Andrea Elizabeth’s Wordpress Blog

It is not forgetting unconfessed or unrepented from sin, or from whence I have come.
It is not cold disregard.
It is not giving up on improvement.

It is getting free of an unhealthy attachment to a certain type of positive attention and affirmation from others which is mostly rooted in pride.
It is seeing the work of improvement and purification, as God’s doing with my willing cooperation, but that at the same time, His yoke is easy and His burden is light.
It is learning to not be easily offended.
It is learning that I am not abandoned.
It is letting people have the wrong(?) impression of me while seeking to improve my communication.
It is in learning that it is not my responsibility to change things to my way of thinking, but having the freedom to express myself if it seems right to do so.
It is accepting criticism, confrontation, and feedback that may reveal that I’m not as great as I think I am, without utter shame, but with humble gratitude.

Freedom is in rightly understanding and walking in God’s precepts, commandments, and statutes, which are not burdensome, but life-giving.

Taki’s Magazine has an interesting article on the decline of the humanities departments in universities. It seems to suggest that students aren’t as interested in learning about the meaning of life as they are in making a living. This indicates to me that there is a disconnect between the intelligentsia in this country and the working class. Apparently the wise ones do not need to earn a living, or I guess they feel that people should appreciate their wisdom enough to supply their living for them. Just for being? And what does “being” mean again? I love the anecdote in the comments about Duke University hiring the best English Department in the country and then having them almost self-destruct the department because apparently great minds do not think alike.

Not that I think the humanities are unimportant. I do however have a fear that most people cannot earn a very good living with an advanced degree in them except as a professor or rarer, a popular author. They seem to me to be best studied as an undergraduate to enhance a continued path toward a law degree or political career or even a career in business. The humanities provide an opportunity to study people and life which can make a person more well-rounded, and they help people communicate better. There is value to a well-expressed view even if it is wrong, which brings me to NeoChalcedonian’s quote on his philosophy blog,

Why study philosophy? To reach truth, of course. But when you consider for how many centuries philosophers have been pursuing the truth, and how widely they still differ, what are your chances of capturing that truth? Not high, one must agree. Is the study therefore wasted? Not at all. For if you pursue the truth seriously, and fail to get it, as you may, you come out with a mind invaluably honed and whetted, and that in itself is prize enough. (Brand Blanshard)

As this quote says, philosophy, and I would say even psychology, history, and literature, does not bring us to ultimate, contextualized truth. Critical thinking can help us recognize what isn’t true, but only revelation will reveal what is. This is why I’m not so worked up against post-modernism. It is a reaction against misrepresented truth, imo. Not that they have the answers either, duh. My main objection is against the immorality and atheism among secular post-modernists. The truth of the meaning of life and the source of joy is in my view the Orthodox Church, which is barely represented in America’s schools and universities. Without the proper balance you have guilt-and-shame, externally imposed morality, while maintaining a rationalistic, secular view of truth, or an anything-goes, undisciplined shallow, liberal, or given-up-on view of truth.

As I consider these things, so far we have chosen the moral, rational, with the naive premise of universal, self-evident, view of teaching truth for our son who’s interested in the humanities, though he is going to focus more on a math degree until he can get into an Orthodox Seminary. With another son, we’ve chosen a technical university for engineering for his chosen career in that field. Our oldest son is pursuing an undergraduate business degree that I do not relate to at all, but I’m not going to dictate his path. Nevertheless, I hope someday that America will have more Orthodox options for lower and higher education.

Turtle Mom has posted helpful direction about not slacking off during Bright Week. Her post prompted me to look at the St. Seraphim Cathedral schedule and indeed they had Paschal Liturgies yesterday and today. The Hours are waiting for me to get back to them, though I have kept up with the Kathisma scedule, and the Morning Prayers from the Jordanville Prayer Book and the daily Bible lectionary that we do as a family.

The title is from the Troparian to the 3rd Paschal Ode,

Now all things are filled with light, heaven, and all things beneath the earth. Then let all creation keep festival for Christ’s arising, in which it is established. Yesterday, O Christ, with Thee I was entombed. Today, with Thee arising, I arise. Yesterday I was crucified with Thee: glorify me together with Thyself, O Saviour, in Thy kingdom. (more on the hymns here.)

It is hard to get into the mindset of the Orthodox Calendar. We are invited to participate in the events that are commemorated each day in a way that transcends the time and distance, including that of relationship, separating us from them. We aren’t dramatizing or recreating, but actually participating. I have had a habit of viewing history as that which happened to someone else a long time ago, and all it is to me is a sometimes interesting story or partial explanation of why I’m here now under different circumstances. But the Calendar is meant to bridge the gap of detachment. Through the services, daily readings, and lives of the Saints we are invited to actually time travel and be there. We aren’t to use our imaginations, which is tempting, but to enter in by faith.

If yesterday I was crucified with Christ and today I am risen with Him, then the other circumstances of my day aren’t going to seem so important, not that they are to be neglected. Our perspective changes. Christ our God was crucified last Friday, and then Sunday it was revealed that He is Risen! And He defeated sin and death by His death! The graves were emptied just 2 days ago! We are to await the coming of the Holy Spirit in the city of our God.

We watched Galaxy Quest last night and the nerd fan totally believed that the TV show astronauts were actually fighting for the salvation of the universe and that they needed his help, but still he took out the trash for his mother. That was my favorite part.

I received this question in a comment from my last post that I decided not to approve because of some of the additional ad hominems that were written. But this is probably something I should answer given the controversial nature of Jacques Derrida among some of my fellow Orthodox,

“What is the relation between “Writing and Difference” and orthodox christianity or salvation?”

What I think Derrida has in common with Orthodoxy, as I’ve written in some of my other posts on this subject, is a criticism of the Platonic, and western, way of defining things in terms of opposition, superiority and inferiority as well as his being against marginalizing people or things based on unqualifiable prejudice.

I like some of his language about not judging others, but this is a more slippery slope because of his atheism, rejection of Orthodox revelation, and I’m not sure I understand the “violence” of his methods in deconstruction. These concerns may rightly disqualify him from my further attention, and as I respect those who do not seem to respect him, I think I’ll not jump right back into studying him again, though I do like his oftentimes poetic way of expressing things.

Maybe I’ll read the Philokalia instead.

During Lent I concentrated mostly on the services of the Church instead of the many books in my many stacks around the house. I did get a couple of chapters of The Hobbit read to the kids though. As I ponder whatto write about, I feel inadequate to describe Pascha. I don’t want to focus on my personal experience, and I don’t want to try to explain the services in general or the theology behind them. I just want to say that Orthodoxy is not so much about intellectual understanding, though that has its place, but about participation. If you want to “know” how the Orthodox Church “views” Christ’s Passion and Resurrection then you are going to have to spend the rest of your life in the Church open heartedly listening and doing everything, skipping nothing, including how to repent when you do skip something. One of the coolest things is that there will be opportunity next year to keep practicing the same skills. Becoming Orthodox is an art.

When I mention “open-heartedness” and the many roads on the blank page, I remember Derrida. Writing and Difference happens to have remained on the top of my closest book stack these many weeks. I fear a collective groan, but I must remain true to my instincts during my free time.

Ok, one experiential note. Yesterday was a transition day between the intense Pascha and pre-Pascha services, and the attaining of what we had been preparing to receive - our Resurrected Lord. I was sad to leave the “work” behind and became a little worried about, “now what?”. I don’t know how to party very well. Am I Eeyore or what? Maybe I’ll take that which-Pooh-character-are-you test afterall. No, I don’t want to be defined by my current mirror reflection.

I’ll take a leap of faith and say,

Happy Bright Week to all!

If we mourned, let us embrace being comforted,

If we sorrowed, let us receive Christ, who is our joy,

If we were poor in spirit, let us accept the richness of Christ, the source of all,

If we were hungry, let us remember that we who communed are filled with Christ, and hopefully not in an unworthy manner.

Dare to be happy.

The Angel cried to the Lady full of grace
Rejoice! Rejoice! O pure Virgin!
Again, I say rejoice!
Thy son is risen from His three days in the tomb!
With Himself He has raised all the dead.
Rejoice, rejoice, O ye people!
Shine! Shine! Shine, O new Jerusalem!
The glory of the Lord has shown on thee.
Exult now, exult and be glad, O Sion.
Be radiant, O pure Theotokos,
In the Resurrection, the Resurrection of thy Son

Icon by Tatiana Grant. Her gallery of icons and painted eggs is amazing.

We reverently touch and praise Him who was cruelly beaten, scourged, mocked, spit upon, and pierced through for our sake. He is gently removed from the cross where He was killed and which becomes His glory. We take His body down, anoint it with spices, wrap it in fine linen, and lay it in a new tomb. We remember, wait and watch.

If kitsch, sentimentality, emotionalism, nostalgia, neo-platonic idealism, attraction and I’d dare to say biological ties, and indebtedness are not the highest basis (not necessarily illigitimate basis) for relating and relationship, then what is? The above are all too circumstantial and based on an immature, if not fallen mode of relating. Not that there isn’t a deeper and more real and eternal relationship underneath the sentimentality or temporal things that tie us to people, things and ideals. Love is what we are looking for, and connection.

Perhaps there is a balance that when tipped the wrong way, the above become insufficient to tie us to the things we thought we loved. To oversimplify, sin and selfishness are probably what swings connecion in the wrong direction to cold detachment. Because people and things are not just ideals and figments of our sentimentality. They are created by God and maintain His sustaining presence, and are meant to be in communion with God who unites all of creation in Christ. That’s the ideal or the eschatological state anyway.

But sin separates. I’m not blaming the leaver or the left, because there is perhaps a time for both - to leave or be left. God may call us out of a relationship to go higher up with Him, but is this because the one attached to has sin and doesn’t want to leave it to go up? Or maybe they didn’t receive the call. I don’t know. If it was a matter of calling, and the left one was pure in heart, then they would willingly let the other go in love and peace and with a continued sense of connection that transcends time and space. Sense. That which makes us “feel” connected.

The connection based in the first sentence can have a grasping, insular, horizontal quality that is ultimately materialistic. As with everything, there is balance. We don’t deny material, or we would become gnostic. We aren’t to be detached in a cold, things don’t matter to me, sort of way. Probably Father Schmemann’s For the Life of the World, which I haven’t completed, would be helpful here. How to bring things into communion with God. We talk about being environmentally conscious and examining how the things we are attached to were produced, but I think that we can become too purist in our thinking and reject fallen things as if we weren’t. Still, we need to be aware and to seek to redeem and consecrate the place in which we find ourselves. Prayer is the way to do that. Prayer helps us transcend (not in a gnostic way) temporal, immature attachment to things and to seek a higher good. It helps us loosen our grip on lesser modes of attachment, not that things shouldn’t be touched. But they should be touched with reverence and with the remembrance of Christ.

Remembrance of Christ. Hopefully our Lenten preparations have brought about, through detachment from worldly things, a cleansed and opened awareness so that we will be able to discern the experience of His loving Passion for us and His unstoppable desire to be united with us in spirit, body, soul, mind, and heart.

(edited to add a link to Sophocles’ blog where he posts a wonderful article on Communion and Great and Holy Thursday by Father Alexander.)

Here’s a good article on how to pray The Hours at home when regular services can’t be attended at Church. Since there’s extra services this week, I’m mainly trying to keep up with the once a week reading of the Psalms Kathisma schedule. And I walked about a mile today with the kids amidst the new buttercups, bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes on the ranch road outside our small neighborhood. Trying to establish new habits is hard, but I think these are practical ways for me to spend my time with a healthier mindset. Redeeming the time may not necessarily mean making up for lost, squandered time, but spending and dedicating attentive time to the life of the Church and in God’s beautiful creation.

(note to self, next time wear socks and tennis shoes, remind Rebecca to do the same, and remind everyone, including Pippin the Corgi, to drink water beforehand when it’s hot and humid despite it only being April.)

All we can do is write of the door and paint a picture on it of what we see. The Bridegroom. The picture is the afterfact of His being there. It proves to us He is there, waiting for us to answer, but the conversation will be the same and different with everyone. The conversation is the Bridegroom Matins. I have no garment fit to wear, I must rouse myself from sleep to answer. But His consent to clothe me in light if I stay awake and answer His call depends on what He thinks of my unfit garments. My garments are different than yours. But if you say yours are unfit too then we have something in common. I hope we will be let in anyway with the ready Virgins who accompany the Queen whose

garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad. Kings’ daughters were among thy honourable women: upon thy right hand did stand the queen in gold of Ophir. Hearken, O daughter, and consider, and incline thine ear; forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house; So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty: for he is thy Lord; and worship thou him. And the daughter of Tyre shall be there with a gift; even the rich among the people shall intreat thy favour. The king’s daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of wrought gold. She shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework: the virgins her companions that follow her shall be brought unto thee. With gladness and rejoicing shall they be brought: they shall enter into the king’s palace. Instead of thy fathers shall be thy children, whom thou mayest make princes in all the earth. I will make thy name to be remembered in all generations: therefore shall the people praise thee for ever and ever.