difficult word to translate. If you just say ‘mind’, that is far too vague. In our translation of the Philokalia, we, with some hesitations, opted for the word intellect, emphasizing that it does not mean primarily the rational faculties. The nous is the spiritual vision that we all possess, though many of us have not discovered it. The nous implies a direct, intuitive appreciation of truth, where we apprehend the truth not simply as the conclusion of a reasoned argument, but we simply see that something is so. The nous is cultivated certainly through study through training our faculties, but also it is developed through prayer, through fasting, through the whole range of the Christian life. This is what we need to develop most of all as Orthodox, something higher than the reasoning brain and deeper than the emotions.”- Kallistos Ware

Transcendence is sight or comprehension beyond the rational and emotional into the real nature of the seen and unseen.

Escapism is taking a vacation from the real and inventing an alternate reality.

Fiction can be either an attempt to illustrate the transcendent as in a parable, or to indulge in a denial of the real.

Withdrawal can occur by the transcendently goaled person in order to pray or heal, or in the escapee so that he doesn’t have to face reality.

Interaction can be either an attempt to transcend what is shallowly apparent, or an attempt to propagandize falsehood.

Regarding dialectic, falsehood causes unhealthy division. Truth unifies, so there is a dialectical relationship between the true and the distorted, but not in the intended relationship between things. Brother should not be divided against brother, but if one or both brothers is deceived, then a certain dialectical division occurs. But one brother is not bad, just his perception of reality is false and is creating a manufactured, unnatural hostility. If he is committed to this mindset, it may become necessary to withdraw from him in order to bring peace. But often the disagreeing brother is the one who can’t stand to be around the other without confrontation. The enmity is between and each is convinced he is right. My perception of this starkness may be because I have been around unusually extreme situations. Others know how to “just get along” better than I. But with the divorce rate, the amount of wars, factions, sects, mental illness and estrangements between family members such that everyone is very familiar with the meaning of those words, it is all too common. The deceiver is alive and well.

There is a dialectical relationship between truth and error, they cannot coexist. Sin, the devil’s delight, causes division.

However holiness is stronger than evil. I suppose this is why God and the Saints are not in distress over these distorted but damaging divisions. They are not threatened by lies. But the deceived’s wellbeing is. I suppose God has some sort of impassible sadness over the state of destructively deceived people.

However, I am still blinded by sin. This is why I pray for God’s mercy on me and those around me. My sin hurts them as well as myself. Sin blinds, and this is why we pray as the blind men did, “Lord, have mercy on us!” Darkness flees away in the presence of God as the dragons fled from the water when Christ was baptized. But some prefer darkness. I guess we all do to the extent that we still sin. This is the tension between those who love the beauty of God’s house and those who are repelled by it. Yet even those who love the True Church entertain sin. We are to have mercy as God has mercy on us. In His mercy I want Him to show me my darkness which has been revealed in a surprising concentration during Lents. Each one has been a pretty painful experience, but I feel lighter afterward. To me mercy isn’t overlooking error. I know Christ prayed, “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.” I can pray for God to forgive those who hate the beauty of God’s Church thinking they are protecting Him from the dishonor of perceived idolatry and unfaithfulness to the Bible. They don’t seem to know what they are doing, I pray they don’t. But to me mercy is corrective, not just withholding punishment. Corrective as in restoring health, which is transcendent realism. Incarnated reality. Anything less is dysfunctional. Transcendence is becoming impassible during opposition. This is how martyrs faced death. They weren’t afraid of what the people in error could do to them. Holiness is stronger than torture, lies, and destruction. It’s hard to think about Orthodox Churches that have been bombed or burned or otherwise desecrated. It hasn’t been possible throughout these 2000 years to totally wipe them out, so in that my faith is encouraged and I do not despair. Yet Paul saw fit to issue warning against error in today’s Epistle reading,

2 Timothy 4:9-22 (Epistle)

9 Be diligent to come to me quickly;
10 for Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world, and has departed for ThessalonIca-Crescens for Galatia, Titus for Dalmatia.
11 Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is useful to me for ministry.
12 And Tychicus I have sent to Ephesus.
13 Bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas when you come-and the books, especially the parchments.
14 Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm. May the Lord repay him according to his works.
15 You also must beware of him, for he has greatly resisted our words.
16 At my first defense no one stood with me, but all forsook me. May it not be charged against them.
17 But the Lord stood with me and strengthened me, so that the message might be preached fully through me, and that all the Gentiles might hear. Also I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion.
18 And the Lord will deliver me from every evil work and preserve me for His heavenly kingdom. To Him be glory forever and ever. Amen!
19 Greet Prisca and Aquila, and the household of Onesiphorus.
20 Erastus stayed in Corinth, but Trophimus I have left in Miletus sick.
21 Do your utmost to come before winter. Eubulus greets you, as well as Pudens, Linus, Claudia, and all the brethren.
22 The Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Grace be with you. Amen.

Transcendence warns of the damage of deceit, but it seems those who are caught in untruths “love this present world” more than the truth. But transcendence does not despair no matter what, for as Rich Mullins, who gave me hope when my ex-husband left, also says, “My Deliverer is Coming” and is indeed ever present. May my sinful blindness be removed so that I see reality more and more.

St. Gregory of Nyssa: Luminous Darkness

by Andrea Elizabeth

This article at Monachos on St. Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Moses describes an apophatic approach to God which is very helpful. God’s unknowable “darkness” can seem like emptiness, or stinginess on His part in revealing Himself. I am helped by this explanation of how our desire to know God is met.

Nineveh was a great city before God, of about a three-day journey

by Andrea Elizabeth

Jonah 3:3

more from Ad Thalassium 64

Permit us to fill in this gap with a few observations. We must assume that the thee-day journey signifies the three different ways of the godly life, or in other words, the discipline proper to each of the three universal laws. By universal laws here I mean the natural law, the scriptural law, and the law of grace. For each of these laws has a peculiar mode of life and appropriate course of action, since each generates a different disposition of the will for those who follow it.

Maximus explains that the Natural Law “prevents the senses from overpowering reason” in how we treat others, typified by Christ’s teaching, Whatever you desire for men to do to you, do likewise to them (Mt. 7:12, Lk 6:31). Maximus says that this law provides a type of unity among people who overcome their selfishness.

The second law, the Scriptural Law, “curbs the unruly urges of the more foolish by the fear of punishment, and trains them to look only for equitable distribution… of justice” which slowly turns the fear (of punishment) into a disposition  [of] “deliberate willing of the good.” This will eventually engender a love of others, and a desire for mutual loving unity with them. “The law of nature consists in natural reason assuming control of the senses, while the scriptural law, or the fulfillment of the scriptural law, consists in the natural reason acquiring a spiritual desire conducive to a relation of mutuality with others of teh same human nature. Therefore the Lord himself specifically says, Love your neighbor as yourself (Lev 19:18, Mt 5:43; 19:19; 22:39; Mk 12:31) and not Regard your neighbor as yourself. The one indicates only the connatural sharing in being, while the other signifies the providence leading us toward well-being.

So he’s saying natural law leads to fairness, but Scriptural law leads to love of those like us.

The third law is the Law of Grace, which “teaches those who follow it directly to imitate God himself, who… loves us, his virtual enemies because of sin, more than himself, such that, even though he himself transcends every essence and nature, he consented to enter our human essence without undergoing change, and while retaining his transcendence, to become a man and willingly to interact as one among men. He did not refuse to take our condemnation on himself, and indeed, the more he himself became a man by nature in his incarnation, the more he deified us by grace, so that we would not only learn naturally to care for one another and spiritually to love others as ourselves, but also like God to be concerned for others more than forourselves, even to the point of proving that love to others by being ready to die voluntarily and virtuously for others. For as the Lord said, There is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend (Jn 15:13).

…The law of grace consists in a supernatural reason, and transforms nature, without violating it, unto deification. It also displays, beyond comprehension, the supernatural and superessential Archetype in human nature, as in an image, and exhibits the permanence of eteranal well-being. 

…For the entire orderly arrangement of the Church (indeed the individual human soul) is encompassed in these three laws, having its length defined in virtue, its width in knowledge, and its depth in the wisdom of mystical theology. [notes: This triad of virtue, knowledge, and mystical theology evokes the three dimensions of the spiritual life - ascetic practice, contemplation, and mystical theology - which Maximus appropriated from Evagrius and expounded abundantly in his spiritual writings.]