Notes from a Common-place Book

In the Doldrums

2012-01-25T12:24:00.000-08:00

I'm stuck in the blogging doldrums these days. It is not that I do not have anything to say, but rather that I cannot seem to muster enough interest to expound on much of anything. And then, financial concerns and working 3 jobs tends to focus one's attention in directions other than blogging. That said, I have posted something here every month since November 2005, and I realize that January is fast slipping away. Skipping a month sets a bad precedent and evokes images of an undisciplined soul sliding further into sloth and lethargy. And so, I must post something it seems.

To post on the current political circus would be picking low-hanging fruit indeed, and Lord knows I am the last one to pile-on. Ahem. But if I were to do so, I would probably link to something like this, from a writer with whom I never agree, except on those rare occasions when he writes something sensible that agrees with my thinking.

I suppose I could post yet another laudatory commendation of my hero Daniel Larison's latest, or perhaps a

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a clip or two by my other foreign policy mentor, Dr. Brzezinksi.

I could always link to an interesting article on Turkey, such as this or this (with dead-on conclusion: Here, the trouble with the AKP is not that it is too “Islamist.” The trouble is that the governing party, which has clashed with a powerful state establishment for years and found the solution in liberal reforms, is now enjoying the very power that it once found menacing. As Andrew Finkel put it well in the New York Times, with a reference to the Lord of The Rings, this is a “Frodo Baggins moment” for the AKP: “It knows it should throw the ring of power into the fire, but the ring feels increasingly comfortable on its finger.”)

I suppose I could pour scorn on the incoherent ramblings of unrepentant neocons--always fun.

And with Great Lent still almost a month off, it is too early for American Orthodox "Scandal Season."

And so, I think my first post of 2012 will be this: My friend John preaches for a church of Christ in rural Alabama. He is a good-natured sort, who does not take offense at the Protestant/evangelical/Restorationist straw-men I construct and demolish here. John sometimes posts his sermons online. I encourage you to check out this one: "A Gentle Religion." As an Orthodox Christian, I have to say that I agree with every word. I find it very well done, a thorough mining of Scripture as only a church of Christ preacher can do.

And on his subject, I would add the following, though I doubt the writings of an Orthodox bishop and saint would be much quoted from a church of Christ pulpit ;)

And when your enemy falls into your hands, do not consider how you can pay him back and let him feel the sharp edge of your tongue before sending him packing; consider rather how you can heal him and restore him to a better frame of mind. Continue to make every effort by
both word and deed until your gentleness has overcome his aggressiveness. Nothing has more power than gentleness. As someone has said, ‘A soft word will break bones.’ And what is harder than bone? Well then, even if someone is as hard and inflexible as that, he will be conquered if you treat him gently. There is another saying, ‘A soft answer turns away wrath.’ It is obvious therefore that whether your enemy continues to rage or whether he is reconciled depends much more on you than on him. For it rests with us, not with those who are angry, either to destroy their anger or to inflame it.

St. John Chrysostom

Books for the New Year

2011-12-25T19:31:00.000-08:00

Today, I finally finished Digenes Akrites, the epic Byzantine narrative poem (yes, there is such.) This brings to a close my last book list, meaning that is time to start whittling-down the new stack. The appeal of book is often connected to the place and occasion of their discovery. Consequently, I have sorted the new list accordingly. I have cheated a bit on my discipline, having read a few in advance--but for the most part, I am sticking with my plan, that is to read the books I have on hand before moving on to others. The list for the first part of 2012 shapes up as follows:

Annual Pilgrimage to Arkansas, May 2011:

New Confessors of Russia, by Archimandrite Damascene (Orlovsky)
The Gurus, the Young Man, and Elder Paisios, by Dionysios Farasiotis

Every May, I take a two-day trip to northern Arkansas to visit the last surviving sibling of either of my parents. We are not noticeably long-lived, so at age 88, my aunt is redefining the genetic history for our family. I aways go the back roads, avoiding Arkansas interstate highways at all costs. All Saints of North America Orthodox Mission (ROCOR) out from DeQueen has become one of my favorite stops. The rural setting is picture perfect. The two titles above that I purchased there should be familiar to most Orthodox readers, but for some reason have eluded me until now. Fr. George earns a living by the St. Mark the Grave-digger's Workshop, in a barn across from the farmstead and chapel. There, he crafts wooden liturgical furniture, as well as caskets. Events of this last year have brought home the fact that I might want to keep his number handy.

Road trip through the South, July 2012:

Slaves in the Family, and The Sweet Hell Inside: The Rise of an Elite Black Family in the Segregated South, by Edward Ball
Sunken Plantations: The Santee Cooper Project, by Douglas W. Bostick
Dixie: A Personal Odyssey Through Events that Shaped the Modern South, by Curtis Wilkie
The Reservoir, by John Milliken Thompson
A Good, Hard Look: A Novel, by Ann Napolitano
Life, Death and the Coming Kingdom, by Fr. Cyril Argenti

Any road trip east usually takes us through Jackson, a favored stop-over. In times past, we would always try to have supper at Dennery's (now closed), a favorite haunt of Eudora Welty. In recent years, we enjoy the Mayflower and/or Cock o' the Walk. The thing we never fail to do, however, is to visit Lemuria, the South's finest independent bookstore. My preference is for used bookstores and the people who own and inhabit them, but I make an exception for this establishment. On our way east, we noticed they were hosting a book-signing in a few days, which would fit nicely on our return trip. We probably would not have purchased the books by Thompson and Napolitano otherwise, but I am glad we did. We picked up a few titles in Charleston, where--to my wife's consternation--little notice is given to native-son Pat Conroy. I came away with a slim volume while paying a short visit to Holy Ascension Orthodox Church in nearby Mount Pleasant.

If you are trying to understand the history of Southern slavery in all its ramifications, I heartily recommend Ball's Slaves in the Family. I passed the book on to the late Milton Burton about two weeks before he went into the hospital for the last time. He devoured the book and claimed it to be one of the best he had ever read, which which is high praise indeed. Wilkie's book offers a unique insight into the Civil Rights Movement. He grew up in the Mississippi of the 1950s, the step-son of a relatively enlightened Presbyterian minister, attended Ole Miss and witnessed first hand the violence of 1962, worked as a journalist for the Clarksdale, MS newspaper where he interviewed Martin Luther King while sitting in a car in a rural church parking lot only a week before his assassination, served as a McCarthy delegate on the alternative (and seated) Mississippi delegation to the 1968 Democratic Convention while also taking part in the antiwar street demonstrations, then later a turn as a legislative aide which led to scoring a job as the token Southerner on the Boston Globe where he was able to experience firsthand northern racism in the anti-integration violence on Boston's South Side, then assigned to cover the 1976 Presidential candidacy of an obscure Georgia governor, and finally assigned to the paper's Middle East Bureau, just in time for the Lebanese Civil War. All told, his story makes for a helluva ride.

Recycled Books, early October 2011:

The Alexiad, by Anna Comnena
Montenegro: The Divided Land, by Thomas Fleming

During a professional convention in the one of the north Dallas wastelands (in this case, Frisco), I made a break for nearby Denton, which is at least a college town and has some history to it. Recycled Books, downtown on the square, is a worthy destination. I already owned the Comnena, but not in hardback. I look forward to reading Fleming's take on Montenegro. As I have been told, he is something of an enthusiast for Serbia and Montenegro, though I think he stops short when it comes to their Orthodoxy.

Byzantine Studies Conference in Chicago, late October 2011:

Theodore the Stoudite: The Ordering of Holiness, by Roman Cholij
The Chronicle of Ibn Al-Athir for the Crusading Period from al-Kamil fi'l-Ta'rikh, Part 1
The Chronicle of Ibn Al-Athir for the Crusading Period from al-Kamil fi'l-Ta'rikh, Part 2
The Chronicle of Ibn Al-Athir for the Crusading Period from al-Kamil fi'l-Ta'rikh, Part 3
History as Literature in Byzantium, ed. by Ruth Macrides
Tales from Another Byzantium: Celestial Journey and Local Community in the Medieval Greek Apocrypha, Jane Baun
A Synopsis of Byzantine History, 811-1057, by John Skylitzes
From Byzantium to Modern Greece: Hellenistic Art in Adversity, 1453-1830

One of the overriding attractions of the Byzantine Studies Conference is the presence of 3 or 4 booksellers, where one can obtain scholarly works at a 40% to 60% discount. Even so, they are still over-priced. If I am able to attend next year (at Holy Cross, in Boston), obtaining 3 titles from Ashgate Publishing will be as strong a motivation as any. Of the titles above, I particularly look forward to delving into Ibn Al-Athir and Skylitzes.

Holy Archangels Monastery, early December 2011:

A Ray of Light: Instructions in Piety and the State of the World at the End of Time, by Archimandrite Pantleimon

What God has Done for our Salvation, by St. Nikodim of the Holy Mountain

Five members of our parish teach classes in one way or another at tiny Lon Morris College in nearby Jacksonville, Texas. And so, the Orthodox presence at this nominally Methodist school has attracted a little attention--at least among other faculty members and students. My friend and fellow parishioner received permission to take some of his history and world civ. students on a field trip to Holy Archangels Monastery in the Texas Hill Country. The number of students was not large, so there was plenty of room for me to tag along. There and back again turned into a 18-hour day, but I believe it to be quite an experience for the students--and the bus-driver. While there, I picked up the two small devotional volumes listed above. I have already read St. Nikodim's and profited from doing so.

Recommendations and Odds and Ends:

A Christian Ending: A Handbook for Burial in the Ancient Christian Tradition, by J. Mark Barna
Sanctified Vision: An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible, by John J. O'Keefe and R. R. Reno
Greece's Dostoevsky: The Theological Vision of Alexandros Papadiamandis, by Anestis Keselopoulos
The Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy, 1658-1832 , David M. Lang

I have posted on the Papadiamandis book earlier. It remains a strong favorite of mine. If you want to know anything about the late Kingdom of Georgia, then I'm your man--having already read Lang's rare work. I figured I could go ahead and read it since I paid-out on this book over 4 or 5 months. One of the revelations of this book had to be the extent of Persian influence in Georgia--and in some cases, visa-verse. Obviously, much of it involved coercion, and cooperation was necessary for their very survival. And so, the claim of Georgian "Europeanness" is a qualified one, I think.

In the Mail:

l'Histoire de la Georgie depuis l'antiquite jusqu'en 1569 J.-C., by Marie-Felicite Brosset

The Byzantine Monuments and Topography of the Pontos, by Anthony Bryer

These two are my birthday/Christmas presents to myself. There's not much out there for those interested in detailed histories addressing Trebizond and Georgia--or at least not in English. Brosset's work (1851) is seminal for Georgian study. As it can only be obtained in French, it is safe to say that I may be reading it for quite some time. For Trebizond, you start with Bryer. Print-to-orders abound, but the original first volume with the maps and illustrations is harder to come by. This one is being sent from Germany.

Wish List:

George F. Kennan: An American Life, by John Lewis Gaddis

I enjoy reading of America's Cassandras. George F. Kennan was one. Andrew Bacevich is another. Kennan was one of the most fascinating Americans of the 20th-Century. As soon as I come across a good deal on this volume, I will snap it up.

D. B. Hart on the Fate of the American Religion

2011-12-18T20:20:00.000-08:00

I still have some residual Ochlophobistophilism about me, which gives me pause before linking to an article written by David Bentley Hart. Back in the day, such actions could get you banned in Memphis (Owen, I joke.) My first exposure to DBH was back in 2003, when I stumbled across an essay he wrote about Malcolm Cowling. I found myself terribly impressed and scribbled 2 or 3 pages of selected passages in my real common-place book. His acclaimed work, The Beauty of the Infinite, was released that same year, and so I eagerly ordered a copy. I found the book to be utterly and absolutely unreadable. And so, I have since shied away from his writings. I will say, however, that his coffee-table book, The Story of Christianity, is very nicely done. A recent post at Second Terrace, led me to the particular article in question here, in the current issue of the New Criterion. If you can wade through the Hartian verbiage, I believe there to be much to commend this work. I have copied significant excerpts below, and have highlighted on particular passage I find to be especially noteworthy.

After all--and this is a truth so certain that only the most doctrinaire Marxist or lumpen British atheist could deny it—the structure of culture is essentially an idealist one, and a living culture is a spiritual dispensation…. That is why the very concept of a secular civilization is nearly meaningless…

All of which brings me to my topic: the uncertainties of the American future and the possible role religion may or may not play in that future…. Often blamelessly derivative, but also often shamefully forgetful of even the recent past, it is a nation that floats lightly upon the depths of human history, with sometimes too pronounced a sense of its own novelty…

There may not be a distinctive American civilization in the fullest sense, but there definitely is a distinctly American Christianity. It is something protean, scattered, fragmentary, and fissile, often either mildly or exorbitantly heretical, and sometimes only vestigially Christian, but it can nevertheless justly be called the American religion—and it is a powerful religion. It is, however, a style of faith remarkably lacking in beautiful material forms or coherent institutional structures, not by accident, but essentially. Its civic inexpressiveness is a consequence not simply of cultural privation, or of frontier simplicity, or of modern utilitarianism, or even of some lingering Puritan reserve towards ecclesial rank and architectural ostentation, but also of a profound and radical resistance to outward forms. It is a religion of the book or of private revelation, of oracular wisdom and foolish rapture, but not one of tradition, hierarchy, or public creeds. Even where it creates intricate institutions of its own, and erects its own large temples, it tends to do so entirely on its own terms: in a void, in a cultural and (ideally) physical desert, at a fantastic remove from all traditional sources of authority, historical “validity,” or good taste (Mormonism is an expression of this tendency at its boldest, most original, and most effervescently vulgar). What America shares with, say, France is the general Western heritage of Christian belief, with all its confessional variations; what it has never had any real part in, however, is Christendom.

And so, in fact, America was established as the first truly modern nation, the first Western society consciously to dissociate its constitutional order from the political mythologies of a long disintegrating Christendom, and the first predominantly Christian country to place itself under, at most, God’s general providential supervision, but not under the command of any of his officially recognized lieutenants. The nation began, one could argue, from a place at which the other nations of the West had not yet arrived.

In another sense, however, when one considers the result, it is all rather astonishing. America may have arisen out of the end of Christendom, and as the first fully constituted political alternative to Christendom, but it somehow avoided the religious and cultural fate of the rest of the modern West. Far from blazing a trail into the post-Christian future that awaited other nations, America went quite a different way, down paths that no other Western society would ever tread, or even know how to find. Whereas European society—moving with varying speed but in a fairly uniform direction—experienced the end of Christendom simultaneously as the decline of faith, in America just the opposite happened. Here, the paucity of institutional and “civilizing” mediations between the transcendent and the immanent went hand in hand with a general, largely formless, and yet utterly irrepressible intensification of faith: rather than the exhaustion of religious longing, its revival; rather than a long nocturnal descent into disenchantment, a new dawning of early Christianity’s elated expectation of the Kingdom….

In the wake of Christendom’s collapse, the forms of Christianity that would prove most lively would be those that possess something analogous to the apocalyptic consciousness of the earliest Christian communities: their sense of having emerged from history into the immediacy of a unique redemptive event; their triumphant contempt for antique cult and culture; their experience of emancipation from the bondage of the law; their aloofness from structures of civil power; and their indifference to the historical future (for the present things are passing away).

Whatever the case, the American religion somehow slipped free from this story before it reached its dénouement, and so it is not inextricably entangled in the tragic contradictions of historical memory. At its purest, in fact, it is free of almost all memory, and so of all anxiety: it strives towards a state of almost perfect timelessness, seeking a place set apart from the currents of human affairs, where God and the soul can meet and, so to speak, affirm one another. For a faith so thoroughly divorced from history, there is no set limit to the future it may possess. And if, as I have said, culture is always shaped by spiritual aspirations, this all has a very great bearing on what kind of future America might possess. History is not created by historical consciousness, after all; the greatest historical movements are typically inspired by visions of an eternal truth that has somehow overtaken history. This is simply because a people’s very capacity for a future, at least one of any duration or consequence (good or bad), requires a certain obliviousness in regard to time’s death-bound banality, a certain imaginative levity, a certain faith. The future is often the gift of the eternal.

Whatever one’s view of Evangelicalism, only bigotry could prevent one from recognizing its many admirable features: the dignity, decency, and probity it inspires in individuals, families, and communities; the moral seriousness it nourishes in countless consciences; its frequent and generous commitment to alleviating the sufferings of the indigent and ill; its capacity for binding diverse peoples together in a shared spiritual resolve; its power to alter character profoundly for the better; the joy it confers. But, conversely, only a deep ignorance of Christian history could blind one to its equally numerous eccentricities: the odd individualism of its understanding of salvation; its bizarre talk of Christ as one’s “personal Lord and savior”; its fantastic scriptural literalism; the crass sentimentality of some of its more popular forms of worship; its occasional tendency to confuse piety with patriotism….

Much of American Evangelicalism not only lacks any sense of tradition, but is blithely hostile to tradition on principle: What is tradition, after all, other than man-made history, and what is history other than exile from paradise? What need does one have of tradition when one has the Bible, that eternal love letter from Jesus to the soul, inerrant, unambiguous, uncorrupted by the vicissitudes of human affairs? In some of its most extreme forms, Evangelicalism is a religion of total and unsullied reverie, the pure present of the child’s world, where ingenuous outcries and happy gestures and urgent conjurations instantly bring forth succor and substance. And, at its most intensely fundamentalist, so precipitous is its flight from the gravity of history into Edenic and eschatological rapture that it reduces all of cosmic history to a few thousand years of terrestrial existence and the whole of the present to a collection of signs urgently pointing to the world’s imminent ending….

My central claim is that what one sees with particular clarity in Evangelical piety is a deep spiritual orientation that both informs and expresses the American mythos: that grand narrative, going back to colonial times, of a people that has fled the evils of an Old World sunk in corruption, cast off the burden of an intolerable past, and been “born again” as a new nation, redeemed from the violence and falsehood of the former things.

It is not difficult, of course, to enumerate the weaknesses of a culture shaped by such a spiritual logic. It is a spirituality that, for example, makes very little contribution to the aesthetic surface of American life. This is no small matter. The American religion does almost nothing to create a shared high culture, to enrich the lives of ordinary persons with the loveliness of sacred public spaces, to erect a few durable bulwarks against the cretinous barbarity of late modern popular culture, or to enliven the physical order with intimations of transcendent beauty. With its nearly absolute separation between inward conviction and outward form, it is largely content to surrender the surrounding world to utilitarian austerity. It could not do otherwise, even if the nation’s constitution were not formally so secular. It would not have the imaginative resources. It is a religion of feeling, not of sensibility; it might be able to express itself in great scale, but not as a rule in good taste.

It is, however, a religious temperament wonderfully free of cynicism or moral doubt, and so it may have a singular capacity for surviving historical disappointment and the fluctuations of national fortune. Its immunity to disenchantment seems very real, at any rate. It may, in fact, grow only stronger if the coming decades should bring about a decline in America’s preeminence, power, international influence, or even solvency. Whatever the case, it is unlikely to lapse very easily into a decline of its own, or vanish into some American equivalent of the spiritual exhaustion and moral lassitude of post-Christian Europe.

The question that should concern us, it seems to me, is whether in years ahead America will produce a society that has any particular right to a future. By this, I mean nothing more elaborate than: How charitable and just a society will it be, how conscious will it be of those truths that transcend the drearier economies of finite existence, and will it produce much good art? And all of that will be determined, inevitably, by spiritual forces.

It is not obvious, however, what those forces will be, or what they will bring about. It is very much an open and troubling question whether American religiosity has the resources to help sustain a culture as a culture—whether, that is, it can create a meaningful future, or whether it can only prepare for the end times. Is the American religious temperament so apocalyptic as to be incapable of culture in any but the most local and ephemeral sense? Does it know of any city other than Babylon the Great or the New Jerusalem? For all the moral will it engenders in persons and communities, can it cultivate the kind of moral intelligence necessary to live in eternity and in historical time simultaneously, without contradiction? Will its lack of any coherent institutional structure ultimately condemn it to haunting rather than vivifying its culture, or make it too susceptible to exploitation by alien interests, or render it incapable of bearing any sufficiently plausible or even interesting witness to the transcendent . . . ? And so on and so on. There is much to admire in the indigenous American religious sensibility, without question, but also much to deplore, and there is plenteous cause for doubt here.

Still, the worst fate that could befall America, one far grimmer than the mere loss of some of its fiscal or political supremacy in the world, would be the final triumph of a true cultural secularism….Even when it is not breeding great projects for the rectification of human nature or human society—not building death-camps or gulags, not preaching eugenics or the workers’ paradise—the secularist impulse can create nothing of enduring value. It corrupts the will and the imagination with the deadening boredom of an ultimate pointlessness, weakens the hunger for the good, true, and beautiful, makes the pursuit of diversion life’s most pressing need, and gives death the final word. A secular people—by which I mean not simply a people with a secular constitution, but one that really no longer believes in any reality beyond the physical realm—is a dying people, both culturally and demographically. Civilization, or even posterity, is no longer worth the effort. And, in our case, it would not even be a particularly dignified death. European Christendom has at least left a singularly presentable corpse behind. If the American religion were to evaporate tomorrow, it would leave behind little more than the brutal banality of late modernity.

In the end, though, on the matter of religion and the American future, I am certain of very little….Perhaps the quieter strengths they impart to our culture—its deeper reserves of charity and moral community, the earnestness of its spiritual longings, its occasional poetic madness—will persist for a long while yet, and with them the possibility of cultural accomplishments far more important than mere geopolitical preeminence. There is, at any rate, some room for hope.

Tradition and the "Secret Permanences"

2011-12-17T19:35:00.001-08:00

I enjoyed the recent article by Michael O'Meara, entitled The Shock of History, being a review of a book by the same name--Le Choc de l'Histoire by French historian Dominique Venner. He finds that amidst the current crisis--financial, demographic, cultural, existential--Europe is awakening from a long sleep, a dormition, if you will. Venner's thoughts on tradition are ones that can be appreciated by the Orthodox reader. He draws interesting distinctions between America and Europe, and I largely agree with his observation that the U.S., in its own way, occupied western Europe every bit as much as the Soviets did in the East. A few selections, as follows:

“The future belongs to those with the longest memory.” –Nietzsche

Conservative thinking...is essentially historical thinking—in that it orients to the concrete, to ‘what is’ and ‘what has been’, instead of to ‘what ought to be’ or ‘what can be’. ‘Properly understood’, historical thinking (as créatrice de sens) reveals the ‘Providential’ design evident in the course and test of time.

Venner’s thesis is that: Europeans, after having been militarily, politically, and morally crushed by events largely of their own making, have been lost in sleep (‘in dormition’) for the last half-century and are now—however slowly—beginning to experience a ‘shock of history’ that promises to wake them, as they are forced to defend an identity of which they had previously been almost unconscious.

Like the effect of cascading catastrophes (the accelerating decomposition of America’s world empire, Europe’s Islamic colonization, the chaos-creating nihilism of global capitalism, etc.), the shock of history today is becoming more violent and destructive, making it harder for Europeans to stay lulled in the deep, oblivious sleep that follows a grievous wound to the soul itself—the deep curative sleep prescribed by their horrendous civil wars (1914-1918 and 1939-1945), by the ensuing impositions of the Soviet/American occupation and of the occupation’s collaborationist regimes, and, finally, today, by a demographic tsunami promising to sweep away their kind. As Europe’s lands and institutions were assumed by alien interests, her ancient roots severed, and her destiny forgotten, Europeans fell into dormition, losing consciousness of who they were as a people and a civilization.

Tradition for him is precisely that which does not pass. It is the perpetual spirit that makes Europeans who they are and lends meaning to their existence, as they change and grow yet remain always the same. It is the source thus of the ‘secret permanences’ upon which their history is worked out.

Tradition...is preeminently contemporary....It renders what was formed and inspired in the past into a continually informed present. It is always new and youthful, something very much before rather than behind them. It embodies the longest memory, integral to their identity, and it anticipates a future true to its origin. Life lived in reference to tradition...is life lived in accordance with the ideal it embodies—the ideal of ‘who we are’.

In one sense, Venner’s Europe is the opposite of the America that has distorted Europe’s fate for the last half-century....Modeled on the Old Testament, not the Old World...America’s New World (both as a prolongation and rejection of Europe) was born of New England Calvinism and secularized in John O’Sullivan’s ‘Manifest Destiny’....Emboldened by the vast, virgin land of their wilderness enterprise and the absence of traditional authority, America’s Seventeenth-century Anglo-Puritan settlers set out, in the spirit of their radical-democratic Low Church crusade, to disown the colony’s Anglo-European parents....Believing herself God’s favorite, this New Zion aspired—as a Promised Land of liberty, equality, fraternity—to jettison Europe’s aesthetic and aristocratic standards for the sake of its religiously-inspired materialism. Hence, the bustling, wealth-accumulating, tradition-opposing character of the American project, which offends every former conception of the Cosmos.

Venner says US elites (‘cosmocrats’, he calls them) pursue a transnational/universalist vision (privileging global markets and human rights) that opposes every ‘nativist’ sense of nation or culture—a transnational /universalist vision the cosmocrats hope to impose on the whole world. For like Russian Bolsheviks...these money-worshipping liberal elites hate the Old World and seek a new man, Homo Oeconomicus—unencumbered by roots, nature, or culture—and motivated solely by a quantitative sense of purpose.

As a union whose ‘connections’ are essentially horizontal, contractual, self-serving, and self-centered, America’s cosmocratic system comes, as such, to oppose all resistant forms of historic or organic identity—for the sake of a totalitarian agenda intent on running roughshod over everything that might obstruct the scorch-earth economic logic of its Protestant Ethic and Capitalist Spirit. (In this sense, Europe’s resurgence implies America’s demise).

What will awaken Europeans from their sleep? Venner says it will be the shock of history—the shock re-awakening the tradition that made them (and makes them) who they are. Such shocks have, in fact, long shaped their history. Think of the Greeks in their Persian Wars; of Charles Martel’s outnumbered knights against the Caliphate’s vanguard; or of the Christian forces under Starhemberg and Sobieski before the gates of Vienna. Whenever Europe approaches Höderlin’s ‘midnight of the world’, such shocks, it seems, serve historically to mobilize the redeeming memory and will to power inscribed in her tradition.

More than a half-century after the trauma of 1945—and the ensuing Americanization, financialization, and third-worldization of continental life—Europeans are once again experiencing another great life-changing, history-altering shock promising to shake them from dormition. The present economic crisis and its attending catastrophes...combined with the unrelenting, disconcerting Islamization of European life (integral to US strategic interests) are—together—forcing Europeans to re-evaluate a system that destroys the national economy, eliminates borders, ravages the culture, makes community impossible, and programs their extinction as a people. The illusions of prosperity and progress, along with the system’s fun, sex, and money (justifying the prevailing de-Europeanization) are becoming increasingly difficult to entertain. Glimmers of a changing consciousness have, indeed, already been glimpsed on the horizon.

The various nationalist-populist parties stirring everywhere in Europe—parties which are preparing the counter-hegemony that one day will replace Europe’s present American-centric leadership—represent one conspicuous sign of this awakening. A mounting number of identitarian, Christian, secular, and political forces resisting Islam’s, America’s, and the EU’s totalitarian impositions at the local level are another sign. Europeans, as a consequence, are increasingly posing the question: ‘Who are we?’, as they become more and more conscious—especially in the face of the dietary, vestimentary, familial, sexual, religious, and other differences separating them from Muslims—of what is distinct to their civilization and their people, and why such distinctions are worth defending. Historical revivals...are slow in the making, but once awakened there is usually no going back. This is the point, Venner believes, that Europe is approaching today.

History is the realm of the unexpected....In history, the future is always unknown. Who would have thought in 1980 that Soviet Russia, which seemed to be overtaking the United States in the ‘70s, would collapse within a decade? Historical fatalities are the fatalities of men’s minds, not those of history.

History, moreover, is the confluence of the given, the circumstantial, and the willful. This makes it always open and hence potentially always a realm of the unexpected. And the unexpected (that instance when great possibilities are momentarily posed) is mastered, Venner councils, only in terms of who we are, which means in terms of the tradition and identity defining our project and informing our encounter with the world.

Hence, the significance now of husbanding our roots, our memory, our tradition, for from them will come our will to power and any possibility of transcendence. It’s not for nothing, Dominique Venner concludes, that we are the sons and daughters of Homer, Ulysses, and Penelope.

(The 3 paintings--Echo and Narcissus, The Siren, and Tristan and Isolde--all by pre-Raphaelite painter John William Waterhouse are appropriate to the subject matter, I think.)

The 2012 Campaign is Not Fun Anymore

2011-12-12T14:04:00.000-08:00

The 2012 GOP Presidential Campaign is no longer fun. Back when Herman Cain and the Texas-Governor-Whose-Name-Shall-Not-Be-Mentioned-Here were saying crazy things, we could all laugh along, knowing that they were not serious candidates. I still stand by my prediction that the GOP will eventually nominate Romney, but a level of nervousness is now dampening my certainty. Political parties sometimes have death-wishes (the GOP in 1964, the Dems in 1972, for example), and this may very well be one of those years. Instead of electing someone who at least looks presidential (Romney), they opt for the ideologically pure bomb-thrower they believe will take out the ruling party (Gingrich.) I still will be shocked and not a little disturbed if Gingrich gets the GOP nomination. Despite the Tea Party crowd, enough of the traditional GOP remains intact so that the Big Money Crowd should step in to head this off. That said, they may already be too late. Unlike the big-booted Texas governor, Cain, Bachmann and Santorum, Newt Gingrich could conceivably be the pick. In the normal course of events, a Gingrich nomination would simply mean that Obama's re-election would be locked-in by late summer. But, as they say, s**t happens. The country is in a nasty mood, and Gingrich as standard-bearr would be way too close to the Presidency. Gingrich revels in his reputation as an "idea man." That's all well and good if they were in fact good ideas. And his character puts me in mind of an old Groucho Marx line: Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others. Why should we worry about Newt Gingrich replacing The Great Disappointment? Well, here's a sampler from just the last week.

1. Newt Gingrich refers to Donald Trump as "an American icon." The fact that Gingrich may be correct in his assessment--a scathing verdict on 21st-century America, indeed--is besides the point. If Trump were merely an egotistical, self-promoting showman of the first order (which he assuredly is), that would be one thing, but he continues to inflict himself upon our national discourse. For example, only Trump is still left still flogging the Birther issue. Newt's cozying-up to Trump is not just unseemly, it is loathsome. (This was one of the late Milton Burton's favorite adjectives, and I feel confident he would approve its usage in this context.)

2. Newt gave some idea of what a Gingrich Cabinet would look like when he promised to select John Bolton as Secretary of State. Such talk is not funny, but should send chills up the spine of anyone who remembers the run-up to our invasion of Iraq. Bolton as Secretary of State would be a good trigger to cash-out everything and buy that little shack in the jungles of Costa Rica.

3. Finally, Newt expounds on the Israeli/Palestinian issue:

Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places.

Ah, so the "Palestinians" are no such thing--they are just Arabs. The Syrians are not Syrians, they are just Arabs. The Iraqis are not Iraqis, they are just Arabs. And since these so-called "Palestinians" are just Arabs, then they could/should go elsewhere in the Arab world. I'm sure the "Palestinian" family--Muslim or Christian, no matter--would have no objection to leaving the olive grove their family has tended for the last 600 years and relocate to one of the swanky refugee camps in a neighboring Arab country. Gingrich should perhaps be more careful in labeling people as "invented." Before 1948, there was no such thing as an "Israeli." And Americans, the quintessential "invented" people, should be the last to make that accusation against any other. In last night's debate, Gingrich did not back away from this statement, but actually doubled-down into an even more severe statement (they're all terrorists.) Of course, they were all vying to see which one could become AIPAC's favorite whore. What do you call it when the prostitute pays the trick, instead of the other way around? Yep, loathsome's the word for it.

"Aristotle East and West" by David Bradshaw

2011-12-11T20:45:00.000-08:00

I have finally finished the last of the books I bought from the Ochlophobist book sale. I saved the hardest, Aristotle East and West, until last. I have never been one to read philosophy, or to spend much time thinking through philosophical concepts. At some point, I realized that my mind just does not work in that way. If at all possible, I still avoid philosophical debates, ideologies, and isms of all sorts. And so, I knew full well that this work would be a struggle for me. I slogged through the entire book with little comprehension of the issues being addressed--that is, until the end. His summation, in Chapter 9 and the Epilogue, is crystal-clear and understandable. Bradshaw identifies, I believe, the real difference between eastern and western understandings of the Christian faith. My wife and I were exposed to a bit of Calvinism at our friend's funeral, and afterwards we talked through the differences between Arminianism and Calvinism. The conversation I would like to have with her, however, is how both constructs are only possible within the western system of thought.

A few choice passages, following:

What is the point of spinning out words about God when He can be known only through practice? On such a view theology, however complex it may become, is ultimately simply the enterprise of preserving "the faith once delivered to the saints." To claim (as does Aquinas, for instance) that it is a science in the Aristotelian sense--one that has God as its subject matter-would have struck the Byzantines as strangely pretentious. These considerations will help explain why the eastern tradition never produced a theologian of the stature of Augustine or Aquinas. "Stature" is measured by breadth of thought, originality, and influence, and these were not qualities that the Byzantines valued. They valued fidelity to the existing tradition. What one finds in the East is not a series of towering geniuses, but a kind of symphonic movement, in which the role of a great thinker is to pull together and integrate what others before him had said in a more piecemeal way. (p.221)

Augustine arrives at his understanding of the beatific vision by taking the momentary direct vision that he ascribes to Moses and St. Paul and extrapolating it forward into eternity. This ultimate vision is purely a function of the intellect. Strikingly, and by an apparently fortuitous convergence, Augustine thus agrees with Aristotle in seeing intellectual contemplation as the final goal of human life...What is perhaps most remarkable is that the Augustinian presuppositions we have sketched could come to dominate the thought of the West, while having virtually no influence in the East, and yet for almost a thousand years neither side recognized what had happened. Instead the controversy between them focused on relatively peripheral issues such as the filioque and the role of the Papacy. (p.229)

If one were to summarize the differences between the eastern and western traditions in a single word, that word would be 'synergy.' For the East the highest form of communion with the divine is not primarily an intellectual act, but a sharing of life and activity....It led to a tendency to think of earthly, bodily existence as capable of being taken up and subsumed within the life of God. Emphasis was placed, not on any sudden transformation at death, but on the ongoing and active appropriation of those aspects of the divine life that are open to participation....In the West synergy played remarkably little role....its immediate cause was the happenstance way in which Greek learning was transmitted to the West....Augustine impressed upon western thought a number of interlocking assumptions: that God is simple; that He is intrinsically intelligible; that He can be known in only two ways, through created intermediaries or a direct intellectual apprehension of the divine essence; and that the highest goal of human existence is such direct intellectual apprehension. (p.265)

If I am right...then there is reason to conclude that the eastern tradition is fundamentally sound. If so--and if I am also right that the western tradition was already unsound as far back as Augustine--then our entire view of history will have to change. Most significantly, the long movement of the West toward unbelief must come to appear in a very different light....What were the major reasons urged against traditional religious belief by the Enlightenment? It was said that the history of western religion was one of endless persecutions and religious war; that believers had arrogantly attempted to declare the will of God, and even to define what God is; that religious morality, and especially asceticism, had caused the human mind to relinquish its natural powers in favor of blind obedience, while denying the body and earthly life their rightful pleasures. Most interestingly, these failings were traced to an idea of God that was said to be incomprehensible and self-contradictory. It is no wonder, the charge ran, that the various sects are perpetually at one another's throats, since each has laid hold in an arbitrary way upon a single aspect of an idea that is fundamentally incoherent. Voltaire dismissed all such controversies with the simple remark, "a long dispute means that both parties are wrong."...The East has no concept of God. It views God not as an essence to b grasped intellectually, but as a personal reality known through His acts, and above all by oneself sharing in those acts....For the East morality is not primarily a matter of conformance to law, nor...of achieving human excellence by acquiring the virtues. it is a matter of coming to know God by sharing in His acts and manifesting His image. It is striking, in this connection, that the long western tradition of lay resistance to the clerical enforcement of morals had no real analogue in the East. (p.275-276)

Perhaps the philosophes were right in thinking that real persecuting zeal requires a conviction of the rational superiority of one's own conception of God. Perhaps, too, they were right in seeing a link between such zeal and the institutionalization of religious controversy brought about by the scholasticism. From an eastern perspective, it appears as no accident that the institutional strife of Thomist, Scotist, and Ockhamist during the late Middle Ages was followed by the open breach of the Reformation. The East certainly experienced it controversies, but they were always viewed as something temporary to b overcome, not something to b fostered and celebrated by permanent institutions....Nor did war and persecution come to an end once the Enlightenment had pulled God from His throne....From the standpoint of the East the whole story falls sadly into place. The enlightenment attacked scholasticism, but left untouched rationalist ideology; it attacked oppressive morality, but left untouched the alienation of body from sou; it attacked sectarian strife, but left untouched the deeper wellsprings of hatred. We children of the Enlightenment pride ourselves on our willingness to question anything. Let us now ask whether the God who has been the subject of so much strife and contention thought western history was ever anything more than an idol. (p.276-277)

Remembering Milton

2011-12-09T21:06:00.000-08:00

Milton T. Burton, a frequent commentator here, died on December 1st at age 64. He was my oldest friend. Milton had been in declining health for some time, a combination of kidney failure and heart problems being the particular causes of death. He entered the hospital in late October. A stroke left him with diminished mental capacity, from which he never recovered.

Our friendship dates back about 27 years, the best I recall. I can imagine no better friend. Family can let you down, but a loyal friend like Milton is a rare gift indeed. Scarcely a day passed that we did not talk, or at least email one another. Milton was the one who usually called me. Perhaps this was because I knew I did not have to call, for I knew before long I would be hearing from him. Milton kept odd hours. If we received a call at home late at night, my wife and I knew it had to be Milton. If I heard from him at work before 10:00 AM in the morning, then I knew he had not yet gone to bed for the night. I have never met anyone so broadly well-read and informed as Milton. He was a true intellectual, as well as a scholar. The two are not at all the same thing, and are rarely found in tandem, in my experience. Milton could pontificate with the best of them—at length—but he rarely called to do so. More often than not, he wanted my opinion about some recent event, situation or news story. I admit that I always found this to be immensely gratifying—the fact that someone so very much smarter than I would be interested in my opinion.

So much could be said about Milton, yet I find myself grasping for words. Describing him to others has always been something of a problem, for I never met anyone even remotely like him…ever. My long-time office manager used to ask why all my friends were so eccentric. She would usually say this right after Milton had called or stopped by. He delighted in phoning our business and having the receptionist buzz my office and inquire if I wanted to speak to the Rev. Buford T. Sheets. This was one of his many alter-egos, and he had a lot of fun with this character, who--as everyone should know--was the senior pastor of the Greater Gum Springs Apostolic Church of the Final Thunder.

Milton could appear gruff and curmudgeonly. Those of us who knew him well also realized that this was part of the character he wished to portray, something of an act, if you will, that shielded the sensitive and tender-hearted soul underneath. Milton suffered some tough knocks in life, and he was naturally sympathetic to the foibles of others who struggled along in life. It might be said, however, that Milton was a man who did not suffer fools gladly, as the old saying goes. He had a keen ear for cant, hypocrisy and pretense, and was always at the ready to engage in a bit of verbal combat wherever he thought it needful…a bit too ready, some might say. He could be particularly scathing when it came to televangelists, Southern Baptists and Republican “bidnessmen.” Oh how he would have relished the full-flowering of the GOP presidential race this year, with Cain and Perry and Gingrich!

The news story in the local paper contained an interview with Milton’s oldest son, who described his father’s career as “meandering.” Well yes, I suppose that is one way of putting it. At one time, Milton’s mother set him up in a grocery store business in our little town. Later, he taught history a semester or two at our local junior college. For a while, he served as the liaison for our state senator. All of these endeavors ended more or less disastrously—some spectacularly so--with long stretches of nothing much in between.

At long last, about 7 years ago, Milton hit on a profession suited to him. With a computer and internet connection in place, he began experimenting with short stories. He would forward many of them on to me (and other friends) for input. At first, the humor was a little broad, but Milton soon hit his stride and found his voice. He chose the crime novel genre, specifically what might be called Texas Noir. The Rogue’s Game, set in 1947 Texas, was released in 2005 to very favorable reviews. The Sweet and the Dead followed in 2006. A change in publishers led to a gap in releases, but the Nights of the Red Moon was finally released in 2010. This was the best of his novels, in my opinion. A collection of his short stories, Texas Noir, was released as a Kindle ebook in the summer of 2011. I do not own, nor ever plan to own a Kindle, but I have read all the stories as they were being developed, and they are quite good. His fourth novel, The Devil’s Odds: A Mystery, will be released this coming February. There may even be a fifth novel in the pipeline, to be released in 2013.

Milton grew up in a rural area, about 5 miles north of where I have lived since 1977. Around here, his story was usually seen as just a chapter in the larger context of interconnected webs of extended family connections. He may have been eccentric, but he was our eccentric. He belonged to this particular place. This acceptance--even protectiveness—of even the most unconventional is the mark of a true community, where people stay put for a few generations, whether it be a neighborhood in Queens, or in the rural South.

Milton’s maternal family—the side that mattered—were not among the oldest families here, only arriving from north Alabama shortly following the Civil War. He idolized his grandfather, who acquired a 400-acre place around the turn of the last century. He and Milton’s grandmother, also from a north Alabama family, lived in an impressive Queen Anne farmhouse perched a small rise in a grove of magnolias. For that day, they were considered--if not wealthy--then certainly well-fixed. The family was a bit different from most of their neighbors. For starters, they were members of the Primitive Baptist Church. For those outside the South, just know that they are nothing like any Baptist church of your acquaintance. The closest congregation was about 15 miles away, so the family did not move in the typical Baptist/Methodist social circles of the area. Also, the grandmother drank whiskey—not secretly, but openly. In that time and place, this was seldom seen among respectable women (my wife’s great-grandmother being another exception.) Two daughters were born to the couple, Milton’s mother, Allene, being the oldest.

Milton’s mother received an excellent education for that day, obtaining a master’s degree from Stephen F. Austin University. She endured a brief and unsuccessful marriage, with Milton being the only offspring. Allene once told my wife that she enjoyed the company of men, as long as she did not have to be married to them. She and Milton lived with her parents in the old home place. Allene was a formidable woman, severe and a bit feared by her high school students. She always dressed in drab colors, I am told, wearing brown pumps and usually a dress gathered at the waist. She pulled her hair back into a tight bun, almost a caricature of an old-time schoolmarm. But like Milton, she had a soft spot for the misfit or for the one she knew were not destined for academic excellence. By the late 1950s, she started driving convertible Thunderbirds, which were just as likely to have a bale of hay behind the seat as not. One of the last things Milton told me before his stroke was that his mother considered pursuing her doctorate, her intended field of study being the history of the Russian Orthodox Church in Alaska. She was not attracted to Orthodoxy, of course, just fascinated by the culture and story.

My first meeting with Milton is indelibly imprinted in my memory. It was about 1984, I believe. I had business about some land surveying with Milton’s mother, and was delivering some papers to her door. Milton had married his college sweetheart, a Catholic girl of French-Canadian descent whose family had inexplicably landed in East Texas. Milton brought her back to the family home, where they moved in with his mother. This became an increasingly volatile arrangement. In quick succession, Milton became the father of a son, then a daughter, then triplets—all sons. Allene abandoned the family home, bought a trailer house and parked it down the hill from the farmhouse, stuffed a pillow in the window of the front door, which she slammed shut on the world. By this time, the farm itself was gone, reduced to a few acres around the two houses, a small barn and chicken coop, and a row of rusting Thunderbirds.

My meeting with Allene went well. I was told by some that I would not be asked in. (I was.) I found her to be a straight-forward woman who liked to take care of business—much like my own mother. Our visit went well.

At the time, I was in my late 20s, married, with a small son. At that stage of my life, I recall being much preoccupied with the making of lots of money. My life was about to change directions a bit, with things far more interesting than making money. On this particular bitterly cold January day, I was not about to linger too long outside talking with Mrs. Burton. Before I could leave, however, I heard my name being called, and looked up towards the farmhouse. I saw Milton trotting down the hill, in a short-sleeve shirt, wearing a pair of old slacks that had been ripped-off about the knee, wearing a pair of Allene’s blue fuzzy house shoes.

Milton invited me up to the house for a cup of coffee, and of course, I readily accepted. We walked up the trail past the Thunderbird graveyard to the front porch of the house, high off the ground. What I found inside, behind the front door with the etched glass, was something straight out of a Southern Gothic novel. The layout of the house was straight-forward enough. From the left front parlor, a wide hallway cut through the length of the house. Another front parlor was located right of the hall, with a double fireplace connected to the dining room behind. Sliding doors separated this parlor from the formal dining room, and the small galley kitchen behind. A large bedroom was located left of the hallway, opposite of the dining room. A couple of smaller bedrooms were immediately behind, with a tiny bathroom squeezed-in next to the back porch.

The ceilings were about 12 ft. high. Ornate wallpaper had once covered the walls, but this had been ripped off, with just the bare boards now exposed, except in places where it was still hanging on. The house was full of Victorian-era antiques which had, unfortunately, suffered greatly at the hands of the Burton children. Milton’s wife worked at the hospital in the city, while he stayed at home and rode herd over their offspring. You might say he was a bit lax in his child-raising, but it all worked out in the end. Today they are as an intelligent and personable a set of siblings as you will find. I do recall him saying that he got them started dipping snuff early, because he was afraid they would set the house on fire sneaking underneath to smoke cigarettes.

I believe an old organ sat in the front left parlor. A Victorian settee and pair of arm chairs occupied the front right parlor. A coffee table in the center of the room contained what appeared to be a punch bowl, or large fruit bowl—except that it was filled to overflowing with cigarette butts. In the dining room, Milton pointed out a small framed sketch of the Arc de Triomphe that his mother brought home from Paris in the 1930s. After most everything had slipped away, I know that Milton managed to hang on to this memento until the end. Milton apologized for the condition of the house, blaming it on the kids and maintaining that he had a “military mind.” By this time, I had already deduced otherwise.

The small, cramped kitchen was piled high with dirty dishes. I believe the coffee was already on. He pulled a cup out of the sink, turned it up, looked at it, then put it back. He repeated this with another cup. The third cup he pulled out of the sink was apparently clean enough, and so he poured me a cup of coffee. Before leaving the kitchen, he leaned down to light his cigarette on the gas burner of the stove.

Milton continued his tour of the house. He seemed most proud of a 1840 Austrian armoire in the main bedroom, a wedding gift from his mother. This piece now sits in the hallway of our home. As money became desperate in coming years, he sold off the antiques, one by one. Milton called up one day and offered the armoire to us. I would have just given him the money, but it was a point of pride with him that we take the furniture. The hallway narrowed towards the back of the house, making room for a steep stairway to the attic, hidden behind a doorway. He led me up the stairs to the attic, but we did little more than poke our heads above the floorboards. Milton’s grandfather had an old maid sister who had lived in the house. For many years, Milton believed that the place was haunted by the spirit of his Great Aunt Geneva, and that the eeriness was centered on her old trunk in the attic. One day he climbed the stairs, pulled the trunk down, loaded it into the back of one of the Thunderbirds and dumped it in a bar ditch of a back country road, having never looked inside. According to Milton, the hauntings ceased from that date.

We parted company with mutual assurances that we would be back in touch with the other. And we were. I cannot believe what an innocent I was at the time. I found myself fascinated with my new found friend.

In time, Milton’s wife left for town, with the near-grown children in tow. Allene moved into an apartment in town, and before long, Milton joined her, having lost the house itself. To my knowledge, Milton never agonized over the course his life had taken, being content with a good read, some coffee and nicotine. One of the last things I was able to do for Milton was to sneak some Copenhagen in to him in the hospital. The first time he asked, I agreed but hoped he would forget about it. He did not. He called me the next day about it, and so I bought a can of snuff for the first time in my life. Milton thought he had pulled one over on the nurses, but they knew he had it all along. We all have our particular addictions and weaknesses. He knew mine and he did not try to deny his own--alcohol and pain medications. Over 20 years ago, however, Milton gave up drinking all on his own, never looking back.

The great tragedy of his life had to be the loss of one of the triplets in a 1987 traffic accident. As might be expected, Milton had failed to reserve a place for himself in the family plot of their community cemetery. And so, Milton’s body has been cremated, and his ashes will be interred tomorrow at the foot of this son’s grave. Afterwards, friends and family will gather at our house for a meal.

In recent years, Milton came back around to the Primitive Baptist Church of his youth. He was a thorough-going Calvinist, a theological construct that has always baffled me. Of course, as Milton would say—“I was predestined not to understand.” But we never argued religion, as we each respected the other too much for that. Milton was intrigued by my becoming Orthodox, and would often question me about the beliefs and practices of same. In our discussions, he would invariably remark on how this was just like the Primitive Baptist Church! Like I say, I never argued religion with him, but the only similarity between the Orthodox and the Primitive Baptists is the scarcity of their numbers in this region. But Milton was indeed something of a biblical scholar, particularly in the Old Testament.

A few years after meeting Milton, I would gain another great friend. His eccentricities run in a different direction, but he is no less colorful. I think about what my life would have been like if I had never met either of these great, good friends—or if I had never met my wonderful wife, for that matter. For better or for worse, I am largely the man I am now because of their influences. Only by my ongoing friendship with them did I awake from my stupor and really begin to engage the wider world. I know that for some, my own life is now cast within the context of eccentricity. For that I say, “thank you, Milton” and May Your Memory Be Eternal.

2011-11-16T13:47:00.000-08:00

I occassionally post the following quote from Solzhenitsyn. It's that time again.

Untouched by the breath of God, unrestricted by human conscience, both capitalism and socialism are repulsive.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Daniel Larison on Herman Cain's "Lybian Pause"

2011-11-16T13:39:00.000-08:00

As long as candidates can be relied on to back Israel, hate the current vilified countries, favor increased military spending, and endorse the latest war, they normally aren’t expected to know very much. Cain probably thought that was how it worked in the nominating contest, too, and he has now been disabused of that notion.

If you are a foreign policy junkie and not yet reading Daniel Larison......well, you should be. This post is a good place to start.

"Don't Know Much About History"...

2011-11-14T12:20:00.000-08:00

My life is not yet so pitiable that I spend Saturday night at home watching the latest Republican "debate," supposedly devoted to foreign policy. As this is a particular interest of mine, I did, however, try to follow the reviews and commentary afterwards. For starters, the only two candidates on the stage that could speak to foreign affairs with any degree of authenticity--Paul and Huntsman--were shut out of the debate. Herman and Rick just looked silly. Mitt and Newt tried to see which one could be the more bellicose towards Iran. But the prize has to go to Rick Santorum. As someone with even less a chance of winning the nomination than Perry (and that is setting the bar pretty low), why does it matter what he said? Here is why: his views are hardly out of the mainstream of GOP thought these days--or Democratic either, for that matter. Santorum's contribution, as follows:

Romney said he would take military action "if all else fails."

Former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania agreed. Noting that a mysterious computer virus had caused disruption inside Iran's nuclear labs, and that Iranian scientists have been assassinated in recent months, he said, "I hope that the U.S. has been involved" in those and other covert actions.

Doesn't anyone study History anymore? This attitude displays an appalling lack of understanding about the country in question. Iran is no thrown-together construct of post-colonialism, but the proud modern inheritor of some 3,000 years of Persian civilization. And even a cursory overview of Persian history will note the 1953 CIA-led Anglo-American coup d'etat (Operation Ajax) which overthrew the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossaddegh, setting up the formerly constitutional monarch, Reza Shah Pahlavi, as the absolute ruler. His increasingly autocratic 26-year reign and repressive secret police caused the simmering resentment against the Crown and its enablers (us) to boil over in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The rest, as they say, is history.

And now, Santorum--the quintessential "pro-life" candidate--is hopeful that we have been in on the assassination of Iranian scientists. The only problem with an ends-justifies-the-means foreign policy is that the ends so seldom end up where we think they will.

Where the Real Money Is

2011-11-14T08:44:00.000-08:00

Gail Collins offers an interesting insight that will be of great value to young collegiate types trying to figure out a career path. If you are going after the big money, forget about that MBA. Instead, you might want to consider History, perhaps a M.A. in Medieval Studies. At least that is the story Newt Gingrich is selling these days.

Newt, on the other hand, is always good in debates if you like extremely pompous people who appear to be practically levitating with their own sense of personal wonderfulness. During the last outing, Gingrich’s most fascinating moment came when he explained why the mortgage lender Freddie Mac paid him $300,000 in 2006. First of all, it had nothing whatsoever to do with lobbying, or attempting to influence the Republicans who happened to control Congress at a time when there was talk of clamping down on the way Freddie operated. Just put that out of your mind.

No, Gingrich explained very clearly that Freddie gave him the three-hundred grand for his “advice as a historian.”

This is fantastic and important news. Right now a great many college students are trying to decide on a course of study. Some of them would probably like to major in history but are wondering if they should pick something that might be more lucrative. Not to worry, college students! Look at Newt. Three-hundred-thousand dollars for advising! And the way he described it in the debate, it appeared to involve about only an hour of his time.

So, if given a choice between an M.B.A. in finance or an M.A. in medieval studies, you know where to go. And tell them Newt sent you.

Rethinking Greece

2011-11-14T06:38:00.000-08:00

Greece has been in the news a lot recently, and not in a good way. This article, by George Zakardakis, puts the crisis in historical perspective--always a refreshing touch.

I have a good friend who enjoys traveling in Greece as much as I do. She is something of a militant atheist, which means she goes for the broken columns. What happened since Late Antiquity, i.e. Christian/Byzantine Greece--the "real" Greece, I would say--interests her not at all. In 2010, she convinced me to visit King Philip's Tomb at Veroia. I'm glad I did, but I have to admit that I did so only because I happened to be in the neighborhood. This Disneyfied version--the Greece of the tour groups--is at the root of the current crisis, which, as Zakardakis points out, goes much deeper than the financial.

He writes:

Sinking deeper into the gravest economic crisis in its postwar history, Greece is no nearer to finding an exit from its woes. A toxic mix of anxiety and fear hangs in the air in Athens. The ordeal shows that living up to lofty idealism is never easy. Modern Greeks know that well for we are, in many ways, the imperfect reflection of an ideal that the West imagined for itself.

When the Greek crisis began two years ago, the cover of a popular German magazine showed an image of Aphrodite of Milo gesturing crudely with the headline: "The fraudster in the euro family." In the article, modern Greeks were described as indolent sloths, cheats and liars, masters of corruption, unworthy descendants of their glorious Hellenic past.

The irony was that modern Greece has little in common with Pericles or Plato. If anything, it is a failed German project.

In 1832, Greece had just won its independence from the Ottoman Empire. The "Big Powers" of the time, Britain, France and Russia, appointed a Bavarian prince, Otto, as Greece's first king. Otto arrived with German architects, engineers, doctors and soldiers and set out to reconfigure the country to the romantic ideal of the times.

The 19th century had seen a resurgence of Europeans' interest in ancient Greece. Goethe, Shelley, Byron, Delacroix and other artists, poets and musicians sought inspiration in classical beauty. They longed for a lost purity in thought, aesthetics and warm-blooded passion.

Revisiting the sensual Greece of Orpheus and Sappho was ballast to the detached coolness of science or the dehumanizing onslaught of the Industrial Revolution.

Otto ensured that modern Greece lived up to that romantic image. Athens, then a small hamlet, was inaugurated as the capital. The architects from Munich designed and built a royal palace, an academy, a library and beautiful neoclassical edifices. Modern Greece was thus invented as a backdrop to contemporary European art and imagination, a historical precursor of many Disneylands to come.

Otto was eventually expelled by a coup. But the foundations of historical misunderstanding had been laid, to haunt Greece and its relations with itself and other European nations forever.

Of course, it is easy enough to blame all your problems on the West. But Zakadarkis maintains that this romanticized Western fantasy of Greece locked in place a real division within Greek national identity, which has yet to be resolved. Unless it is, he believes even worse headlines lie ahead.

No matter what Otto may have imagined, the truth was that my forefathers, the brave people who started fighting for their freedom against the Turks in 1821, had not been in suspended animation for 2,000 years....they were not walking around in white cloaks with laurel wreaths. They were Christian orthodox, conservative and fiercely antagonistic toward their governing institutions. In other words, they were an embarrassment to all those folks in Berlin, Paris and London who expected resurrected philosophers sacrificing to Zeus.

The profound gap between the ancient and the modern had to be bridged, to satisfy Europe's romantic expectations of Greece. So a historical narrative was put together claiming uninterrupted continuity with the ancient past, which became the central dogma of Greek national policy and identity.

[The Greeks] despise the loss of their sovereignty as well as the bitter medicine prescribed by their European brethren for their "rescue." Austerity enforced by unelected officials from the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank is perceived as not remedy but punishment, a distasteful concept to the orthodox Greeks whose core value is mercy.

The Greek financial crisis is a crisis of identity as much as anything else. Unless the people redefine themselves, this could become the perfect catastrophe: a country designed as a romantic theme park two centuries ago, propped up with loans ever since, and unable to adjust to the crude realities of 21st-century globalization.

Harold Bloom on the Mormon Moment

2011-11-13T18:50:00.000-08:00

I wonder though which is more dangerous, a knowledge-hungry religious zealotry or a proudly stupid one?

This is how Harold Bloom ends one of the best essays I've read in a long time, found here. It seems I've read more about Bloom than by him, though there is a copy of The Western Canon on a bookshelf somewhere in the house. In the November 13th NYTimes, he addresses the significance of our first Mormon presidential nominee. If it were just that, I would not give the article much attention. Bloom, however, uses the issue to speak much-needed truth about American culture, religiosity and money/politics, while putting the invented Mormon faith in the context of all the other faiths we have invented.

I predicted the 2012 GOP ticket back in March, and I stand by that prognostication. I do not give a whit about Mitt's Mormonism. I will not be voting for him for other reasons. And for all the blather about it on the right, the last time we elected anyone who acted as though they took this Christian business seriously was back in 1976, and as I recall, that did not work out too well. Besides, I believe we generally get the politicians we deserve.

But on to Bloom. I have copied a number of passages, below. I encourage you to read the entire article linked above. It is quite good. Enjoy.

Mr. Romney…is directly descended from an early follower of the founding prophet Joseph Smith, whose highly original revelation was as much a departure from historical Christianity as Islam was and is. But then, so in fact are most manifestations of what is now called religion in the United States, including the Southern Baptist Convention, the Assemblies of God Pentecostalists and even our mainline Protestant denominations.

However, should Mr. Romney be elected president, Smith’s dream of a Mormon Kingdom of God in America would not be fulfilled, since the 21st-century Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has little resemblance to its 19th-century precursor….The Salt Lake City empire of corporate greed has little enough in common with the visions of Joseph Smith. The oligarchs of Salt Lake City, who sponsor Mr. Romney, betray what ought to have been their own religious heritage. Though I read Christopher Hitchens with pleasure, his characterization of Joseph Smith as “a fraud and conjuror” is inadequate. A superb trickster and protean personality, Smith was a religious genius, uniquely able to craft a story capable of turning a self-invented faith into a people now as numerous as the Jews, in America and abroad.

Persuasively redefining Christianity has been a pastime through the ages, yet the American difference is brazen. What I call the American Religion, and by that I mean nearly all religions in this country, socially manifests itself as the Emancipation of Selfishness. Our Great Emancipator of Selfishness, President Ronald Reagan, refreshingly evaded the rhetoric of religion, but has been appropriated anyway as the archangel of American spiritualized greed….The American Religion centers upon the denial of death, literalizing an ancient Christian metaphor.

Obsessed by a freedom we identify with money, we tolerate plutocracy as if it could someday be our own ecstatic solitude. A first principle of the American Religion is that each of us rarely feels free unless he or she is entirely alone, particularly when in the company of the American Jesus. Walking and talking with him is akin to receiving his love in a personal and individual relationship.

A dark truth of American politics in what is still the era of Reagan and the Bushes is that so many do not vote their own economic interests. Rather than living in reality they yield to what oddly are termed “cultural” considerations: moral and spiritual, or so their leaders urge them to believe. Under the banners of flag, cross, fetus, exclusive marriage between men and women, they march onward to their own deepening impoverishment. Much of the Tea Party fervor merely repeats this gladsome frolic.

As the author of “The American Religion,” I learned a considerable respect for such original spiritual revelations as 19th-century Mormonism and early 20th-century Southern Baptism, admirably re-founded by the subtle theologian Edgar Young Mullins in his “Axioms of Religion.”

A religion becomes a people, as it has for the Jews and the Mormons, partly out of human tenacity inspired by the promise of the blessing of more life, but also through charismatic leadership. What we now call Judaism was essentially created by Rabbi Akiva ben Joseph to meet the needs of a Jewish people mired under Roman occupation in Palestine and elsewhere in the empire....Joseph Smith, killed by a mob before he turned 39, is hardly comparable to the magnificent Akiva, except that he invented Mormonism even more single-handedly than Akiva gave us Judaism, or Muhammad, Islam.

I recall prophesying in 1992 that by 2020 Mormonism could become the dominant religion of the western United States. But we are not going to see that large a transformation. I went wrong because the last two decades have witnessed the deliberate dwindling of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints into just one more Protestant sect. Without the changes, Mitt Romney and Jon M. Huntsman Jr., a fellow Mormon, would not seem plausible candidates.

The accurate critique of Mormonism is that Smith’s religion is not even monotheistic, let alone democratic. Though the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints no longer openly describes their innermost beliefs, they clearly hold on to the notion of a plurality of gods. Indeed, they themselves expect to become gods, following the path of Joseph Smith….Mormons earn godhead though their own efforts, hoping to join the plurality of gods, even as they insist they are not polytheists. No Mormon need fall into the fundamentalist denial of evolution, because the Mormon God is not a creator. Imaginatively liberating as this may be, its political implications are troublesome. The Mormon patriarch, secure in his marriage and large family, is promised by his faith a final ascension to godhead, with a planet all his own separate from the earth and nation where he now dwells. From the perspective of the White House, how would the nation and the world appear to President Romney? How would he represent the other 98 percent of his citizens?

Mormonism’s best inheritance from Joseph Smith was his passion for education, hardly evident in the anti-intellectual and semi-literate Southern Baptist Convention. I wonder though which is more dangerous, a knowledge-hungry religious zealotry or a proudly stupid one? Either way we are condemned to remain a plutocracy and oligarchy. I can be forgiven for dreading a further strengthening of theocracy in that powerful brew.

The Myth of American Exceptionalism

2011-10-29T12:59:00.000-07:00

Most statements of “American exceptionalism” presume that America’s values, political system, and history are unique and worthy of universal admiration. They also imply that the United States is both destined and entitled to play a distinct and positive role on the world stage.

The only thing wrong with this self-congratulatory portrait of America's global role is that it is mostly a myth....By focusing on their supposedly exceptional qualities, Americans blind themselves to the ways that they are a lot like everyone else.

This unchallenged faith in American exceptionalism makes it harder for Americans to understand why others are less enthusiastic about U.S. dominance, often alarmed by U.S. policies, and frequently irritated by what they see as U.S. hypocrisy....Ironically, U.S. foreign policy would probably be more effective if Americans were less convinced of their own unique virtues and less eager to proclaim them.

These are the words of Stephen M. Walt, Harvard professor and co-author of The Israel Lobby, in an excellent Foreign Policy article entitled The Myth of American Exceptionalism, here.

Walt identifies 5 of the pleasant lies we tell ourselves:

1. There is Something Exceptional about American Exceptionalism.

2. The United States Behaves Better Than Other Nations Do.

3. America's Success is Due to its Special Genius.

4. The United States is Responsible for Most of the Good in the World.

5. God Is on Our Side.

We are now one year and 6 days away from the 2012 presidential election. Expect to hear much about American Exceptionalism, whoever the GOP nominee turns out to be (though it will be Romney.) He will accuse President Obama of not believing in AE, and he will be wrong. Both parties completely buy into the idea, though using different language to express it.

Walt's article is superb, a much-needed corrective to our conventional mindset.

The Way We Live Now

2011-10-27T17:39:00.000-07:00

I have attended two conferences in recent weeks--one in Frisco, Texas and the other in Chicago. The first was the annual state convention of my profession. As I teach a couple of required courses in our local university, my presence was expected. (And the fact that my two nights at the Embassy Suites would be covered tended to sweeten the deal.) The second conference was the annual gathering of the Byzantine Studies Association of North America. The use of frequent flyer miles brought this meeting within the arc of affordability. Two more disparate gatherings could not be imagined.

Frisco lies at the far north edge of a conglomeration of burgeoning suburban cities we used to simply refer to as North Dallas. When it comes to runaway growth, Frisco is in a class by itself. In 1990, the town boasted 6,000 residents. Today, the population has surpassed 120,000.

Though I have lived my entire life in rural, semi-rural and small-town settings, I tend to enjoy urban areas. Dallas and environs, however, is not a favorite. I appreciate those cities with lively downtowns and that promote and protect distinctive neighborhoods. Dallas suffers on both counts. The city has few real neighborhoods for its size, with the truly interesting ones hidden away in the struggling southern and eastern sectors--not in the north where all the growth is heading. Dallas is making strides in downtown revitalization, though here again, there is an artificiality to it all, as opposed to their neighbor to the west, Fort Worth.

Frisco seems to suffer from over planning. The area around the convention center/hotel was pastureland ten years previously. Now, freeways and wide, divided esplanades splice through the black land, blocking off the shopping centers, malls, office parks, restaurants, and entertainment venues of various sorts--all set far back with acres of parking in front. Everything is carefully landscaped, to be sure.

Outside of the old town core, Frisco tends towards walled enclaves of ugly, two-story, cheaply-constructed-to-the-naked-eye brick veneer jobs jammed up alongside each other on tiny lots, or walled enclaves of back-to-back McMansionas Texiana. One area gated development opted for a different, though unintentionally hilarious look, dubbing itself "Savannah," complete with Lowland architecture and imported palms. All this on the tree-less black lands of North Texas, a stone's throw from the Red River. Frisco is an almost totally planned city and has won numerous awards and all, but I couldn't help thinking to myself--they did this on purpose? The city is absolutely incomprehensible without use of the automobile. People jog, but they don't walk. There is no where to walk to. My last night there, somewhat in protest, I left my truck in the parking garage and walked a half-mile down the street to an El Salvadoran restaurant.

There will eventually be a limit to this growth. According to those who study these things, the city of Frisco will have a population of 280,000 when it is "built out." To the north, the small community of Prosper is all set to be the "next Frisco." Beyond that, there is the Red River and Oklahoma, where all things Texan come to a screeching stop.

Other than changing planes at O'Hare, I had not been to Chicago since 1987. The conference venue was DePaul University in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. The hotel for the conference was 10 blocks east, on the West edge of the park. I was in for a pleasant surprise in my accommodations. The Belden-Stratford is a 14-story 1922 hotel, complete with grand lobby. 80% of the building is given over to apartments, while the remaining 20% are offered as hotel rooms. A mistake was made in my reservations, so they had to put me in one of the vacant apartments. So, instead of a single hotel room, I ended up in a 1200 square foot two bedroom, two and a half bath, living room, dining room, full kitchen corner suite, with East views overlooking Lincoln Park and Lake Michigan, and South views overlooking the Chicago skyline. I almost hated to leave the room.

The weather was perfect, crisp temperatures and without a cloud in the sky. The walk to and from the conference each day gave me opportunity to check out the neighborhood. Lincoln Park is one of those districts that has been pretty thoroughly gentrified. Being so close to downtown, it is a desirable locale, and property values reflect that. I am quite sure I could not afford to live here. The homes and apartments differed enough from one another to keep the walk interesting. I noticed that many of the residences boasted large picture windows, and most had their shades open where one could see the artwork and/or decorative items they were sharing with those on the sidewalk. While I liked this, I found it different from most streetscapes, where the blinds are kept closed.

DePaul is a Catholic university where the student body appeared earnest and well-scrubbed. I thoroughly enjoyed the conference, met an old acquaintance or two, and even made a few new friends among the academe. The field of Byzantine studies is a rarefied little world if there ever was one. But what a fascinating world it is! Many of the papers were read by graduate students. I wish them all well, though I wonder where they think the jobs will be.

One night, we were all bussed out to the University of Chicago for a lecture. The drive out there, south along Lakeshore Drive as it wrapped around downtown Chicago, was worth the trip. The campus was something to see, as well. The venue that night was the Oriental Institute, where we listened to a talk delivered in an old wood-paneled lecture hall, complete with red leather theatre seats. Afterwards, they treated us with a reception in the exhibit hall, replete with Sumerian, Babylonian and Assyrian displays. The lamassu there, from the palace of Sargon II, was even more impressive than the one in the Louve. (I'm being a little pretentious here. A lamassu is one of those Assyrian winged horses with a human head. And no, I did not know what the word meant either until I read the sign next to the display.)

We enjoyed a reception at Cortelyou Commons the last night of the conference, where two association officers re-enacted a scene from the play, Theodora. There, I had occasion to speak briefly with Daniel Larison, whose writings I seem to constantly extol on these pages.

Somewhere along the way, I managed to squeeze in a visit to a local Irish pub (Kelley's, established 1933.) Meeting two fellow Orthodox bloggers while in Chicago was an especial treat--as was my visit to Christ the Savior Orthodox Church (OCA.) The temple was located 1.7 miles south of my hotel, and this made a nice Sunday morning walk. The church is in what was once a turn-of-the century Presbyterian church that eventually disbanded. Our Savior's got an incredible deal on the building, as well as the mansion house next door, which serves as their hall. The iconography in the church is almost finished and is beautifully done. I estimated 85-100 at Divine Liturgy, heavily represented by younger families with children. That is usually a good sign, I think.

The Rich Man and Lazarus was the subject of the homily for that particular Sunday. I remember that the priest brought out the fact that the Rich Man (whose name we do not even know) failed to see Lazarus (whose name is preserved for eternity) as a brother. The sermon hit home with me because of an incident that had happened only the day before. I was walking west on Belden, approaching the commercial area at the Clark Street intersection. A disheveled-looking man was standing on the sidewalk ahead, just outside the 7-Eleven. I could tell that he was what we call a "street person." He had a few bags on the ground and his old coat was pulled up over his head. As I approached, I was going over in my mind what I would do if he asked for money. Of course I would give him some, if asked, but then I was wondering if I had any small bills on me and that sort of thing. When I drew even with him, I tried to avoid eye contact and he did not say anything. Phew, I thought, problem solved. A block further on, I saw a man walking his two pugs. I am a pug person, and so I smiled broadly and stopped to admire the two dogs. As I walked on, the enormity of what I had just done hit me squarely in the face. I had shown great affection towards these two pampered pets. And yet, I had failed to recognize Christ in the face of my poor brother on the street corner. I had missed my chance. There was nothing to do now but to repent and try to do better next time. The following morning, before striking off to church, I made sure I had some money in my right pants pocket, just in case. A few blocks before I reached the church, a woman stopped me and asked if I could help her with bus fare. This time I was ready. My gracious Lord had given me a second chance.

Of Icarus and Other Things

2011-10-16T15:48:00.000-07:00

I'm still having trouble getting back into the groove of blogging. Last weekend, I attended a convention in the suburban wastelands north of Dallas. This coming weekend, I will be at a conference in Chicago. That contrast ought to give me something to write about. In the meantime, I have enjoyed the following:

So Beinart has come to admire historical figures who might once have stood as correctives to his own facile brilliance—who have a deep knowledge of specific countries, a healthy respect for other people’s nationalism, a skepticism toward claims of disinterested morality in the conduct of foreign policy, and an aversion to war except as a last resort. Kennan once set out to write a biography of Chekhov; as Beinart dryly observes, “Bush sent a man to run Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, who had never before been posted to the Arab world. To grasp the intellectual chasm between American foreign policy toward the U.S.S.R. in 1946 and American foreign policy toward Iraq in 2003, one need only try to envision Bremer writing a biography of an Iraqi writer, or, for that matter, being able to name one.”

...Beinart outlines a number of the early-warning signs that a spell of myopia is about to deliver a catastrophe: doctrinaire mental habits, belief in preordained success, contempt for the counsel of allies, pervasive fear of threats, refusal to prioritize enemies. Americans have been especially vulnerable to irrational surges in national faith, because of an improbable combination: they’ve acquired the supreme strength of an imperial power without relinquishing their original claim—whether from God or the Declaration of Independence—to speak for freedom-seeking people everywhere. As a consequence, Americans like to imagine that they are acting without self-interest. It’s tough to get them to do anything overseas, including going to war, without telling them that something higher is at stake. This national character has, on balance, brought great benefits to the rest of the world. Beinart’s incontrovertible theme is that it has also brought great tragedies.

Review by George Packer of Roger Beinart's The Icarus Syndrome.

Why is there not a literalist, fundamentalist reading of the Year of Jubilee? an economic moment of the cancellation of debt? a restoration of the old property lines? A built-in systemic revulsion of servitude and slavery?

Or is at economics when right-wing fundamentalists decide to become allegorical all at once? Or when they become conveniently dispensational?

That is, when all difficult moral choices are put off to the millennium?

Why are all difficult moral choices that are put off economical? Socio-economical?

Why did the "reformation" adopt such a secularistic model of sola scriptura? Was the Calvinistic economic model of the rich getting rich off of usury so precious, that it was worth severing Christian consciousness from the Rule of the Saints?

Good questions from Fr. Jonathan Tobias at Second Terrace.

Blond said the modern Left and the modern Right have remarkably much in common. I know it sounds odd, but it’s true.” He said New Left in the 1960s promoted liberalization from traditional moral norms to emancipate individual desires. Then the New Right that followed promoted liberalization from economic strictures. What’s happened has been a social disaster, especially for the poor. The only people who have made out fine have been the wealthy. Blond had a great line about he morality of the sexually libertine left, when applied to economics by the economically libertine right:

“It produced an economy where people thought you could screw each other and everybody would get rich.”

Phillip Blond by way of Rod Dreher (h/t Teetotaler)

The great difficulty is the knowledge of God that is proper to the Christian journey of faith, is that is not sought as knowledge, per se. It comes to us as insight, sometimes suddenly and unexpected, but it comes as the fruit of humility and penance in our lives. The proud do not know God for we are told that “God resists the proud.” Humility is a very difficult struggle, for we learn ourselves to be lower than others rather than greater. This is a great mystery for we are surrounded by those whom we would easily judge to be less than ourselves and greater sinners than ourselves. However, in the truth that is revealed by the light of the Kingdom of God, this is simply not the case. That Holy Light reveals us to be less than others and the least worthy of God’s good favor.

…We hate and fear our own failure when it confronts us and scurry about to find something with which to cover our mistakes. This is the scurrying of Adam and Eve as they sought to cover themselves falsely from the presence of God. Humility would embrace such God-given moments (our failures) not to shame ourselves, but because in such moments our hearts are broken and far more able to see God.

…However, God does not wish to crush us, to break us beyond all recognition. He is, after all, a kind God.

Embrace the failings that come naturally as we are humbled before ourselves and others. Flee from pride and stubbornness. Beware of being “right.” Give thanks for all things, in all circumstances, and always. God will make Himself known.

Fr. Stephen Freeman on Knowing God (again h/t Teetotaler)

Greece's Dostoevsky: The Theological Vision of Alexandros Papadiamandis

2011-10-05T12:04:00.000-07:00

I have been requested to help spread the word about the recent publication of Greece's Dostoevsky: The Theological Vision of Alexandros Papadiamandis, offered by Protecting Veil Press. I became an enthusiast of Papadiamandis upon reading The Boundless Garden about two years ago. Little of his work is available in English, so this reasonably-priced volume should be a welcome addition, as well as an introduction to those unfamiliar with Papadiamandis. I understand that this current publication contains two short stories, one from The Boundless Garden and another previously unpublished in English.

Herman A. Middleton, the translator, guest posted about Papadiamandis at Byzantine TX on September 30, and at Eighth Day on October 4. Future posts will be at Biblicalia at on October 6 and Mystagogy on October 11.

I hope that more and more American Orthodox readers (and non-Orthodox, for that matter) will become familiar with Papadiamandis and his work. We will certainly profit from doing so. I also want to express my appreciation to Herman for his commitment to this project.

A Busy, Churchy Week

2011-10-01T16:38:00.000-07:00

My blogging activity has been at a low ebb lately. That is usually a sign that real life is intruding onto the unreality of online life. Perhaps that is the case with me. I devote more time trying to keep my business afloat, as well as attending to my second and third jobs--teaching a couple of classes at two local colleges. In addition, this has been a particularly eventful week in church, with two extra Liturgies and a 3-day lecture series we hosted with Fr. Demetrios Carellas.

Before Liturgy last Sunday, I found myself in the strange position of giving a talk to the "old folks class" at First Presbyterian Church in the city. I do not have a Calvinist bone in my body, though many of my oldest and closest friends are of that persuasion. I do not understand it and it has never appealed to me in any way. My best friend would wryly observe, no doubt, that I was predestined not to understand. [And this reminds of my favorite line about Calvinism: In the movie Cold Comfort Farm, Calvinist preacher Amos Starkadder, portrayed by Ian McKellan, proclaims right before he leaves town: "The Lord will provide.....or not.....depending on His whim."]

My tie to the Presbyterian Sunday School class is two lifelong friends who are the youngest members of this class. They had been studying church history a bit, I think, and had been focusing on "religious art" through the ages. In so doing, they finished up with Byzantine icons and iconography. My friend suggested that I come and talk to them about iconography, the Orthodox mission in our city, and, ahem, my journey to Orthodoxy. I say this with some trepidation because I was trained-up online under the stern tutelage of the old Ochlophobist blog during its glory days. Those of us who hung on every word there were shamed away from the convert stories on the tip of our lips. Seemingly, it was a slippery slope--once you had posted a "journey" story, then before you knew it, you would find yourself listening to Fr. Peter Gillquist on AFR and wearing Get to Know the Original tee-shirts. I jest a bit a bit at Owen's expense here, but he did discipline many of us away from posting self-centered and silly convert stories. But what do you do if someone actually asks? In that case, I think you have to comply, and so I did.

I talked with them a little about iconography, concentrating mainly on what it is not. Apparently, they viewed it as just an exotic form of religious decoration, so we had to start from scratch. As it turns out, while iconography was the excuse, what they really wanted to hear was how a Church of Christ elder from East Texas ended up in the Holy Orthodox Church. I told the story as well as I could within the time constraints. I'm not going to post it here, but if anyone is interested they can email me and I will forward a transcript. The class was a congenial bunch and the talk seemed well-received, though I suspect a presentation on most anything would have fit the bill for them.

I attended lectures Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night at our mission by Fr. Demetrios Carellas. He is a noted speaker, I think, in Orthodox circles, and is the spiritual father of our priest. The topics were Faith, Hope and Love. The talks were excellent and well-attended. Fr. Demetrios is warm-hearted and a delightful man to know. We videotaped the sessions, and I hope to post links here to all three in the near future.

Friday night, after Vespers, I attended a talk by Ken Myers at Sylvania Church in the city. As many may know, Myers is the man behind Mars Hill Audio. He is well-known nationally, and the lecture should have attracted more people than it did. Sylvania Church is a former Baptist Church that dropped the B-word, though they still have The Baptist Hymnal in the back of each pew. They emphasize that they are Reformed, and have elders, so this is not a typical Southern Baptist congregation. Everyone seemed well-scrubbed and earnest. The young men would clasp your hand in a firm handshake and smile broadly at the same time. It has been a while since I visited an evangelical church and I had forgotten some of the routine. The lecture series was entitled Abandoning God's Gifts: The Tragedy of Modern Suspicion about Beauty. The specific talk I attended was Life, the Universe and Everything: Why the Gospel means more than a ticket to Heaven. Myers himself is Presbyterian. He conveyed a good grasp of the topic and I found myself in agreement with much of what he had to say. His audience listened intently, talking copious notes all along. But it was a little sad, I thought, for it all seemed just another abstract intellectual construct. In coming weeks, no doubt, they will appoint a committee to investigate how they can incorporate beauty into their services.

Liturgies on Monday morning and Friday night finished out my week in church--that, and a Catholic funeral on Friday afternoon, where the priest delivered as beautiful a homily as I have ever heard.

2011-09-29T14:06:00.000-07:00

I came across these incredible photographs at the Pravoslavie site. The captions are in Russian, so I can only make assumptions about the subject matter. They seem to be of rural Russian wooden churches from the 17th and 18th centuries. There are a number of "before and after" shots, as some of the churches are being restored. Unfortunately, it may be too late for some of the others. The photography is impressive and moving. All can be seen here.

Some Observations by Dr. Brzezinski

2011-09-19T12:40:00.000-07:00

I always enjoy when Mika's dad is a guest on the show. Just returning from overseas, he touched on a number of subjects in a 14-minute interview. Dr. Brzezinski requires little coaxing to say what is on his mind. Often too much a globalist for my taste, his plain-spoken realism, however, is in short supply these days. His comments--while sobering--are a welcome antitode to the usual blather.

Russia:
In a "state of unease, uncertainty"

Germany:
"a sense of uneasiness" about America

the Middle East:
entering era of "populism, not democracy"
"we've missed the boat here"

Our Middle East policy:
"disintegrating before our eyes"
"absence of any sense of strategic direction"

Our opposition to Palestinian statehood in U.N.:
a "tragic historical error"
"blind people looking at today and mostly at yesterday are leading"
"an evasion of historical responsibility"
"both the United States and Israel with be totally isolated in the Middle East"

Israel:
"isolating itself by an increasingly self-destructive policy"
"6 million people are ruling 5 million other people--that's not stable"
"in the long run, not a formula for survival"
"perpetual conflict and eventual fading of the security of Israel and its prospects for survival"

Pakistan:
"we are willing to be part of the solution, but we are not going to be there eternally, solving the problem for the region, if they are not willing to participate with us...we are going to pack up and leave...throw the ball to the Chinese...and it will be their problem"

The American Rich:
"who whoop it up without any responsibility--social responsibility--for our lives here in America"
"cannot have society in which 1% owns so much"

The American Poor:
"the remnants...are deprived"
"prescription for social conflict, in addition to economic paralysis"

GOP Candidates:
"going through kind of a lunatic phase in our politics"
"living in a never-never land of illusions, slogans, passions, convictions--very unrelated to reality"
"literally frightening"

President Obama:
"Pity...very, very dramatically atttractive leadership which doesn't really go far beyond speeches, that's part of the problem"

Fr. Demetrios Carellas

2011-09-18T11:45:00.000-07:00

St. John of Damascus Orthodox Mission is hosting a lecture series featuring Fr. Demetrios Carellas on September 26th through 28th. The talks will be at 7:00 PM each night, preceded by Vespers at 5:30, with refreshments in between. If you are within driving distance of Tyler, Texas, we hope you will consider attending.

9/12+

2011-09-12T15:48:00.000-07:00

I spent a pretty normal Sunday yesterday--church, then council meeting, then back home for some reading and a bit of writing. I watched no television, save for a few choice scenes from It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World--which I know by heart already. I purposely bought no newspapers. Nor did I purchase any of the requisite commemorative magazines. In short, I completely avoided taking any notice of 9/11. Our little town pulled off a large memorial service at the halftime of our homecoming football game on Friday--complete with a field-sized flag, fly-overs, and a ladder truck from the NYFD. They even borrowed our antique bell to ring in commemoration. We didn't go. My wife and I did not even talk about it during the weekend. This morning's local headlines were of the Tyler extraganza at the megaBaptist church, with firefighters and police front and center, American flag videos running continuously on both movie screens flanking the podium, and a rousing medley of patriotic songs, which is all appropriate, I suppose, if your religion is Americanism, rather than Christianity.

I do not discount the horrendous human tragedy of that day. Human carnage is sickening--all of it. I suppose the thing is this: I cannot divorce the events of 9/11 from everything that has come afterwards--our lost, fearful disastrous decade which shows every sign of becoming a lost, fearful disastrous generation. I'm not saying we should forget--far from it. Remember the tragedy and the lives lost in the conflagration. But the event and--God forbid--our response, should not define us as a nation.

I find it hard to express exactly what I want to say, but I am largely in sympathy with the sentiments of the following articles.

Pat Buchanan

Patrick Foy

Tom Engelhardt

Andrew Bacevich

A superb collection at Tipsy Teetotaller

And this from Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick:

Orthodox Christianity is about coming face to face with death, grappling with death, and wrestling it to the ground. It is not about accommodation to this world. Those who prefer to be accommodated to this world will always be utterly devastated by moments like 9/11, because they cut so sharply into the comfortable complacency of a consumerist culture. For them, it is true that nothing will ever be the same. But those who will not surrender, those who will not be defeated by death or by the world that death holds in its thrall, those who have put on Christ and struggle to put on Christ every day—they cannot be destroyed.

Repose of Archbishop DMITRI

2011-08-28T16:45:00.001-07:00

Archbishop DMITRI, first and (as yet) only bishop of the Diocese of the South (OCA) fell asleep in the Lord early this morning. Those outside the Diocese of the South may not understand the relationship we had with this good and saintly shepherd. I recall the first homily I heard from him. I was not yet Orthodox, but was visiting at the Cathedral. Archbishop DMITRI came out onto the ambo and leaned on his staff. As he motioned for everyone to gather-round, we came closer and sat on the floor at his feet. Then, in a soft, gentle voice--as if he was having a personal conversation with each of us--he simply expounded from one of the parables. In my previous religious tradition, we talked much of shepherds, though mainly it involved the "qualifications" for the office. All of that turned out to be so much intellectual posturing and nonsense. For as much as we talked the game, I had never seen "shepherding" really done until that day.

Archbishop DMITRI was raised Baptist, and never discounted his early religious training. In his words, he simply wanted "the rest of his church." And it was this personal connection with the Protestant Bible Belt that informed his zeal for Orthodox evangelism in the South. It is because of his vision that there should be an Orthodox presence in East Texas, that our mission--St. John of Damascus--is here today. I have been around since the inception of our young church, and I know well the direct hand he played in our establishment.

I think everyone in the DOS has an Archbishop DMITRI story. Generally, it involved a tale he would tell, with the ever-present cup of coffee in his hand. One he never tired of relating was the following: He was traveling in East Texas and stopped at a Dairy Queen for coffee. He was not far from his hometown of Teague. An Orthodox bishop is not the usual customer one encounters in a podunk Texas Dairy Queen. As he told it, an old man setting across the cafe from him was staring a hole in him, as we say. Finally, the man could stand it no longer, and got up and came over to Archbishop DMITRI. He took another long look at him, and said, "yer not from around here, are ya?" The archbishop looked up over his coffee and replied, "Well, actually I am." The poor befuddled customer didn't know how to take that.

I feel deeply privileged and blessed to have been under his care.

The following tribute/biography is taken from the OCA website, and it is quite good.

In Memoriam: + His Eminence, Archbishop DMITRI

Orthodox Christians were deeply saddened to hear of the falling asleep in the Lord on Sunday, August 28, 2011, at 2:00 am [CDT] of His Eminence, The Most Reverend DMITRI, retired Archbishop of the Diocese of the South, Orthodox Church in America. The Archbishop was eighty-seven years old. Ordained in 1954, then consecrated to the episcopacy in 1969, his ecclesial ministry spanned fifty-seven remarkable years.

His Eminence was born Robert R. Royster on November 2, 1923, into a Baptist family in the town of Teague, Texas. He often credited his mother for providing him and his sister with a strong, initial faith in Christ. After discovering Orthodoxy as teens they asked their mother for a blessing to convert, whereupon she asked one basic yet predictive question: "Does the Orthodox Church believe in Christ as Lord and Savior?" As it turned out, a specific emphasis on the person and work of Jesus Christ became the hallmark of the future hierarch's ministry, profoundly influencing his preaching and writing.

Having received their desired blessing, and after a period of inquiry and study, brother and sister were received together as Orthodox Christians at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Dallas, Texas in 1941. It was at that point that the two received the names of Dmitri and Dimitra.

Dmitri was drafted into the US Army in 1943, after which he underwent intensive training in Japanese and linguistics in Ann Arbor, Michigan and the Military Intelligence Service Language School in Fort Snelling, Minnesota. Following this he served as a Japanese interpreter at the rank of Second Lieutenant on the staff of General Douglas MacArthur. After his military service Dmitri completed his education, receiving a Bachelor's Degree from the (now) University of North Texas in Denton, just outside of Dallas, and a Master's Degree in Spanish in 1949 from Southern Methodist University. He completed two years of post graduate studies at Tulane University in New Orleans whereupon he returned to his home in Dallas.

In 1954, as a subdeacon with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under Constantinople, Dmitri worked with the Mexican Orthodox Community of Our Lady of San Juan de Los Lagos, at which time he began translations of Orthodox liturgical services into Spanish. In April of 1954 Subdeacon Dmitri, his sister Dimitra and their priest, Fr. Rangel sought permission of the local hierarch, Bishop Bogdan, to establish an English language Orthodox mission in Dallas, the future St. Seraphim Cathedral. Dmitri was ordained to the diaconate and priesthood that same year and assigned as rector of St. Seraphim's. In 1958 permission was sought and given to bring both Fr. Dmitri and the parish into the Russian Metropolia, predecessor to the Orthodox Church in America. During his pastorate Fr. Dmitri served as an instructor of Spanish at Southern Methodist University. He functioned in this capacity for a number of years. Dmitri also taught at Tulane University in New Orleans for a brief period during his tenure as student.

During the early years of St. Seraphim's Fr. Dmitri continued his missionary activities among the Mexican Americans but was intent on developing the new community placed in his care. As a direct result of his desire that people from all walks of life hear the message of Orthodox Christianity, the Cathedral remains to this day, a multi-ethic parish, consisting of both cradle Orthodox and converts.

While working outside the Church and tending to priestly responsibilities, Fr. Dmitri found time to print his own original articles in a weekly Church bulletin. In the 1950's and 60's Orthodox theological works in English were scarce, particularly on a popular level of reading. Fr. Dmitri saw a need and sought to address it. Later, his curriculum for catechumens used at St. Seraphim's would be published by the Department of Christian Education of the Orthodox Church in America, with the title: Orthodox Christian Teaching. The Dallas community grew steadily; Fr. Dmitri had a unique gift for relating to all people. Both young and old looked to him as a loving father.

From 1966 to 1967 Fr. Dmitri attended St. Vladimir's Orthodox Seminary in New York while concurrently teaching Spanish at Fordham University. He studied with people like Fr. Alexander Schmemann, Fr. John Meyendorff, and Professor Serge Verhovskoy. In 1969 Fr. Dmitri was elected to the episcopate. On June 22 of that year he was consecrated Bishop of Berkeley, California as an auxiliary to Archbishop John (Shahovskoy) of San Francisco. The consecration of Bishop Dmitri is regarded by some historians as the first consecration of a convert to the episcopate in America (though Ignatius (Nichols) was consecrated in 1932 but subsequently left the Church).

In 1970 Bishop Dmitri was given the title, Bishop of Washington, auxiliary to Metropolitan Ireney. He would later recall the helpful training he received as an auxiliary under both Archbishop John and Metropolitan Ireney, particularly the many periods of instruction in Church Slavonic.

On October 19, 1971, Bishop Dmitri was elected Bishop of Hartford and New England. In 1972 the Holy Synod of Bishops brought Mexico under the auspices of the Orthodox Church in America, which had received its autocephaly (the right to govern itself) in 1970 from the Moscow Patriarchate. Given his knowledge of and fondness for Mexican culture and the Spanish language, Bishop Dmitri took on additional responsibilities from the Holy Synod as Exarch of Mexico. He was as much beloved by the Mexican people as by those in his own Diocese.

In 1977 at the 5th All American Council convened in Montreal, Bishop Dmitri received a majority of popular votes in an election for a new Metropolitan of the Orthodox Church in America. For the sake of continuity -- a cradle Orthodox occupying the Primatial See was more in keeping with the contemporary challenges of a young territorial Church -- the Holy Synod chose instead The Right Reverend Theodosius (Lazor), Bishop of Alaska who became an advocate and supporter of missionary work in the southern United States.

In 1978 the Synod of Bishops took an important step by creating the Diocese of Dallas and the South. His Eminence became its first ruling hierarch, taking St. Seraphim Church as his Episcopal See. Christ the Saviour Church in Miami, Florida, a prominent Orthodox community in the South, became the second Cathedral of the newly formed Diocese. The Archpriest George Gladky, a veteran missionary and rector of Christ the Saviour, was named Chancellor. He and Bishop Dmitri worked admirably with others to establish Churches and teach Orthodoxy in a region of America where Orthodox Christianity was relatively unknown. The first Diocesan Assembly of the South was convened in Miami, August 25-26, 1978.

In 1993 the Holy Synod elevated Bishop Dmitri to the rank of Archbishop. During his tenure as hierarch the Archbishop chaired various departments of the Orthodox Church in America, and was instrumental, early on, in speaking with representatives of the Evangelical Orthodox Church seeking entrance into canonical Orthodoxy.

On September 4, 2008, following the retirement of Metropolitan Herman, the Holy Synod named Archbishop Dmitri as the locum tenens. Archbishop Seraphim (Storheim) assisted him as administrator. In November of 2008, Archbishop Dmitri's role as OCA locum tenens ended with the election of Bishop Jonah (Paffhausen) of Fort Worth as Metropolitan. On March 22, 2009, the Archbishop requested retirement from active duty as a Diocesan Bishop effective March 31, 2009. Under his leadership the Diocese of the South grew from approximately twelve communities to over seventy at the present time and remains one of the most vibrant Dioceses in the OCA.

During the past two years the Archbishop has lived quietly at his home, writing, making occasional visits to Diocesan communities, and maintaining a quiet involvement with the life of St. Seraphim Cathedral. He was blessed in his last days to have many parishioners who visited and cared for him at home twenty-four hours a day as well as medical professionals who came to his bedside to treat and evaluate his condition. The community in turn received a great blessing from the love and courage with which the Archbishop welcomed them and approached his illness. He remained courteous, hospitable and dignified throughout, even attending Church when his strength allowed. These unexpected visits to the Cathedral by the Archbishop were sources of joy and inspiration to the faithful.

For his former Diocese and the Orthodox Church in America, His Eminence leaves behind a progressive vision of evangelism and ecclesial life, a solid foundation upon which to develop future communities and schools. He leaves the faithful the experience of having had a compassionate father whose enthusiasm was contagious, inspiring many to look profoundly at their own vocations in the Church.

Archbishop Dmitri's greatest joys as well as sorrows were connected to his episcopal ministry. The establishment of new missions, the ordinations of men to the priesthood or diaconate, and the reception of others into Orthodoxy were continual sources of delight. In addition he patiently dealt with clergy and laymen during his tenure who needed correction. In fact, it would be difficult to recall an instance where he strongly reprimanded anyone, at least publicly. Private, gentle advice when needed was more "his style." At times his approach confused and frustrated some who believed that his manner of oversight should be stricter; that he should be more demanding in his expectations. Again, this was never the Archbishop's way. It was not in his character to remind people bluntly of their responsibilities. The Archbishop chose to lead by example rather than by decree. Ultimately and personally this became a source of his extraordinary influence and popularity. Accordingly he lived in a modest manner and was generous to a fault, not only giving beyond the tithe to his Cathedral, but donating to seminaries, charities, diocesan missions, and persons in need.

As stated, Archbishop Dmitri's episcopacy was strongly characterized by a single-minded devotion to the person and work of Jesus Christ. His publications are testimony to this dedication. They include commentaries on: The Sermon on the Mount, The Parables of Christ, The Miracles of Christ, St. Paul's Epistles to the Romans and to the Hebrews, The Epistle of St. James, and the Gospel of St. John. His works also include the aforementioned Introduction to Orthodox Christian Teaching, as well as A Layman's Handbook on The Doctrine of Christ. Some of these have been translated into other languages, enthusiastically received as instructional tools by the faithful abroad. When asked to document his personal thoughts concerning evangelism or American Orthodoxy the Archbishop consistently hesitated, preferring instead to dwell on the teachings of the fathers regarding Scripture and Church doctrine.

For many years His Eminence was the editor of the first diocesan newspaper in the Orthodox Church in America: The Dawn. This modest publication was a primary means of education and an instrument of unity amongst members of a Diocese spanning over one million square miles. One full page in The Dawn was regularly devoted to making available his translations of Orthodox Spanish material. Later the Archbishop included a Russian page to minister to the needs of new immigrants.

The dignity that he brought to his episcopacy was well known. People commented on his bearing, the way he carried himself as a bishop of the Orthodox Church. Some found it surprising that such an august figure possessed great love and respect for others, that he presented himself as one of the people.

Without exaggeration it can be said that His Eminence was a rarity, a unique combination of faith, talent, intelligence and charisma. For the Diocese of the South, indeed for the Orthodox Church in America, he was the right person at the right time.

Forty- two years a bishop, each day offered in service to Christ with Whom he now enjoys the blessedness of the Kingdom. We pray for his continued prayers and we thank the Lord for having given His flock the gift of Archbishop Dmitri. May his Memory Be Eternal.

"Remember those who rule over you, who have spoken the Word of God to you, whose faith follow, considering the outcome of their conduct" (Hebrews 13:7).

"For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel..." (I Corinthians 4: 15)

Back to Burke

2011-08-27T15:28:00.000-07:00

We've always been a magazine family. Both the wife and I like nothing better than to curl up with a new publication. In recent years, we have scaled back considerably--a good thing, particularly as the magazine age may be drawing to a close. We are down to a few essential subscriptions. There is Southern Living, of course, which will probably be last to go. (I know, I know. But we are white, middle-class Southerners. This is what we do.) In terms of Orthodox or other religiously-oriented publications, I retain only Road to Emmaus. We also enjoy the Oxford American, basically a magazine for Southern Living subscribers with something more than Readers Digest Condensed Books on their bookshelves. I also have kept my subscription to Southern Cultures, which is the best scholarly journal on the subject. Finally, there is The American Conservative. The name can be misleading, as the magazine is anything but a promoter of what passes for conservatism in today's public discourse. Here is where I can get my fill of such writers as Andrew Bacevich, Michael Lind, Patrick J. Buchanan and Daniel Larison, who all view with a jaundiced eye the myth of American Exceptionalism.

The conservatism that the magazine and such writers promote is usually far removed from the policies advocated by Movement Conservatives, who to the extent that they are even aware of contrarian views, dismiss such approaches as quaint, crackpotish, antiquarian or even liberal. A conservatism that concerns itself with actually conserving things, traditionalism and minding one's own affairs gets little traction these days. But this is no time for despair. The battle must be waged, as the current issue's editorial sets out in clear language.

Back to Burke

The biggest loss conservatives suffered in recent years was not the election of Barack Obama in 2008 or the defeat of the last Republican Congress in 2006. It wasn’t the passage of the president’s healthcare reform or nearly $1 trillion stimulus package, nor any other legislative setback. Conservatives had already lost something far more basic—their moorings.

Edmund Burke was never more eloquent than when denouncing the Penal Laws that circumscribed the liberties of Ireland’s Catholics. That system, he wrote in 1792, was “as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment and degradation of a people, and the debasement, in them, of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.” This was Burke’s opinion at a time when Catholics were synonymous with subversion—didn’t they owe highest allegiance to the pope? To fearful Englishmen, “papists” were “the apex of all evil” above “all Pagans, all Mussulmen.”

Burke demanded civil liberty—“a liberal and honourable condition”—for them anyway. He was not oblivious to minority dangers, nor indifferent to public orthodoxy. But who can imagine him alongside such Islam-baiters as Herman Cain or Pamela Geller, shouting about Sharia or boasting of plans to exclude an unpopular minority from public office?

A great imposture has taken place. Whatever else the likes of Cain or Geller may be, if Burke is a conservative, they are not.

What is true for civil liberties applies to foreign policy as well. From John Quincy Adams to Robert A. Taft, American conservatives have been realists, not in the Henry Kissinger sense but in their worldly understanding of the limits of power, both our own and our rivals’.

The ideological intensity of the Cold War muted this tradition. But even then Barry Goldwater fought wasteful Pentagon appropriations, while Ronald Reagan undertook no Mideast nation-building, notwithstanding the murderous bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon. What would Goldwater have made of the $388 billion F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program?

The point is not to hold up any of these men, even Burke, as right in all respects. They illustrate rather than define conservative style.

In contrast, the latter-day right possesses what Michel Chevalier called the morale of an army on the march: no time for reflection, no room for dissent, there are liberals to vanquish.

Nine years ago The American Conservative took its stand athwart this mentality. From the beginning, the magazine reclaimed conservatism’s discarded patrimony while reaching out for new ground as well. Within the first three months, thinkers as disparate as diplomatic historian Paul Schroeder and Norman Mailer—a sometime “left conservative”—had graced these pages.

TAC is not libertarian or what was once called “paleoconservative.” It aspires to be conservative as Burke was, broad-minded but firmly rooted, with an emphasis on securing peace and a well-grounded liberty at home. One of our themes has been the local, not as an “-ism” but as the texture and matrix of civil life, urban as well as rural. The recovery of political economy too, in the face of liberal and neoliberal dogmas alike, is part of this. (The muse is Jane Jacobs, not Ayn Rand.)

For over 20 years conservatives have been denied their name and heritage, fobbed off with the counterfeit goods of partisanship and neoconservative ideology. Today the plight of the country is too grave to accept any substitutes; it’s time for conservatives once more to speak in their own voice.

Memory Eternal

2011-08-27T11:44:00.000-07:00

The recent heat wave/drought in the state of Texas has been one for the record books. I am told that this is the hottest it has been since 1980. I do not remember that summer as being anything like this, but perhaps the fact that I was in my 20s then has something to do with it. July and August have always been endurance runs in Texas, even for those of us who have lived here always. This summer, any crops were burned-up long ago, and now many trees are dying in this stifling, take your-breath-away heat and humidity. And my recent stay in the hospital reminded me that as hot as it is, the hottest place in the state is a Texas prison. During my hospitalization, there were 4 prisoners in the immediate adjoining rooms--much less the entire hospital--all there due to heat-stroke.

The day after my release, I drove down to the Micheal Unit prison, located in Tennessee Colony, Texas. I have been a volunteer chaplain for over a year now, meeting with the Orthodox offenders and inquirers every 2nd and 4th Thursday. A ROCOR priest drives down from Dallas and meets with them on the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays. This scenario is the ideal. In practice, there may be many things to disrupt the pattern, from unscheduled lock-downs, to the chaplains (through whom we have access to the offenders) simply not being there on our days. At first, I worried about being prepared, and what I would say, etc. This is a foolish and selfish consideration--the offenders are simply glad that anyone from the outside shows up at all.

I have to go through 4 gates/checkpoints before I reach the chaplain's office. She then escorts me through a maze of passageways, and 3 more checkpoints, to the gym, where all religious services are conducted. If we are lucky, we meet in a small corner room. If that chamber is being used for storage, we meet in a corner of the gym, with a few folding chairs and a large fan. As we were walking over to the gym, she told me of the death of Alexander, one of "my guys," as I refer to them. The previous Monday, he had collapsed from the heat and died. This caught me by surprise, as all sudden, unexpected deaths do. The prison buildings are concrete block, with high narrow windows. The offices are air-conditioned, but all the living and working quarters of the offenders are not. There are fans, here and there, but that is not normative. As I was led to understand, Alexander's was one of several heat-related deaths in recent weeks.

Alexander was a quiet and soft-spoken man in his mid 40s. English was not his first language, or even second, for that matter. He was a Georgian, who had spent a number of years in Russia before coming to the U.S. Of course, his remembrances were not tinged with my Georgiophile romanticism. It had been a hard existence there, and his family sought a better life, first in Russia and later in the U.S. I never knew what it was that landed him in prison, it being a question I never ask. Frankly, it does not matter. From my perspective, the only difference between us was that he got caught and I did not.

Alexander was most comfortable in the Russian language. I know that Fr. Seraphim went to great lengths to obtain a Russian-language prayer book for him. As much as it depended upon him, Alexander never missed one of our classes, or the services with the priest on alternate weeks. The last time I met with him, we passed the prayer book around during the prayers and I was surprised at how well he could now read English. He walked along side me as far as he could when I returned to the chaplain's office afterwards. I do not remember now that of which we talked--just the normal small talk of life, I suppose. When I left him at the gate and said goodbye, neither of us had a thought that this would be our last meeting in this life.

I understand that a nephew has been located and he claimed Alexander's body. We had a short panikhida service for him at our mission, and his name is now commemorated in our services. So, for Alexander, I say "Memory Eternal!" Please pray for the servant of God Alexander, and while doing so remember, if you will, the others there at the prison: Ron, William, Antonio, Mariano, James, Demetrius and Silas. Ron and William are set to become catechumens on August 31st.

With the Saints give rest, O Christ,
to the souls of Thy servants,
where there is neither pain, nor sorrow, nor sighing,
but life unending.

Perry-Free Zone

2011-08-16T17:58:00.001-07:00

I have been concerned for some time now that the casual visitor to this blog might be frightened away by the sudden image of a grinning Rick Perry in the previous post. I decided to post something a little less threatening--and what could be more soothing that baby chicks?

I was being released from a 6-day stay in the hospital at just about the same time that Governor Rick was rolling out his Big Announcement. I suppose this passes for news in these dog days of summer, but to listen to the television talking heads, one would think that the race was now all but over. Four days into his official candidacy, however, things are looking a little differently, which fits with my overall prediction for Perry and the race in general. But still, visions of a 3rd Bush term (just without the intellectualism) have, I feel, hindered my recovery. And so, for the foreseeable future at least, and in the interest of my mental health and spiritual well-being, I am declaring this blog a Perry-Free Zone.

Prayerapalooza in Houston

2011-08-02T07:47:00.000-07:00

Longtime readers of this blog will know that I took, and continue to take a rather dim view of the George W. Bush presidency. At best, I only ever considered him a lesser among evils, and in time I came to even revise my opinion on that. But say what you will about him, there was no pretense or duplicity about the man. You knew exactly what you were getting. In short, I would not classify George W. Bush as a demagogue. This casts him in sharp contrast to his successor in the Texas statehouse.

Our current and forever governor, Rick Perry, is in the news a lot these days. It seems he fancies a run for the White House himself. If nothing else, this illustrates the role delusion plays with those too long in power. Governor Rick is not popular here. Our vaunted economy does not look so good up close, and nobody here attributes it to anything Perry has or has not done. True, the state of Texas will vote Republican regardless of the nominee, and he will no doubt do well in the Iowa and South Carolina primaries. But in my wildest imagination, I cannot imagine another Texas governor winning the GOP nomination, much less the Presidency anytime soon. In fact, I would support a constitutional amendment prohibiting Texas or Minnesota politicians from becoming President.

From observing several Perry gubernatorial election cycles, it should come as no surprise that I have pegged him as a huckster of the highest order, willing to say/do/be anything to win an election. And after all this time in office, we now discover that he has a softer, more spiritual, downright prayerful side. This Saturday, Governor Rick is heading up a giant prayer rally in Houston, (more details, here.) The usual evangelical players are here: both Dobsons, Tony Evans, Richard Land and Tony Perkins are among the co-chairs, with the other sponsors including the ever-ready John Hagee and Max Lucado, but consisting mainly of evangelicals of the Pentecostal variety, with a smattering of Baptists.

To ridicule this event exposes one to the charge that they are opposed to prayer. I am not, but I believe I am on firmer theological ground here when I suggest that it is better done in a closet than in a coliseum. Frankly, I had intended to ignore the whole extravaganza, and was prepared to do that very thing. So, I was a bit perturbed when the new mayor of our little burg (population 2,340) proclaimed Saturday as a "Day of Prayer and Fasting" to coincide with the event. For those unable to make the drive down to Houston, a big-screen would be made available at the First Baptist Church where local residents could follow along. The "fasting" was proscribed as lasting from 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM. I suppose a sun-up to sundown fast would have sounded too Ramadanish. Our normal routine on Saturdays calls for a late breakfast and early supper, with no meal in-between. I never knew that all these years we had been "fasting."

William McKenzie writes of the event in today's Dallas Morning News (accessible only to subscribers, unfortunately.) McKenzie is a good journalist and Presbyterian layman. He is what passes for a moderate in Texas. He writes:

Let's cut the governor some slack. If he wants to gather largely conservative evangelicals to hold a rally to pray for America--and has invited other governors to what is billed as a Christian event--let him. It's his prerogative. What's troubling is Perry's theology.

Start with the flag-and-cross concoction. Perry and other sponsors want attendees to pray to God to guide America and to learn about Jesus Christ.

Each is fine, but not together. When you bind prayer for a nation with learning about Jesus, you take off down the wrong road.

He concludes, as follows:

And here's another problem with the event's theology: Mixing Jesus and America and the assumption that Christ will bless America with greatness if we, the people, call on him. I don't doubt that God loves each American and that he wants our nation to act justly and righteously. But this view assumes that we--collectively, as a nation--are on his side and that he should be on ours. Where in Scripture can you remotely get to either point?

Some on the Christian Right long have woven America into their theology. And this goes way beyond politicians asking God to bless America at the end of speeches.

In a 1972 essay, author Thomas Howard explained how Americanism and Christianity became intertwined as far back as the 1800s:

"American was not just vaguely considered Christian: believers actually looked upon the American way of life as a basically Christian one, and hence regarded any threat to that way as a menace to Christianity itself."

One good thing about this Perry rally is that it shows again how conservative evangelicals have engaged the world. They once separated themselves from the larger culture.

But the theology at play is open for debate. Perry and his followers aren't going to change their minds come Saturday. They still are going to promote their creed. But the rest of us don't have to buy it.

I think McKenzie has it about right.

Extracting a Southern Blessing (Travelogue 2011)

2011-07-25T05:37:00.000-07:00

My wife and I recently returned from a short trip through the Deep South. Every July we attend a regional reunion on my mother's side of the family, descendants of a Revolutionary War veteran who died in Georgia in 1816. Consequently, most of us in attendance are only very remotely related to one another. These get-togethers have been going on for 32 years and many of us have formed closer bonds with each other than with our more immediate relatives. This is a good thing, as my "close" relatives on this side of the family would not walk across the street to attend a family reunion. Anyway, we find it to be great fun, and my wife always returns with a year's worth of stories and anecdotes. Chattanooga was our venue this year, for no greater reason than we've never met there before. (Next year looks to be Lake Eufaula in Alabama, and the year following to be in North Carolina.) From Tennessee, we pushed on to Charleston, South Carolina for a first time visit. We stayed two nights there, followed by one night in Senoia, GA and then a 12-hour slog straight home. I tend to avoid interstate highways whenever possible, which makes for a longer, but far more interesting journey.

The South is a complex region--equal parts fascination and frustration. But I have never found it dull. Flannery O'Connor said that one has to "wrestle with the South, like Jacob with the angel, to extract a blessing." While she had writers specifically in mind, I believe the larger point holds. The South is easily given to caricature, with the mystique of Moonlight and Magnolias on one end of the spectrum and the NASCAR/Dukes of Hazzard stereotype on the other. I will say that the reason these perceptions are so enduring is that there is an element of truth in each. I know real people and situations that could be straight out of Hollywood central casting for these particular depictions. Fortunately, the South is many other things in between.

Texans have a unique, and sometimes equivocal relationship with the South. We are Southerners, to be sure, but we were the last state of the old Confederacy, as well as the place where the West begins. And so, we have two very distinct orientations, and Texans often pick and chose between them. We are Southern when it suits our purposes and Western when it does not. This dichotomy allows us to be a little more discerning at times, and less accepting of the darker side of Southern culture. Of course, we have our own particular demons. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill once defined the limits of the South as the circulation of Southern Living magazine. This is as good a definition as I have heard. As we have been subscribers all our married life, I guess that puts us inside the South.

The region is not at all immune to the creeping and increasingly shallow similitude of our broad American popular culture. Southern communities that have sold out everything to the god of American consumerism are as ugly, bland and soulless as anywhere else in the country (the stretch of road through the Florence-Muscle Shoals area of Alabama comes to mind.) You could be in Anywhere America. In spite of this, I am always reassured by the resilience of Southern culture. Even in the areas blighted by our general culture, you can turn off the main thoroughfares, drive a bit, and soon there is no doubt about the region you are in. Of course, the racism is still around, though now largely confined to the political arena. And when one does encounter it, it seems more anachronistic than normative.

We stayed the first night at Jackson, Mississippi, only 5 hours away and giving us a good jumping-off point for all points East. Instead of taking the interstate through Alabama and on up to Chattanooga, I decided to follow the Natchez Trace Parkway into northeastern Mississippi, and then cut over to the reunion. The Parkway is one of the great treasures of the South, extending all the way from Natchez to Nashville. The entire route is two-lane, 55 mph, with no billboards or traffic signs, and with limited access. There are no home and very few farms along the way. For the most part, you are simply driving through the woods. This is not for everybody, but suites me quite well. The problem came when I left the Parkway and tried to work my way in a general easterly direction towards Chattanooga. The commercial sprawl of Florence-Muscle Shoals in Lauderdale County marred what should have been a scenic area. I believe there are more Churches of Christ per capita in this county than anywhere else in the world, including Nashville. My own ancestors played no little part in making it that way back in the early decades of the 19th-century. Limestone and Madison Counties were much more attractive, and contained some of the finest farmland I was to see. We finally arrived in Chattanooga, hours later than we would have otherwise, but I would do the same if I had it to do over.

We left Tennessee on Sunday morning, with a fairly lengthy drive ahead of us. As to what to do about church, I had already decided on a course of action. Chattanooga has an OCA mission I would have loved to visit. But Saint Tikhon's is located on the northwest edge of the city, while we were staying out by the airport on the southeast, with the convoluted interstate highway under construction in between. And of course, my wife would no doubt sit in the car while I was at Liturgy. The better alternative was to fore go my preference and ensure that she was able to attend a Church of Christ. I found one close at hand, with a 9:00 a.m. service, in which I accompanied her. The only times I have entered a Church of Christ in the last 5 or 6 years has been at these reunions--in 2009 in Macon, Georgia, and in 2007 in Little Rock, Arkansas. Each left a lasting impression. The Arkansas church was in an upscale neighborhood, with a young energetic minister (whose wife--in an odd six-degrees-of-separation scenario--turned out to be a granddaughter of my grandfather's late-in-life second wife.) I recall that he skillfully expounded at some length on the nature of mission work, its scriptural basis and the necessity for our doing the same, but without once mentioning the actual subject of mission work. During the entire service, except perhaps during the singing, was the name of Jesus ever even mentioned. Not once. The Georgia church was smaller, older and less affluent. Here, the minister sat on a stool with his laptop on the lectern, and delivered his entire exposition of Scripture by PowerPoint. And they were so starved for visitors, that we were literally swarmed in the foyer. My visit to the Churches of Christ in 2011 would prove equally memorable, though I approach the retelling of this with some misgivings. Whenever one criticizes their former religious affiliation, it is often seen as self-justification for what they have replaced it with--and a weak one at that. I know that is my reaction to those who have left Orthodoxy and write of it, and no doubt my Church of Christ friends must view my comments in the same light. And so, I will try to do this as dispassionately as possible. The East Brainard Church of Christ is a large, suburban congregation, with attendance in the 570s, and weekly contributions in the neighborhood of $25,000 (this from their bulletin.) The service had just started when we arrived, and the auditorium was fairly well filled. Churches of Christ are now all across the spectrum, though even the most "progressive" of them would still be seen as fairly conservative given the current state of American Protestantism. I knew immediately where this congregation fell within the spectrum--the guy in the pew in front of us brought his Starbucks coffee to the service and the young song leader was leading in a rousing "Shine, Jesus, Shine." The communion service came early on, and I was impressed that the man reading Scripture beforehand actually invoked the three Persons of the Trinity. I thought this a nice touch, as it is not normally done. In fact, I had about decided that--in the Church of Christ context--they were "doing" worship about as well as could be expected. During the communion service, I noticed that there seemed to be backdrop on the stage. There were panels painted to look like a child's room, with a small bed on one side and a desk on the other. I assumed it pertained to something going on with the children's department. A "Toy Chest" sign had been placed on the double doors to the left of the stage. Soon, all would be made clear. A young woman and a boy walked briskly down the aisle, where the boy climbed up on the stage. Ahhh, a skit. The woman put her hands on her hips and told the boy, in no uncertain terms, to clean up his room. Once they had exited, the double doors opened and characters dressed up as a cowboy and a spaceman climbed up on the stage. They proceeded to go into their routine and it was soon obvious that they were plugging the Vacation Bible School that started that night, being kicked off with a screening of "Toy Story 3." Before long, they were joined by three men painted green and dressed as soldiers, a Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head and someone in a dinosaur suit. They proceeded to dance around and go through their routines, to general clapping and laughter. Neither my wife nor I said a word, and I knew she had to be mortified. I was thinking that whatever the preacher had to say couldn't be too credible, coming on the heals of this. Things could not get any sillier. Or so I thought. At that point, the cowboy character, taking roll, started enquiring where Barbie was. And at that point, a young buxom, blond church member wearing a tight workout outfit with everything pushed up and out, you might say, rode a bicycle down the main aisle of the sanctuary, honking her horn as she went. She ran on stage and started bouncing up and down (literally) and waving to the crowd. And so, VBS was kicked off in a big way. This does not quite stoop to the level of a clown mass, but it is on its way. As it turned out, I never got to hear what the preacher had to say. My wife turned to me and asked, "are you ready to leave?"

The trip down through Georgia and South Carolina proved to be most interesting. I wanted to cut over through Jefferson and Lexington, as these communities have historical significance to my family. The latter, though a county seat, is little more than a hamlet and one of the most unspoiled little country towns I have seen in quite a while. The fact that Oglethorpe County is not exactly on the road to anywhere plays a large part in its preservation, I suspect. I stopped at the "new" Bethsalem Presbyterian Church--the one built in 1817. My family came to Georgia from North Carolina with this church group in 1785. Again, I was impressed with the productive farmland. In my region of Texas, crops stopped being grown decades ago, taken over by cattle and timber. And so I always enjoy traveling through a real agricultural region. I never knew corn grew as high as I saw it here. We entered South Carolina at Augusta, and then angled over to Aiken. This small city has to be one of the most pleasant communities anywhere. One day, I hope to return there and look around a little more closely. On the road into the town, I passed the sign for St. Catherine Orthodox Church. I know nothing of this mission or its status, but I was pleased to see it take its place among other roadside churches, such as the Whosoever Wills Prayerband Holiness Church, a bit further down. And who knows, perhaps one day these missions may dot the Southern landscape here and there. (I know that hope does not fit the narrative of some who assert that Orthodoxy will never take hold in the country, doomed as it were by the very converts it attracts. They may be right, but I think not. And even if so, I have always enjoyed working at something while being told it can't be done.) Of course, there were plenty of roadside establishments of a less spiritual nature, such as Zippy's Motel and Social Club and the Wow-Wee Country Club. Had I been traveling alone and not in such a hurry to reach Charleston, I think the Wow-Wee would have made a tempting stop.

In due course, we finally arrived in Charleston, a city not exactly on the way to anywhere. Charleston was meant to be approached by sea, rather than by road. Our accommodations were well-situated, on Meeting Street three blocks north of Broad, within easy walking distance of most everything one would want to see in the old town. I always try to get a sense of the places I visit. I suspect that my snap judgments may sometimes be far off the mark. That said, my impression of Charleston is not that of the quintessential Southern town I imagined, what with the part they played in starting the war and all. In many ways, the town hearkens back to something far older than the ante-bellum South. One gets the feel of insularity from the outside world, a city-state almost. I believe the residents are more about being "all about Charleston," than they are being representatively Southern.

The town bills itself as the "Holy City" in light of its numerous churches. That might be stretching it a bit, but the old town is chock-a-block with them and most are quite lovely. The portico of St. Philip's Church actually extends out into the street. The entire churchyard, as well as the lot across the street is the parish cemetery, where many notables, including John C. Calhoun, are buried. At night, this is one of the most atmospheric places in the city. There are all sorts of specific tours of the old town, including the ubiquitous "Ghost Tours." But the good folks at St. Philip's are having nothing to do with it. They have a sign posted inside the fence stating "The Only Ghost at St. Philip's is the Holy Ghost...Join Us for Worship Sundays and Learn about the Trinity, Including the Holy Ghost." Good for them, I say. The raised tomb of William Rhett, a founder of Charleston who died in 1722, is hard up against the iron fence directly across from St. Philip's. The top of the tomb is covered with pennies, and a few nickels that passers-by have flipped there for good luck. I do not believe in luck, but reached into my pocket anyway. I did have a number of pennies, as well as a few dimes. In my foolish reasoning, I considered how much more lucky a dime would be than a mere penny. And so, I flipped the dime through the fence onto the tomb. The coin landed on end, rolled around in a complete circle and then careened off the raised slab onto the ground below. I had to laugh at myself, now duly chastened for my over-reaching. I fumbled in my pocket again and came out with a nickel, figuring to split the difference. The five-cent piece rolled and stayed. I would have to be content with moderate luck, I suppose. The nearby Circular Congregational Church (United Church of Christ) is an interesting structure on Meeting Street, a block north of Broad. I really did not expect to find an old Congregationalist church in Charleston, but nevertheless, there it was. As at St. Philip's, the churchyard was completely taken over by the ancient graveyard, which in fact backed right up to the St. Philip's Cemetery. Many of the burials dated back to the early part of the 18th-century. With the older stones depicting the angel of death, the cemetery could have just as easily have been in colonial Boston or Cape Cod, except for the fact that many of the names were French. I had to chuckle at the sign in front of the church, which read "Circular Congregational Church, a Progressive and Inclusive Community since 1681." But of course! These days, everyone knows what the words progressive and inclusive really mean when used in a religious context. And when one thinks of progressivism and inclusivity, I am sure that Charleston, South Carolina is the first thing that pops into our minds, as it has since 1681. Pretty silly stuff, that. In my first semester in graduate school, my history professor introduced us to the concept of "presentism," in which one's contemporary beliefs are forced back upon historical events. But then, another sign advertised that on Tuesday nights the stolid old church transformed itself into "Praise House!" I am sure you get the picture.

The old city market was only a block north of our inn. This long, narrow hall is a fixture of old Charleston. The structure has recently undergone a thorough-going restoration, and is now a tourist haunt. Most of what is sold here is frou-frou stuff manufactured elsewhere. But outside the halls, a number of black women still sit in the shade and weave the beautiful sweet-grass baskets. We purchased a small one, our only souvenir from Charleston. The payment went directly to the artisan herself, who only stopped weaving long enough to take the money. Unique to the Gullah culture, I understand this weaving is something of a dying art. There seemed to be a number of women doing it, but with limited interest among the younger generation.

The inn where we stayed offered up an impressive breakfast in the lobby each morning. While I was piling-up my plate, I overheard one of the guests talking to the black lady who was obviously in charge of this operation. The tourist lady was trying to decide which outlying plantation home to visit that day and asked the black lady if she had ever visited there (a question I would not have asked.) The woman was polite, but firm, answering "No, no. I've never wanted to go there." The traveler nodded and quickly replied, "I understand, I understand." And I think we stiff-necked white Southerners are perhaps finally beginning to understand. These stately old Southern plantations that are our pride mean something altogether different to our fellow Southerners whose ancestors were forced to work them.

I left our itinerary in Charleston totally up to my wife, and she decided that we should visit Drayton Hall, a plantation on the Ashley River not too far out of the city. The residence itself was built in 1738 by a younger son of the family that owned the neighboring plantation, "The Magnolias." The latter home, obviously older than Drayton Hall, still remains in the family. The home we visited stayed in the Drayton family for 7 generations before it was finally gifted to the National Historic Trust. Outside of the obvious fact that it was the headquarters of a slave-based rice plantation, there was nothing about the house that we would particularly characterize as Southern. The three-story Georgian and Italianate mansion is simply an English country home, what one would expect to see in Hampshire or Surrey. Other than painting-over, nothing was really ever changed inside the house. The detailed 18th-century woodwork remains in place. The interior reminded me very much of Stratford Hall, the Virginia boyhood home of Robert E. Lee. But more than the house and grounds, we enjoyed the 45-minute presentation and group discussion on the enslaved inhabitants of Drayton Hall. A retired librarian, now Trust employee, led an engaging discussion about the development of the Gullah culture along the South Carolina coast. She had no axe to grind, neither excoriating nor defending the Draytons, merely telling it as it was, as dispassionately as possible given the subject matter.

Before returning into Charleston, I looped over to the suburb of Mount Pleasant, where I visited the Holy Ascension Orthodox Church. I had a nice visit with Fr. John Parker (whom I had met before) and a seminarian summer intern. This is a beautiful temple, and in one sense is something of a rarity in the OCA. I suppose it would be unkind to characterize them as a wealthy parish, so I will just say that their temple is in a wealthy neighborhood and leave it at that. Knowing something about them ahead of time prepared me to be impressed, and I was not disappointed.

Leaving Charleston and trying to get anywhere reminded me again of how isolated the city can seem. I resigned myself to a good bit of interstate driving and did not leave same until I reached Macon, Georgia. I ventured west and northwesterly from Macon, and visited three family cemeteries connected to both our families. Fortunately the graveyards were all right next to the road, and I was able to see what I needed without even engaging the Georgia chigger population. A fruit stand in Woodbury was a necessary stop for some peach ice cream and a 25 lb. box of Georgia peaches, which would find their way into the freezer and jelly jars once we made it home. We stopped over a bed and breakfast in Senoia, Georgia, in what had once been the old Hollberg Hotel. This little town was also saved by being by-passed by the main highway. Incredibly, the town never really suffered, and is in such a state of preservation that it has become something of a destination. A movie studio in town has been the catalyst for a number of major motion pictures being shot here, including "Fried Green Tomatoes," "Sweet Home, Alabama," "Driving Miss Daisy," and a bit incongruously, Stephen King's "Pet Sematery, II." Anyway, it provide a nice respite for the marathon drive home.

That last day, we lingered around the breakfast table visiting with our hosts, as if we did not have a 12-hour slog ahead of us. But we finally got on our way. Before we crossed over into Alabama, I stopped and picked up a half-case of Yuengling, which cannot be purchased west of the Mississippi. I did not know how far west I could buy it, but I wasn't taking any chances! We made a short detour in Uniontown, Alabama, home to one of the most beautiful Episcopalian churches anywhere, the Church of the Holy Cross. Directly behind the church and graveyard stands an old, decaying Southern mansion. I checked on it two years ago when passing through, and at that time, the house was just on the edge of being an utter ruin. I was pleased to see that someone had purchased it, and is tearing away the rotten wood--of which there is a considerable amount--and seem to be in the initial stages of restoring it. I commend them and hope they have deep pockets. About 10 miles further on, we detoured in Gallion to take a look at St. Marks, a beautiful Episcopal church out in the west Alabama countryside. We stopped briefly at our favorite bookstore in Jackson, Mississippi for a 5:00 book-signing by two Southern authors. By 11:00 we were safely at home, and the next morning I was back at work. All in all, a week well-spent for the both of us.

It Could Be Worse

2011-07-08T13:33:00.001-07:00

Curmudgeonly Thoughts on Patriotism and the Fourth

2011-07-04T15:11:00.001-07:00

Let's just say I'm not much of a flag-waver. I have always been a little ambivalent about the Fourth of July holiday. As a historian, I understand the significance of what happened on this date in 1776, and our collective need to commemorate it. And in terms of our history, it is the colonial era--whether it be English, French, Spanish or Dutch--that most interests me. I wholeheartedly agree that our Revolution and the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence which set our course as a nation are truly remarkable events in world history.

That said, a realistic, even-handed reading of the struggle reveals that George III made for an unlikely villain, and that of Britain's many possessions, we were the most pampered, privileged and prosperous. The Seven Years War (our French and Indian War) nearly bankrupted the Empire. And when asked to pony-up our share of the massive debt the Crown incurred in defending these very same colonies, well, the colonists were having none of it. We had been left to our own devices for too long, it seems. And the only thing that separated our glorious revolution from an ignominious one was the fact that we got away with it (thank you, France.) None of this means we should not celebrate the occasion, I'm just saying that I have never been carried away by all the hoopla surrounding the day.

When I was about 12 years old, I remember a conversation between my mother and my uncle--her brother-in-law. My mother was working in the kitchen, as usual, and my uncle was sitting there on a stool, drinking a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette, no doubt, talking away. Two more dissimilar people could not be found, but they enjoyed each other's company, even though he was much more the conversationalist. My mother was the most literal, matter-of-fact person you would ever encounter. She did not speak the language of nuance and subtlety and shaded meanings. Symbolism was lost on her. Mother said exactly what she was thinking, regardless, and in her view it was the right thing to say because it was what she believed. As would be expected, this created lots of controversies through the years, but my dad was usually there to smooth things over, or at least pick up the pieces. She was fiercely loyal, but only to her tribe, her blood kin. It went no further. My uncle was a career Navy man. A life at sea had rescued him from both the Great Depression and an aimlessness in life. He circumnavigated the world 3 times and served in World War II, the Korean Conflict and the Vietnam War. His experiences gave him a perspective my mother could never imagine.

Anyway, the conversation somehow turned to "the Flag." My uncle spoke eloquently of the honor and respect due the flag and its symbolism, etc. My mother, almost off-handedly, remarked that it did not mean anything to her at all, that it was just a piece of cloth. My uncle was left speechless, one of the few times I ever saw him at a loss for words. The discussion continued on, with my uncle becoming increasing frustrated with my mother's intransigence on the issue. And while I understood my mother's thinking--even at that age--I nevertheless sympathized with my uncle.

So, the Fourth was never a major holiday in our home. Generally, it fell during hay-baling season, so the day off simply meant that there was a good chance I would spend it in the hay field. There was always a good meal that night, perhaps with homemade ice cream, but that would be about it. Fireworks were never considered--"foolishness" in my mother's eyes.

My attitude at this stage of life lies somewhere between my uncle's and my mother's view. My "patriotism," if you want to call it that, or at least my loyalties, have much more to do with a particular piece of dirt that I live on, or my family lives on or has lived on. I have no particular feelings about our flag, or any other. In that sense, I recognize that I am my mother's son. I find American history to be unique, but not exceptional. We are not the end of history. Given enough time, there will be other configurations within what is now the United States, some maybe sooner than we would otherwise believe.

I respect and honor our soldiers, and now feel some regret that I did not serve in the armed forces myself. And when the caskets or maimed bodies of our young men are returned home from Mesopotamia or the Hindu Kush, from these most incomprehensible of incomprehensible wars, I am deeply saddened for them, their families and the utter waste of it all. And no amount of flag-waving, parades, Star-Spangled-Bannering or politicians eulogizing about their sacrifice in "defense" of our country helps one damn bit.
.

Tom Perrotta on Flannery O'Connor

2011-06-18T08:20:00.000-07:00

Good talk by novelist Tom Perrotta on Flannery O'Connor, here.

Death of Patrick Leigh Fermor

2011-06-17T15:33:00.000-07:00

[Update: Wonderful Fermor anecdotes in "Surprised by Time," here.]

Patrick Leigh Fermor has died at the age of 96. Since I first learned of him, Fermor has been something of a hero to me, and I have written of him, here and here, and tangentially, here and here. Christopher Hitchens summed-up his legacy thusly: "To his last breath, he remained curious and open-minded to an almost innocent degree and was a conveyor of optimism and humor to his younger admirers. For as long as he is read and remembered, the ideal of the hero will be a real one."

A selection of excellent tributies follow:

The Telegraph

The Guardian (by Jan Morris)

Slate (by Christopher Hitchens)

Paul A. Rahe

The New York Times (by Robert Kaplan)

Maggie Rainey-Smith

The Independent

And then there is the following trascript from a public radio broadcast in northern California (h/t to Dana):

WORDS ON BOOKS and A FEW OTHER THINGS FROM TIME TO TIME
by Tony Miksak for KZYX&Z-FM, 90.7 Philo CA
Airs Sunday, June 19, 2011 at 10:55 am & Wednesday, June 22 at 1 pm
Title: Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915 – 2011)

(MUSIC UP) This is Tony Miksak with a few Words on Books...

We lost an old man this month at age 96. They say whenever someone
dies an entire universe – thoughts, feelings, experience – also dies.
This could not be more true in the case of Patrick Leigh Fermor.

His books are inspiring, thrilling memoirs that inspire others to
similar feats of travel and insight.

When Patrick Leigh Fermor was 19 he decided, having nothing better to
do, to walk alone from London, along the Rhine, down the Danube, to
Constantinople, now Istanbul. This was in 1933, ten months after
Hitler's accession to power, through a Europe soon to disappear.

Years later Leigh Fermor pulled out his battered old notebooks and
wrote two books about the trip, A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods
and the Water. The first was written in 1977, the sequel eleven years
after that. Both have become true classics.

A high-spirited 19 year-old sets out across Europe, but it’s his 63
year-old future self who tells the story. Youth transformed by
maturity, experience enlightened by scholarship, impulse tempered by
reflection. In these books there is more than one kind of time, more
than one state of mind. Fermor blends his selves with grace and
intelligence.

From A Time of Gifts "Often, half in a bay of the mountains and half
on a headland, a small and nearly amphibian Schloss mouldered in the
failing light among the geese and the elder-bushes and the apple
trees...Those buildings looked too forlorn for habitation... But, in
the tiny, creeper-smothered windows, a faint light would show at dusk.
Who lived in those stone-flagged rooms where the sun never came?"

Fermor on the Baroque: "Concave and convex uncoil and pursue each
other across the pilasters in ferny arabesques, liquid notions ripple,
waterfalls running silver and blue drop to lintels and hang frozen
there in curtains of artificial icicles. Ideas go feathering up in
mock fountains and float away through the colonnades in processions of
cumulus and cirrus..."

Walking lonely stretches in the dead of winter Fermor amused himself
by reciting aloud the Latin poets or Shakespeare. At one point a
peasant woman walked out of nearby woods with arm loads of kindling.
Hearing the strange words she dropped everything and flew back into
the forest.

Fermor concludes A Time of Gifts standing on a bridge between Slovakia
and Hungary: "Close behind me, girls in bright clothes were hastening
excitedly across the bridge, all of them carrying bunches of
water-lilies, narcissi, daffodils and violets... I found it impossible
to tear myself away from my station and plunge into Hungary. I feel
the same disability now; a momentary reluctance to lay hands on this
particular fragment of the future; not out of fear, but because,
within arm's reach and still intact, this future seemed, and still
seems, so full of promised marvels."

Fermor served as an irregular in the British Army in Greece during the
Second World War. Living as a shepherd in the mountains of
Nazi-occupied Crete, his small group captured the German general in
charge of the island and conveyed him to British forces in Egypt. For
this exploit and for his later writings Fermor was medaled and later
knighted.

Over the years Patrick Leigh Fermor wrote a number of books, some set
in Greece, all in his uniquely elegant style. This month, obituaries
published all over the world praised both his courage and his
creativity.

(MUSIC) You too, can receive WOB scripts in your email and review
episodes you may have missed. To be on the list, please send a note to
amiksak@gmail.com. I'm blogging at www.wordsonbooks.blogspot.com and I
enjoy reading your comments there.

NOTES:

Newly reprinted this year, the story of that Cretan adventure:

Ill Met by Moonlight by W. Stanley Moss, with an Afterword by Patrick
Leigh Fermor. Paul Dry Books paperback $14.95. ISBN 1589880668.
Stanley Moss was the other British officer on this raid.

A summary of the thrilling story of the General's kidnaping told in
the New Yorker in 2006:
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-16387551_ITM but to
read the entire article you will have to register with Highbeam
Business...

Fermor’s walk from London to Hungary:

A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor, Introduction by Jan Morris.
New York Review Books paperback $16.95. ISBN 1590171659.

Hungary to Constantinople:

Between the Woods and the Water by Patrick Leigh Fermor, Introduction
by Jan Morris. New York Review Books paperback $15.95. ISBN
1590171667.

Words of Mercury is an out-of-print anthology of Leigh Fermor's
writings. Many copies are available, mostly in Canada and the UK. Try
www.addall.com

You can read a review here:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/travel/0,6121,1105876,00.html

Fermor on the pleasures and rigors of monastic life: "In the seclusion
of a cell – an existence whose quietness is only varied by the silent
meals, the solemnity of ritual, and long solitary walks in the woods –
the troubled waters of the mind grow still and clear, and much that is
hidden away and all that clouds it floats to the surface and can be
skimmed away; and after a time one reaches a state of peace that is
unthought of in the ordinary world."

Quoted from:

A Time to Keep Silence by Patrick Leigh Fermor, Introduction by Karen
Armstrong. New York Review of Books paperback $12.95. ISBN 1590172442

I had hoped that Fermor would be able to finish the long-awaited last volume of his trilogy before death. Perhaps it will be published posthumously, and the writer for The Independent (who had lunch with Fermor 10 days prior to his death) gives us all hope that this will indeed come to pass:

I can say that no other person I have encountered has shown such an embrace of laughter, learning, language and life as this towering genius of word and action. The great memorial will be his writing and a great excitement is that the third part of his trilogy about crossing Europe is due soon – I have seen it, and many have waited years for this crafted reminiscence so long in gestation, about which Paddy in self-mockery called himself "The Carpathian Snail".

Latest from Syria Comment

2011-06-14T07:47:00.000-07:00

This from Syria Comment:

There is little evidence of wide-scale mutiny of Syrian soldiers. No solid evidence that they shot at each other, and some evidence that the young men of Jisr set a trap for Syrian soldiers with simple weapons and dynamite. Individual soldiers do seem to have deserted. Some turned up in Turkey. They seem to have been instructed to exaggerate the defections and to follow a common narrative of soldiers shooting each other in a large conflagration at Jisr. This story is hard to verify, making it seem dubious.

Contrary to the claims of Syrian authorities, 120 Syria soldiers do not seem to have been killed. A single mass grave turned up 10 dead soldiers. Four had their heads cut off. This would seem to have been done by the militia of Jisr, which had some success in fighting the soldiers initially sent to pacify them.

On the question of a scorched earth policy, both sides are claiming that the other is burning crops and threatening innocent civilians with retribution and the destruction of their farms if they side with the enemy. The Syrian government issued these interviews with people from Jisr. My last few posts have linked to accounts from refugees in Turkey that insist that the Syrian authorities are burning crops to punish local inhabitants of Idlib province from giving assistance to the assistance.

The refugees in Turkey told stories of revolt, mutiny and mayhem. Government stories that 120 members of the police and military were killed were explained by the opposition as security forces shooting themselves. The Syrian government then published tapped phone calls of activists in Jisr that it collected on the eve of the initial combat. If they can be taken at face value, the activists establish a plan to send all the women and children of the city to Turkey. They were instructed to tell foreigners that Syrian military personnel shot each other. When enlisted men refused to shoot on unarmed demonstrators, their Alawi officers mowed them down – that was the story to be told to the Western press.

Meanwhile, the men of Jisr organized an ambush. One phone call between two activists goes over how to bury the dead; they discuss whether to bury them in a one grave or divide them up an bury them two by two, so as to better conceal the fact that the opposition had abandoned passive resistance in order to take up arms. They discuss how not to be photoed during prayers so as not to give the regime a pretext to claim that they were Salafists. They wonder how to combat tanks with dynamite. Above all they are anxious to get their story out to the West in the most favorable light so as not to reveal they they have established an armed insurgency and to blame any killings on the Syrian army.

The Syrian army has exaggerated the number of its dead in order to justify ever harsher repression of the inhabitants of Jisr and Idlib province. The governent is thrashing about in a failed effort to stop the demonstrations from spreading. Syrian authorities have utterly failed to get out their version of events and have lost the media contest to demonstrate that they stand for anything good. The West is entirely convinced that “the people” stand with the opposition and favor revolution. Government attempts to explain to Western authorities that they stand with the people and are serving anything other than bloody-mindedness with the repression of the revolt, have been such a failure that Rim Haddad, the head of the government’s media effort has been fired.

The Eastern Schism: A Study of the Papacy and the Eastern Churches during the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries by Steven Runciman

2011-06-12T17:38:00.000-07:00

I have just finished reading The Eastern Schism by Sir Steven Runciman (1955.) This is the eleventh of his works that I have read, so it is safe to say I am something of a fan. Unlike contemporary scholars who often seem to major in minutiae, Runciman was a historian of the old school, who knew that his craft was not, at heart, that of an analyst, but rather that of a story-teller. For anyone interested in Byzantine history (or the larger medieval world, for that matter,) my advice is to start with Runciman. He is that good.

This particular study examines the historical events which resulted in the Great Schism, an event we usually associate with the year 1054. This development is little known among most Protestants, for whom church history begins shortly after 1500. But for Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, the event is pivotal, and in different ways defines our respective world views. Nobody lays out the historical processes by which East and West took diverging paths more succinctly than Runciman. A few points from the book stood out in my mind.

1. The schism was not over the Filioque

2. The schism did not occur in 1054

3. Efforts to avoid schism and resolve differences were ongoing by cooler heads on both sides up to the very end of the 12th-century

4. The Fourth Crusade ruined everything

I know that in Orthodox sources, the controversy over the Filioque is usually listed as one of the underlying causes of the Great Schism. And of course, it was a serious issue (from Runciman's view, the azymite controversy--the use of leavened or unleavened bread--was quite nearly as important.) By the 11th and 12th-centuries, both positions had solidified and neither the East nor West showed any sign of budging. But as Runciman well demonstrates, communion was not broken over it. The Orthodox believed that the West was wrong in arbitrarily adding to the Creed, but because of the West's particular history, the limitations and inflexibility of Latin relative to Greek, the lack of educated lay population in the West and other factors, the East was prepared to allow the West to continue with the Filioque, as long as it was not imposed upon the East. In short, they had agreed to disagree in practice. The real problem, however, lay in the arbitrariness of the addition. The Creed came out of the Ecumenical Councils, and to the Eastern mind, that was the only place, and not the Papacy, that a subsequent addition could be enacted. And as time went on, it became obvious that the Pope was intent on imposing his understanding. So, the insurmountable hurdle then was, as it is today, the specific claims of the Papacy.

For high drama, nothing beats the scene of Cardinal Humbert, the Papal Secretary, striding into Haghia Sophia during a Divine Liturgy and laying a Bull of Excommunication on the altar in 1054. According to Runciman, it was a silly document, unworthy of someone of Humbert's education. And surprisingly, it received little notice in Constantinople. The Emperor ignored it, and the general populace was not enraged (for long) and still considered the West to be their Christian brothers in an undivided church. If one were looking for the first time a Pope of Rome was not listed on an Eastern diptych, then the date of the schism would be 1009, not 1054. And if one were looking for an hard and fast date that communion was broken, on the ground, then the date would be 1100, when a Latin Patriarch was chosen for Antioch, when a Greek, John the Oxite, already held the office.

The simple fact of the matter was that relations ebbed and flowed over these two centuries, and even during the lowest points, cordial correspondence passed back and forth between Pope and Patriarch and Emperor, and their representatives. Each side seem committed to continuing the dialogue and avoiding at all costs an outright schism (though often for reasons of pure political expediency rather than piety.)

Several months ago, I let myself be sucked into an argument on one of the sillier monarchist blogs (I am generally sympathetic to monarchy in principle, just not the British version.) The blogger posted a tribute to Constantine XII, the last Byzantine emperor, but in so doing, made some comment to the effect that if the East had just submitted to Rome, then the downfall of Constantinople could have been avoided. I responded and suggested that real history might be a bit more nuanced than this. All discussions of this nature seem to end up back at the Fourth Crusade, as did ours. He finally sputtered "Well, if the Crusades were so bad, then why did the Byzantines keep asking for their help?" By this time, I knew better than to continue the correspondence, as he clearly did not know what he did not know. As Runciman notes, the Byzantines never asked for the Crusades--not even the first one. In 1095, Alexios I was short on manpower and engaged in a bitter struggle on the eastern front with the Seljuk Turks. Two representatives of the emperor were in Italy recruiting soldiers to join the eastern Roman army in this fight. At the same time, a general church council was in session, and the two envoys requested permission to address the gathering and make their needs known. Something was lost in translation and Pope Urban took the plea and ran with it. By the time he had crossed the Alps and gave his famous speech at Clermont, a simple recruiting effort had morphed into a plea by the East to be rescued by the Christian Army of the West. This was not at all what Alexios had in mind. Likewise, the Second and Third Crusades were endured, but never requested. And the Fourth Crusade turned on Constantinople itself. The tragedy of 1204 was outside the Papacy's control, and they had no choice but to validate the results afterwards. But in so doing, the Schism was set. And each side, from the highest clerics down to the communicant in the lowliest village knew it. Neither now saw the other as brother, but as schismatic or heretic.

Some selections:

Throughout the history of the Eastern Empire there was a large lay population that was as well educated as the clergy. The professors, the government servants, and even the soldiers were usually as cultured as the priests. Many of them were highly trained in theology, and almost all of them felt themselves perfectly competent to take part in theological discussions. No one in Byzantium thought that theology was the exclusive concern of the clergy. (p. 7)

Right worship was really more important to the East Christians than right belief. They were devoted to their liturgy...[and] was probably the strongest single spiritual force in the make-up of the Byzantines. It inspired their best art and their best poetry and music; and the humbler members of the Empire felt an even stronger loyalty to it than the educated. (p. 8)

The whole attitude of the medieval West was different. Christianity spread more slowly in the West than in the East, and paganism lasted on much longer there, particularly in cultivated circles. The Church there was obliged, for its self-defence, to insist on the need for unity and uniformity of belief. At the same time there was less general interest in speculative philosophy and less desire, therefore, for theological debate. Language played its part in the difference. While Greek is a subtle and flexible tongue, admirably suited to express every shade of abstract thought, Latin is far more rigid and inelastic; it is clear, concrete, and uncompromising....Even in Roman times the level of culture had been generally lower in the Western provinces....The cultured lay circles of Italy were extinguished during the wars and troubles of the fifth and sixth centuries. The only education that survived was conducted by the Church for the Church. In the early Middle Ages there were few laymen int he West who could even read. This gave the Church in the West a position in society that the Eastern Churches never possessed....Unlike the Eastern Liturgy, the Western Mass was a mystery performed by the priesthood, and the lay congregation did not have the same intimate feeling of participation. Moreover, while the language of the Byzantine Liturgy was roughly intelligible to the average Byzantine, the Latin of the Mass was a foreign language to most of the faithful in the West. The Western laity was seldom permitted to interfere in any matter of religion. (p. 9)

The East enjoyed speculation and argument; but the official Church was ready to exercise charity towards unessential divergences, and avoided doctrinal pronouncements and condemnations except when political issues or the liturgy was involved. The West had a simpler, stricter, and more legalistic and logical conception of right and wrong belief. In the East there were large numbers of educated laymen and laywomen accustomed to play a part in religious affairs, and there was an articulate public opinion that did not hesitate to criticize both the Emperor and the hierarchy. Neither an educated laity nor a public opinion that was articulate on religious matters existed in the West before about the twelfth century... (p. 11.)

Thus to the Romans Church union meant the submission of the Eastern Churches to Rome, but to the Byzantines it meant that the Roman bishop should resume his place as the senior of the Patriarchs and be mentioned once more int he diptychs and be accorded all deference and honorific titles due to him. It would be difficult to reconcile these views (p. 58.)

Economy was still more necessary when it came to the controversy over the Filioque. Of course this was wrong; but, after all, he [Peter III, Patriarch of Antioch] wrote, the Latins are our brothers, and it is only ignorance that makes them deviate. We must not demand from them the same scrupulous exactitude that we demand from our own highly educated circles. it should be enough that they confess the Mystery of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Perhaps, he suggested, they had lost the copies of the acts of the earlier councils (p. 65.)

The Latin argument on the Filioque seems at first sight to be clearer and more convincing than the Greek; but the Latin conception of the Trinity is less subtle and delicately balanced....The only solution would have been for each Church to show the Economy so often recommended by Orthodox theologians. But Rome was not in the mood to allow divergences, while the Greeks, though they might be willing to show tolerance over purely theological points and practices, could not bring themselves to forgive an addition to the Creed which they considered a direct challenge to the authority of the Oecumenical Councils. Nor were they prepared to admit that any of their old-established usages could be wrong. The essential issue was the question of papal authority. Could the Pope add to the Creed at his pleasure, and could he even insist on uniformity of usage? (p. 109.)

How to Make Furniture

2011-06-05T18:29:00.000-07:00

The W. K. Cowan Furniture Company of Chicago, Illinois was in business from the years 1894 to 1916. William Kennett Cowan (no relation, or at least none this side of the year 1660) was known for the quality of his product. In the 1898 catalog, he set forth his philosophy, to-wit:

To govern production by excellence rather than expense;

to prefer simplicity;

to make use serve beauty and beauty usefulness;

to believe in goodness, abhor sham, make surroundings contribute to Life;

in short to conserve, even in the midst of commercial stress and strife, those eternal verities which make for advanced living;

these things are a part of the Ideal and the Working Plan of this Company.

Here was a man who obviously saw his trade in life as a noble calling. The furniture he created was intended to "make surroundings contribute to Life." I found it a bit jarring to read this and realize how antiquated such sentiments would seem to many today. I suspect most businessmen would laugh at a business plan that set out to "conserve...eternal verities." And that is to our shame.

What I'll Be Reading (for quite a little bit)

2011-05-30T12:21:00.000-07:00

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Back in December, I listed the books I intended to read over the next few months. That list is now finished, the volumes are on the shelves, and it is time to start the process anew. My current book stack is as follows:

ON-GOING READS THAT WILL REMAIN CLOSE AT HAND:

The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian
The Cambridge History of the Byzantine Empire, c. 500-1492

RECENT ACQUISITIONS (heavy on Pelikan, Runciman and Byzantine/Georgian anything):

Aristotle East and West by David Bradshaw
Byzantium and the Roman Primacy by Francis Dvornik
Mary Through the Centuries by Jaroslav Pelikan
Jesus Through the Centuries by Jaroslav Pelikan
The Captain of our Salvation by Rowan A. Greer
The Christian Intellectual by Jaroslav Pelikan
The Light of the World by Jaroslav Pelikan
The Ascetic Life, The Four Centuries on Charity by St. Maximus the Confessor
Maximus the Confessor by Andrew Louth
The Eastern Schism by Steven Runciman
Byzantium in the Ninth Century by Lelie Brubaker
The Medieval Manichee by Steven Runciman
The Sicilian Vespers by Steven Runciman
The Fall of Constantinople 1453 by Steven Runciman
Fools for Christ by Jaroslav Pelikan
Byzantine Gospel by Aidan Nichols
Byzantine Style and Civilization by Steven Runciman
The Excellent Empire by Jaroslav Pelikan
Mothers and Sons, Fathers and Daughters by Michael Psellos
The Cave Monasteries of Byzantine Cappadocia by Lyn Rodley
The Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy, 1658-1832 by David Marshall Lang

ON THE LOOK-OUT FOR (should finances permit):

Prince Ioann of Georgia and his "Kalmasoba" by David Marshall Lang
Digenes Akrites by John Mavrogordato
Lasharela: A Georgian Chronicle of the 13th Century by Grigol Abishidze
Landmarks in Georgian Literature by David Marshall Lang
Bread and Ashes: A Walk Through the Mountains of Georgia by Tony Anderson
The Georgian Chronicles
Sanctified Vision by John J. O'Keefe
Stories I Stole by Wendell Steavenson
A Modern History of Georgia by David Marshall Lang

No doubt I will be commenting from time to time on some of these selections, and I would appreciate any advance reader previews that might be offered.

For all the world, it looks as though I am retreating into my Byzantine/Georgian cave. There are worse things, I suppose. It will keep me off the streets for a while, anyway.

Good Reporting on Syria

2011-05-30T12:05:00.000-07:00

For those interested in a real insight into the current situation in Syria, I suggest bookmarking the following site and blog:

http://syriacomment.com/

(h/t to Brad)

St. John the Russian

2011-05-27T06:35:00.000-07:00

St John the Russian and Confessor, whose relics are on the island of Euboia
Commemorated on May 27

The Holy Confessor John the Russian was born in Little Russia around 1690, and was raised in piety and love for the Church of God. Upon attaining the age of maturity he was called to military service, and he served as a simple soldier in the army of Peter I and took part in the Russo-Turkish War. During the Prutsk Campaign of 1711 he and other soldiers were captured by the Tatars, who handed him over to the commander of the Turkish cavalry. He took his Russian captive home with him to Asia Minor, to the village of Prokopion.

The Turks tried to convert the Christian soldiers to the Moslem faith with threats and flattery, but those who resisted were beaten and tortured. Some, alas, denied Christ and became Moslems, hoping to improve their lot. St John was not swayed by the promise of earthly delights, and he bravely endured the humiliation and beatings.

His master tortured him often in the hope that his slave would accept Islam. St John resolutely resisted the will of his master saying, "You cannot turn me from my holy Faith by threats, nor with promises of riches and pleasures. I will obey your orders willingly, if you will leave me free to follow my religion. I would rather surrender my head to you than to change my faith. I was born a Christian, and I shall die a Christian."

St John's bold words and firm faith, as well as his humility and meekness, finally softened the fierce heart of his master. He left John in peace, and no longer tried to make him renounce Christianity. The saint lived in the stable and took care of his master's animals, rejoicing because his bed was a manger such as the one in which the Savior was born.

From morning until late evening the saint served his Turkish master, fulfilling all his commands. He performed his duties in the winter cold and summer heat, half naked and barefoot. Other slaves frequently mocked him, seeing his zeal. St John never became angry with them, but on the contrary, he helped them when he could, and comforted them in their misfortune.

The saint's kindness and gentle nature had its effect on the souls of both the master and the slaves. The Agha and his wife came to love him, and offered him a small room near the hayloft. St John did not accept it, preferring to remain in the stable with the animals. Here he slept on the hay, covered only by an old coat. So the stable became his hermitage, where he prayed and chanted Psalms.

St John brought a blessing to his master simply by living in his household. The cavalry officer became rich, and was soon one of the most powerful men in Prokopion. He knew very well why his home had been blessed, and he did not hesitate to tell others.

Sometimes St John left the stable at night and went to the church of the Great Martyr George, where he kept vigil in the narthex. On Saturdays and Feast days, he received the Holy Mysteries of Christ.

During this time St John continued to serve his master as before, and despite his own poverty, he always helped the needy and the sick, and shared his meager food with them.

One day, the officer left Prokopion and went to Mecca on pilgrimage. A few days later, his wife gave a banquet and invited her husband's friends and relatives, asking them to pray for her husband's safe return. St John served at the table, and he put down a dish of pilaf, his master's favorite food. The hostess said, "How much pleasure your master would have if he could be here to eat this pilaf with us." St John asked for a dish of pilaf, saying that he would send it to his master in Mecca. The guests laughed when they heard his words. The mistress, however, ordered the cook to give him a dish of pilaf, thinking he would eat it himself, or give it to some poor family.

Taking the dish, St John went into the stable and prayed that God would send it to his master. He had no doubt that God would send the pilaf to his master in a supernatual manner. The plate disappeared before his eyes, and he went into the house to tell his mistress that he had sent the pilaf to his master.

After some time, the master returned home with the copper plate which had held the pilaf. He told his household that on a certain day (the very day of the banquet), he returned from the mosque to the home where he was staying. Although the room was locked, he found a plate of steaming pilaf on the table. Unable to explain who had brought the food, or how anyone could enter the locked room, the officer examined the plate. To his amazement, he saw his own name engraved on the copper plate. In spite of his confusion, he ate the meal with great relish.

When the officer's family heard this story, they marveled. His wife told him of how John had asked for a plate of pilaf to send to his master in Mecca, and how they all laughed when John came back and said that it had been sent. Now they saw that what the saint had said was true (Compare the story of Habakkuk, who miraculously brought a dish of pottage to Daniel in the lions' den [Dan. 14:33-39], in the Septuagint).

Toward the end of his difficult life St John fell ill, and sensed the nearness of his end. He summoned the priest so that he could receive Holy Communion. The priest, fearing to go to the residence of the Turkish commander openly with the Holy Gifts, enclosed the life-giving Mysteries in an apple and brought them to St John.

St John glorified the Lord, received the Body and Blood of Christ, and then reposed. The holy Confessor John the Russian went to the Lord Whom he loved on May 27, 1730. When they reported to the master that his servant John had died, he summoned the priests and gave them the body of St John for Christian burial. Almost all the Christian inhabitants of Prokopion came to the funeral, and they accompanied the body of the saint to the Christian cemetery.

Three and a half years later the priest was miraculously informed in a dream that the relics of St John had remained incorrupt. Soon the relics of the saint were transferred to the church of the holy Great Martyr George and placed in a special reliquary. The new saint of God began to be glorified by countless miracles of grace, accounts of which spread to the remote cities and villages. Christian believers from various places came to Prokopion to venerate the holy relics of St John the Russian and they received healing through his prayers. The new saint came to be venerated not only by Orthodox Christians, but also by Armenians, and even Turks, who prayed to the Russian saint, "Servant of God, in your mercy, do not disdain us."

In the year 1881 a portion of the relics of St John were transferred to the Russian monastery of the holy Great Martyr Panteleimon by the monks of Mount Athos, after they were miraculously saved by the saint during a dangerous journey.

Construction of a new church was begun in 1886, through the contributions of the monastery and the inhabitants of Prokopion. This was necessary because the church of the holy Great Martyr George, where the relics of St John were enshrined, had fallen into disrepair.

On August 15, 1898 the new church dedicated to St John the Russian was consecrated by the Metropolitan John of Caesarea, with the blessing of the Ecumenical Patriarch Constantine V.

In 1924, an exchange of the populations of Greece and Turkey took place. Many Moslems moved out of Greece, and many Christians moved out of Turkey. The inhabitants of Prokopion, when they moved to the island of Euboia, took with them part of the relics of St John the Russian.

For several decades the relics were in the church of Sts Constantine and Helen at New Prokopion on Euboia, and in 1951 they were transferred into a new church dedicated to St John the Russian. Thousands of pilgrims flocked here from all the corners of Greece, particularly on his Feast, May 27. St John the Russian is widely venerated on Mount Athos, particularly in the Russian monastery of St Panteleimon.

St John's help is sought by travelers, and by those transporting things.

Some Books (7, and last)--Flannery O'Connor's Radical Reality

2011-05-25T17:50:00.000-07:00

Flannery O'Connor's Radical Reality, edited by Jan Nordby Gretlund and Karl-Heiz Westarp, is definitely a book for those who just can't get enough of this author--such as myself. I readily admit that O'Connor is not for everybody, though partisan that I am, I believe she should be.

This is nice, wide-ranging collection of essays by a number of scholars familiar with her work. I particularly enjoyed "Flannery O'Connor's Challenge as Thomistic Maker," by Marion Montgomery, a Georgia professor who actually knew her. Without delving into the particulars of his essay, I do want to simply pass along a couple of O'Connor anecdotes, as well as a related quote, to-wit:

There is an anecdote concerning what we might take as her attempt to generous-spirited to an old naive friend. The friend had come home from Greenwich Village, way up there in New York City, all excited by what she had seen and heard and done. Thus enlightened, she was home for a visit and came out to Andalusia to share her adventures with Flannery, whom she supposed entrapped by the provincial South. Calling on her old acquaintance and friend out at the farm, the tow of them talked and rocked on the front porch, the friend recounting high adventure among poets and artists. The visitor at least fell silent for a spell, the two of them still rocking. The, looking out over the pines and pastures, peacocks and chickens pecking about the yard--perhaps even seeing the jackass O'Connor had bought for her mother as a Mother's Day present--she exclaimed, "Oh, Flannery! If only I could take you out of all this!" And Flannery rocked a minute before responding in her nasal voice, "Out of all what?"

There is another story, shared by a mutual friend and complementary of this challenging visitation upon Flannery by a friend--New York imported to central Georgia. this mutual friend arrived by bus from southern Georgia for a visit. She was let out at the dirt road leading up to Andalusia only to find Flannery meeting her half way down the road, hobbling on her crutches, to share an encounter of an act of country charity the day before. she could not wait to share it. A man, visiting Miss Regina, Flannery's mother, on farm business, was walking and talking with Mrs. O'Connor when he realized that Flannery was trailing along behind them on her crutches. The visitor felt obligated to include her, poor cripple that she was. He stopped, reached down at his feet, and caught up one of Flannery's chickens. The he threw it high up in the air, and the chicken, squawking and fluttering, managed to land safely a few yards away. Turning to Flannery like a considerate uncle, he said, " It don't take much to give a chicken a good time."

And then there is this on O'Connor and Allen Tate and their views on provincialism:

Provincialism, Tate says...is "a state of mind in which regional men lose their origin in the past and its continuity into the present, and begin every day as if there had been no yesterday"....For both Tate and O'Connor, no solution is whole that does not embrace the material and legal order within a spiritual vision. Programs and rulings in the name of the common good are but temporary--temporal--solutions always in decay, requiring an acknowledgment of the spiritual dimension to any viable hope for the common good. Otherwise provincialism obtains. Such provincialism is to be seen, Tate says, in contrast to "the classical-Christian world, based upon regional consciousness, which held that honor, truth, imagination, human dignity, and limited acquisitiveness, could alone justify a social order, however rich and efficient it may be. We have become largely provincials," Tate adds, and so we "do not live anywhere," having committed ourselves "to seeing with, not through, the eye.

The Sovereign State of Denial and the Delusional Republic

2011-05-25T17:40:00.000-07:00

This gets it about right.

For all the talk back and forth in recent days about the vaunted "two-state" solution, I'm afraid the moment for that scenario has already passed by.

Some Books (6)--Early England and the Saxon-English by William Barnes (1869)

2011-05-24T14:13:00.000-07:00

I have commented before on William Barnes and his work in preserving Anglo-Saxon lore and language, here. This 1869 volume presents a general overview of the Saxon English, their culture and society, with particular attention given to the Saxon tongue and its wearing-away in recent centuries. Barnes contends that after the Norman Conquest, the introduction of Latin, Greek and French words into the lexicon needlessly confused and corrupted the language, leaving it harder to understand and learn.

English has become a more mongrel speech by the needless inbringing of words from Latin, Greek, and French, instead of words which might have been found in its older form, or in the speech of landfolk over all England, or might have been formed from its own roots and stems....

It may be thought that Latin and Greek-English is more refined and lofty than pure Saxon-English; but refinement and loftythoughtedness must be in the thoughts, and it is idle to put words for wit.

An example of what he is talking about is seen in the connection between the Saxon terms "year" and "yearly," understandable to all levels of their society. But with the arrival of the Normans, new terminology such as "annual" was introduced. To the common Saxon English, this was not understable, as they had no knowledge of the Latin root of the word--annus. Barnes does not contend that there was anything wrong with these words, but rather that they were totally unneccessary when perfectly Saxon expressions were already in use.

He lists a number of these new "foreign" words alongside the Saxon words they replaced. A few are still in use, though most have been worn away with time. I find that there is a poetic naturalness to the Saxon words. In our coarse, vulgar age, incorporating a few here and there into our speech might not be a bad thing. Some examples, as follows:

Ancestors--Fore-elders

Caution--Forewit

Cemetery--Licherest

Commandment--Bodeword

Environs--Outskirts

Immaculate--Unwemmed

Incantation--Spell

Iniquity--Wrongwiseness

Liberty--Freedom

Miracle--Wondertoken

Obstructive--Hindersome

Republic--Commonwealth

Reprimand--Upbraid

Residence--Wonstead

Conclusion--Upshot

Conscience--Inwit

Desolation--Forwasting

Vicinity--Neighborhood

Asterisk--Starkin

Accumulate--Upheap, upgather

Attentive--Heedsome

Contradict--Gainsay

Culmination--Uptippening

Disseminate--Outscatter

Domestic--Housely

Enthusiasm--Faith-heat

Flexible--Bendsome

Adhere--Oncleave

Library--Book-hoard

Vocabulary--Word-hoard

Constellation--Starhoard

Invalid--Unhale

Mediator--Mid-friend

Mediocre--Middling

Obliged--Beholden

Spiral--Windling

Tacit--Wordless

Veracity--Soothfastness

Vibrate--Whiver

Custom--Wont

Some Books (5)--Christianity and Culture by T. S. Eliot

2011-05-21T19:54:00.001-07:00

Being generally unread in T. S. Eliot, and largely allergic to poetry (sorry), I thought I would try out this thin volume of essays. Eliot is fine, I suppose, but I doubt that I will become any better read from here on out. Christianity and Culture is very much a product of its time and place, in this case, Britain just before the advent of the Second World War. Even so, a few passages caught my attention--

I am not concerned with the problem of Christians as a persecuted minority. When the Christian is treated as an enemy of the State, his course is very much harder, but it is simpler. I am concerned with the dangers to the tolerated minority; and in the modern world, it may turn out that the most intolerable thing for Christians is to be tolerated.

The Anglo-Saxons display a capacity for diluting their religion, probably in excess of that of any other race.

In an industrialized society like that of England, I am surprised that the people retains as much Christianity as it does.

We have no assurance that a democratic regime might not be as inimical to Christianity in practice, as another might be in theory....Those who consider that a discussion of the nature of a Christian society should conclude by supporting a particular form of political organisation, should ask themselves whether they really believe our form of government to be more important than our Christianity; and those who are convinced that the present form of government...is the one most suitable for any Christian people, should ask themselves whether they are confusing a Christian society with a society in which individual Christianity is tolerated.

To justify Christianity because it provides a foundation of morality, instead of showing the necessity of Christian morality from the truth of Christianity, is a very dangerous inversion...

It is not enthusiasm, but dogma, that differentiates a Christian from a pagan society.

But we have to remember that the Kingdom of Christ on earth will never be realised, and also that it is always being realised; we must remember that whatever reform or revolution we carry out, the result will always be a sordid travesty of what human society should be--though the world is never left wholly without glory.

The term "democracy" ... does not contain enough positive content to stand alone against the forces that you dislike--it can easily be transformed by them. If you will not have God (and He is a jealous God) you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin.

Some Books (4)--The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other by Walker Percy

2011-05-21T10:23:00.000-07:00

The novelist Walker Percy remains a continuing interest of me. Several years back, I posted on his Love in the Ruins, and am slowly reading through his body of work. This collection of essays, written between 1954 and 1975, address his "recurring interest...[in] the nature of human communication and, in particular, the consequences of man's unique discovery of the symbol." Many of the chapters are a bit esoteric for my taste, but two in particular grabbed my attention: "The Loss of the Creature," and "Notes for a Novel about the End of the World."

Percy explains "the loss of the creature" by way of the modern practice of tourism. This idea was of particular interest to me. Many of my postings here have been of travel and traveling, and one day I may even pull it together into something a little more substantial.

Using the Grand Canyon as an starting point, he imagines the experience of the first Spanish explorer who stumbled upon it. And he follows that "to no one else is it ever as beautiful--except the rare man who manages to recover it, who knows that it has to be recovered." In this case, he notes that the canyon, "the thing as it is, has been appropriated by the symbolic complex which has already been formed in the sightseer's mind....Where the wonder and delight of the Spaniard arose from his penetration of the thing itself, from a progressive discovery of depths, patterns, colors, shadows, etc., now the sightseer measures his satisfaction by the degree to which the canyon conforms to the preformed complex....The highest point, the term of the sight seer's satisfaction, is not the sovereign discovery of the thing before him; it is rather the measuring up of the thing to the criterion of the preformed symbolic complex....Seeing the canyon is made even more difficult by what the sightseer does when the moment arrives, when sovereign knower confronts the thing to be known. Instead of looking at it, he photographs it...He waives his right of seeing and knowing and records symbols for the next forty years. For him there is no present; there is only the past of what has been formulated and seen and the future of what has been formulated and not seen."

Percy acknowledges that there are ways in which "the thing," can be recovered. One can leave the beaten path by avoiding all of the facilities provided for seeing the thing (though even this quickly becomes institutionalized and programmed, i.e. Lonely Planet, etc.) One can engage in a dialectical recovery of the thing, "which brings one back to the beaten tract but a a level above it." Finally, a "breakdown of the symbolic machinery by which the experts present the experience to the consumer," or even a national disaster may present opportunities for the real recovery of the thing.

Percy observes the tendency (particularly among American travelers,) to feel let-down in they do not capture the "it" of wherever they are going. An example of this would be the American tourist couple traveling in Mexico, becoming hopelessly lost and stumbling onto a remote Indian village where they remain several days and witness a religious festival complete with corn dance. They both know that "this is it," the authentic, defining experience. According to Percy, "their hope has something to do with their own role as tourists in a foreign country and the way in which they conceive this role." The author puts his finger on something I have long felt, but was unable to really articulate. In my travel posts of past years, I include photographs of places, but rarely did I include pictures of people, unless it happened to be those with whom I was traveling. In Georgia, on a number of occasions, I passed on opportunities to photograph farm workers, harvesting crops much as they had done for millennia--by hand, with horses and wagons. I instinctively knew that what they were doing was of far more significance than what I was engaged in. To objectify them, to treat them as quaint curiosities that would entertain my friends at the coffee shop--or look good on a blog post, was demeaning to them, as well as being a cheapening of the moment for me. Percy would describe this as a loss of sovereignty over the experience. I carry the image in my mind, and that is sufficient.

Percy ends the chapter, as follows:

The loss has come about as a consequence of the seduction of the layman by science. The layman will be seduced as long as he regards beings as consumer items to be experience rather than prizes to be won, and as long as he waives his sovereign rights as a person and accepts his role of consumer as the highest estate to which the layman can aspire....the person is not something one can study and provide for; he is something one struggles for. But unless he also struggles for himself, unless he knows that there is a struggle, he is going to be just what the planners think he is.

In the other chapter noted above, Percy writes of those novelists who write about the End of the World. By this, he does not mean anything in the latest end-times fantasy or science fiction, but rather those writers who have "an explicit and ultimate concern with he nature of man and the nature of reality where man finds himself. Instead of constructing a plot and creating a cast of characters from a world familiar to everybody, he is more apt to set forth with a stranger in a strange land where the signposts are enigmatic but which he sets out to explore nevertheless." These authors betray "a passionate conviction about man's nature, the world, and man's obligation in the world."

Percy makes some interesting, and astute, generalizations about authors. "The nineteenth-century Russian novelists were haunted by God: many of the French existentialists are haunted by his absence. The English novelist is not much interested one way or the other....American novels tend to be about everything. Moreover, at the end, everything is disposed of, God, man, and the world." To Percy, these authors know that "something is wrong here," exhibiting a "single strain...a profound disquiet." He asks, "Is it too much to say that the novelist, unlike the new theologian, is one of the few remaining witnesses to the doctrine of original sin, the imminence of catastrophe in paradise?"

The subject of the postmodern novel is a man who has very nearly come to the end of the line. How very odd it is, when one comes to think of it, that the very moment he arrives at the threshold of his new city, with all its hard-won relief from the sufferings of the past, happens to be the same moment that he runs out of meaning!

Which will be more relevant of the "lost" man of tomorrow who knows he is lost: the new theology of politics or the renewed old theology of the Good News? What is most noticeable about the new theology, despite the somber strains of the funeral march, is the triviality of the post-mortem proposals. After the polemics, when the old structures are flattened and the debris cleared away, what is served up is small potatoes indeed.

Walker Percy, who died in 1990, knew a thing or two about what was coming.

Let's Sit This One Out

2011-05-17T07:18:00.000-07:00

The "Arab Spring" seems to be lengthening out into a long, hot summer. The simmering unrest in Syria has attracted some attention in this country, with calls for sanctions and intervention to some degree. To this I say, Please, No.

Make no mistake, Bashar al-Assad is a nasty piece of work. Gangly, weak-chinned and sporting a cheesy moustache, he looks every bit the mild-mannered ophthalmologist he once was. Due to the death of his older brother, Bashar fell heir to the family dictatorship at his father's death in 2000. Hopes of him harboring reformist tendencies have born precious little fruit, and the government's response to the recent street demonstrations have shown that Bashar al-Assad has no intention of giving up the family business.

That said, Syria is not Egypt and neither is it Libya. Yes, the educated Syrian populace is frustrated with their lack of economic opportunity, as well as corruption (though it hardly rises to Egyptian standards.) But there is no widespread opposition and hatred of the Assad regime, heavy-handed as it can be. And the myriad minority groups (of which Assad himself is a member) are fearful of the Sunni majority gaining the upper hand. And Assad is a known quantity in the region, a fact that even his arch-enemies, the Israelis, can appreciate.

One of our parish families spent 3 weeks in Aleppo in April. At that time, at least, nothing was happening there. Another parish member, along with her two young daughters, is in Damascus now visiting family. She reports life is normal, with no disruptions. Of course, both of these examples are from Syrian Christians, who have more to fear from Assad's fall than anyone else. But then I recently heard from my Muslim friend in Aleppo. His words, in broken but clearly understandable English were: "as lately you had maybe in American news about Syria and what is going on but it is all wrong ."

But with demonstrations in the street against autocracy, surely we, the original Revolutionaries, have to do something, don't we? Actually, no. Charles Glass, in an excellent article, here, agrees with the old French saying that there is an "urgent need to do nothing."

Syria is a complex and diverse society in which outside do-gooders risk destroying all they claim to support. The first victims of a war in Syria will be the religious minorities. These include the Alawites and the Christians, who comprise about ten percent of the population and have prospered under the Assad regime. The government, despite the Ottoman-era practice of defining citizens by religious sect, is explicitly secular.

As in Iraq, chaos would mean the mass emigration of the Christian communities who have lived there for two millennia. Syria, following the American invasion of Iraq with its concomitant anarchy and sectarian conflict, took in over a million Iraqi refugees, including more than 300,000 Christians. Where would they and Syria’s indigenous Christians find refuge? Do Washington’s holy warriors want them to leave and for Syria to be as purely Sunni as its favorite Mideast statelet, Saudi Arabia?

Here is what Marco Rubio, the telegenic new senator from Florida and 2012's inevitable GOP vice-presidential nominee has to say about our response to Syria:

Here is the reality. We either believe the founding principles of this nation or we do not. The founding principles of the United States are simple, and that is that our rights don’t come from our laws or from our government. They come from our creator, and that these rights extend to all men. And any government who denies these rights is an illegitimate government.

Anywhere in the world where that is challenged, the United States has to speak out against it. Otherwise, the very essence of our founding, our purpose for existing as a nation and our founding, is gone. This is an important issue. ~Marco Rubio

The dependable Daniel Larison takes this nonsense to task, here, finding this "the most egregious sort of meaningless moral posturing with some flourishes of American nationalism."

And in the combox is this perceptive observation:

For one thing, the fall of Assad would very likely lead to great pressure on the ancient Christian communities of Syria. Are the Christians of the Levant endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights, or are those rights confined to landholding American Deists?

In another post, Larison continues:

[The President] is the chief magistrate of a federal republic. He is not a cheerleader or motivational speaker for the world’s dissidents. Giving protesters encouragement without any intention of lending them real support is a good way to keep getting protesters killed.

“Speaking out” in support of protesters is a phony pledge of solidarity that America is with them, when they know full well that America is not with them....Lending false hope to opposition movements in Syria and elsewhere is not admirable or principled. It is much more like a cruel trick.

It hasn’t even been two months since the Libyan war started, and already we have people agitating for starting the same process all over again. When it seemed that Obama had no intention of ordering military attacks on Libya, critics argued that he had to back up his demand that Gaddafi “must go” with action. Soon enough, Obama opted for intervention, and continues to insist that Gaddafi “must go.” If Obama addresses the Syrian crackdown in his speech on Thursday, will he refrain from making grandiose statements about the regime’s legitimacy, or will he issue another demand for an end to the current regime? All signs currently point to the administration’s unwillingness to make that demand, which is why it may be better if Obama says nothing or as little as possible about Syria.

Denunciations change nothing, so soon enough there will be agitation for “actions, not words,” and then there will be calls for “more decisive action” until people begin promoting the unthinkable and ridiculous option of launching attacks on government forces. As pressure builds, the government eventually adopts increasingly aggressive and confrontational policies. What everyone acknowledged to be “madness” yesterday soon becomes an unavoidable matter of preserving our “credibility.”

And finally, Justin Raimondo has some good thoughts here:

When you're hungry, and out of a job, familiar humiliations become intolerable. Israel's propagandists are telling us the Syrian government is behind the protests at the formerly quiet border between Syria and the Golan Heights: the Syrians are supposedly trying to divert attention from the Ba'athists' domestic atrocities. On the other hand, Damascus sounds a similar note, ascribing anti-government protests in its own streets to the work of the Mossad. These two may fight it out on the field of public diplomacy, and denounce each other as evil incarnate, yet both Tel Aviv and Damascus are basically on the same side – fighting against a human tide that threatens their carefully-constructed prison societies, once thought to be escape-proof and now revealed as rather rickety.

It could end in a new Arab Enlightenment, the restoration of a high civilization that fell into Ottomanized decay and eventual ruin, or it could climax in a orgy of self-immolation and a regional war that will plunge the Middle East back into the darkness. Yet it is possible to draw at least one conclusion from the current chaos, and it is this: the US must get out of the way.

Some Books (3)—The Pllar and Ground of the Truth: An Essay in Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters by Pavel Florensky

2011-05-15T21:04:00.000-07:00

This is a monumental work, written when Florensky was merely 26. A Russian polymath executed by the Soviets in 1937, he is known as "Russia's DaVinci." And while I heartily recommend this book, I find it impossible to summarize. It is much like reading Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. The author goes off on tangents that may be delightful to some, but incomprehensible to others, such as myself. But the work is well worth the effort, with hidden gems of incredibly lucid insight scattered throughout. The endnotes and comments alone run 160 pages, and make fascinating reading in and of themselves. Florensky has much to say about (and against) western notions of rationality in the context of faith. He also speaks at length about friendship, perhaps in ways that may be uncomfortable to some. I also found intriguing his explication of antinomies. Beyond that, I won’t attempt to say. A few selections follow:

Catholicism and Protestantism…in both cases, life is truncated by a concept….If in Catholicism one can perceive the fanaticism of canonicity, then in Protestantism one can perceive the equally great fanaticism of scientism. The indefinability of Orthodox ecclesiality…is the best proof of its vitality….The Orthodox taste, the Orthodox temper, is felt but it is not subject to arithmetical calculation. Orthodoxy is shown, not proved. That is what there is only one way to understand Orthodoxy: through direct Orthodox experience….one can become a Catholic or a Protestant without experiencing life at all—by reading books in one’s study. But to become Orthodox, it is necessary to immerse oneself all at once in the very element of Orthodoxy, to begin living in an Orthodox way. There is no other way. (pp. 8-9.)

The faith by which we are saved is the beginning and the end of the cross and of co-crucifixion with Christ. But so-called “rational” faith, faith with rational proofs, faith according to Tolstoy’s formula…such faith is a harsh, cruel stony growth in the heart, which keeps the heart from God. Such faith is a slander against God, a monstrous product of human egotism, which desires to subordinate even God to itself. There are many kinds of atheism, but the worst is the so-called rational faith. It is the worst, for, besides the rejection of the object of faith…it is hypocritical, accepts God but rejects His very essence, His “invisibility,” i.e., His suprarationality. (p. 48)

Something is lacking. My soul—wishing to be liberated and to be with Christ—longs for something. And something will come: “It doth not yet appear what we shall be.” (1 John 3:2). And the more acutely one feels what is being prepared, the closer and more intimate will the connection with the Mother Church become, and the easier and simpler it will be to endure out of love for Her the dirt that is cast upon Her. What will be will be in Her and through Her, not otherwise. (p. 95)

But precisely because sin is rationality par excellence, it makes God’s entire creation and God Himself absurd, depriving Him of the perspective depth of grounding and tearing Him from the Soil of the absolute. It places everything in a single plane, making everything flat and vulgar.(p. 133)

Holiness is a preliminary self-perception of one’s own freedom, and sin is preliminary slavery to oneself. (p. 160)

The philosopher leaves behind his cloak, all the learned nonsense that clutters up his soul, his ignorance, arrogance, empty words, lies, and sly questions together with his muddled intellectualizing. In other words, he leaves behind the vanity, insanity, and pettiness that consist of gold coins, shamelessness, life without restraint and idleness, deceit, airs of importance, a belief in one’s own superiority, and finally, his beard, frowns, flattery, and so on. Face to face with eternity, everyone must take off everything corruptible and become naked. This makes the emptiness of a soul that has lost most of its content understandable. (p. 173)

What does salvation consist in? It consists in being a stone in the tower that is being built; it consists in real unity with the Church. (p. 248)

To arrive at the Truth, it is necessary to free onself from one’s self-hood, to go out of oneself. But, for us, this is impossible, for we are flesh. But, I repeat, how precisely, in this case, can one grasp hold of the Pillar of the Truth? We do not know and cannot know. We know only that, through the yawning cracks of human rationality, the azure of Eternity is visible. This is unfathomable, but it is so. And we know that “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not the God of the philosophers and scholars," comes to us, comes to our place of nocturnal rest, takes us by the hand, and leads us in a way we could not have conceived of. (p. 348)

Quick Trip to Arkansas

2011-05-09T14:04:00.000-07:00

I am now down to two aunts--one by marriage in Fort Worth, whom I visit every January, and one by blood in Arkansas, whom I visit every May. I enjoy my annual overnight jaunt into the Ozarks and back. My aunt, now almost 88, remembers her happy central Texas childhood in great detail. I hear many of the old stories every visit, but there are always a few new ones thrown in for good measure. I had never heard her tell of the wheat harvesting in the community, or her experience in the Church of Christ Tabernacle with the preacher (and kinsman) who reminded her of Ichabod Crane, or of the time one of my uncle's caused the evacuation of the Copperas Cove High School (as well as ending his school career) by opening a bottle of skunk essence. She enjoys talking of old times--and of the Jehovah's Witness faith she has clung to these last 40 years. Obviously, I try to keep the conversation directed towards family matters (sigh.)

I will have to admit that I have even warmed-up to Arkansas. I have always harbored a Texan's instinctive disdain for our neighboring states. Our view of the westward migration is that anybody with any gumption did not linger in Louisiana or Arkansas, but came on to Texas, as any right-thinking person would do. But it is true, Arkansas is one beautiful state. The key for my changing attitude has come about by 1) avoiding the south-central portion of the state, and 2) staying completely off the Arkansas interstate highway system. My favorite regions are the Delta, from Memphis south, and the western third of the state, from Texas to Missouri.

Staying on the back roads as I do, I spend about 7-8 hours winding my way up to my aunt's. If you are looking for stereotypical hillbillyiana, well there is plenty of that, to be sure. But this sells the region short, for there is more beautiful, productive farmland than you might think. This trip, I kept my eyes opened for any interesting churches I passed along the way. For a few, I stopped to snap a picture.

The white church at the top is the old Boxley church, school and community center, a few miles down the road from my aunt's. Newton County is perhaps the most mountainous in Arkansas, and Boxley Valley is the only area where any real farming can be realistically accomplished. The narrow river valley is a protected area, spotted with white two-storey farmhouses with even larger barns, and all the accouterments of an on-going agricultural culture. This landmark is one of my favorites, but far from the only one of this nature in the area.

Crossing the Arkansas River, I came across this rather substantial red-bricked church out in the middle of nowhere. I was surprised to find a Catholic church out here in the middle of nowhere. The Church of Sts. Peter and Paul was constructed in 1917. A few miles down the road, I understood a little better. The Subiaco Abbey and School, a Benedictine institution, crowned an Arkansas hilltop. This neighborhood is obviously a Catholic enclave. Next trip, I plan to stop and look around a bit more.

In Paris, AR, I slowed down to take a picture of the impressively solid and fortress-like First Christian Church. After reading When Church Became Theatre (3 posts previous), I understand the context of this particular take on church architecture.

Further along, outside of Driggs, I encountered a sign for the Clark Chapel Church of God of the Abrahamic Faith. I had no idea what a Church of God of the Abrahamic Faith would look like, exactly, so I turned down this dirt road to check it out. Four miles on, I still had not reached the chapel, and realizing that I really needed to be heading in a southerly direction, I turned back. Again, a project for a future trip. I couldn't help chuckling a bit though, and thinking of my friend Milton's alter ego, the Rev. Buford T. Smeets, Pastor of the Gum Springs Tabernacle Greater Apostolic Church of the Final Thunder.

Fortified by a real hamburger at Mena's Skyline Cafe (since 1922,) I pushed on. South of Mena, one encounters a patch of what you might describe as stereotypical Arkansas. I made a u-turn after a caught a glimpse of this metal yard. The owner had constructed elaborate biblical quotes and spiritual admonitions out of heavy iron chains. The one pictured is only the main one at the scrap yard entrance--the other iron-clad makeshift billboards lined the entire front of the property. In her day, Flannery O'Connor could have made good use of this. I was kind of impressed myself.

DeQueen is the next town of any size south of Mena. With the dearth of any signs downtown en ingles, I think they probably should just go ahead and rename it de Reina. I turned off here, and headed west. A few miles before the Oklahoma border, I turned up Brooks Road, and stopped at All Saints of America Orthodox Mission, a sight even rarer in these parts than the rural Catholic church above.

This is a ROCOR church located on a beautiful country homestead. Fr. George walked across from his woodshop and greeted me. The farmhouse was his grandmother's and he retired here a number of years ago. The present church started out as a family oratory. While small, it held 45 for Pascha, with some driving from as far away as Little Rock. The walls are covered with icons, and the small dome is a real one, not a tacked-on affair. A nice hall, guesthouse and bells round out the picture. Fr. George invited me to visit sometime and stay in the guesthouse. I may take him up on that. We had a nice talk about current events in American Orthodoxy before I left.

It was now past 4:00 in the afternoon, and I was still a long way from home. I pushed on home and arrived with some daylight left to check on my garden and chickens. A satisfying outing, all the way around, I would say.

My One-And-Only Post on the Late Unpleasantness in the Orthodox Church in America (A Mild Rant)

2011-05-09T09:26:00.000-07:00

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Back when I was working on my graduate degree, I remember an anecdote from one of my history professors. In mock seriousness, he asked us if we knew why infighting within academic departments was so vicious. We were all a little intimidated of him, so no one answered. After a long pause, he replied because the stakes are so small. That's kind of how I feel about the latest sideshow within my particular Orthodox jurisdiction, the OCA. I do not mean to imply that one's salvation is small stakes, but as one commentator wryly noted, there are more model train enthusiasts in America than there are members of the OCA.

I have heretofore refrained from addressing the situation. Mine is not an "Orthodox blog," so to speak, but one where I may occasionally express my own Orthodox slant on contemporary happenings. I avoid publicly addressing "issues" within the Orthodox community. Also, I know I have visitors to this site who are outside Orthodoxy, to whom recent events would seem nigh incomprehensible. Well, hell--it should be equally incomprehensible to any right-thinking Orthodox. But with so much going on, it seems perversely head-in-the-sandish not to acknowledge the situation.

Let's just say there has been a little something for everybody in this year's imbroglio: attempted coups and counter-coups, plots within plots, machinations within machinations, leaked e-mails and stolen emails, dueling blogs, pettiness, jealousy, more plotting, occasional appearances by our royal family trying to keep everyone in line, de facto governance by blog post, sordid sexual allegation upon sordid sexual allegation complete with hierarchical condo hide-a-ways, formerly respected priests throwing their reputations away in vicious attacks, demonization on all sides, etc.

The world of the OCA is a small one. Basically, we all know each other. So it is not unusual that I would have some familiarity with a few of the parties involved, and why I find objectionable the cheap allegations and demonization against those I love and respect. I have been taken aback, as well, by the glee some take in all these troubles. But the Synod has met and decreed. Entrenched mediocrity has been confirmed, and the status quo ante affirmed. On our diocesan level, things are still roiling down here as perhaps the OCA's most vibrant parish, just for good measure it would seem, has been thrown on its back. I am convinced more than ever that the OCA's days are numbered, its vaunted autocephaly an increasingly impolite fiction--whether there is a Great Council or not. But God is still on His throne, and Orthodoxy, thankfully, is far larger than our little OCA. Back in my Protestant days, I saw "church problems" destroy the faith of some. And I have seen it in previous scandals within Orthodoxy. In a strange way, this has done nothing to weaken my faith. Any reality-based reading of Church history clearly shows the faithful plodding on, while bishops may plot and scheme. Simply put, if the Church were not what she claimed to be, such behavior would have sunk it centuries ago. This is all the more reason to keep my head down and tend my own garden here on the parish level. But in doing so, I am reminded of the line from Fiddler on the Roof, which has some applicability to our present situation:

May God bless and keep the Tsar... far away from us!

Some Books (2)--Lives of the Mind: The Use and Abuse of Intelligence from Hegel to Wodehouse

2011-05-08T18:55:00.001-07:00

George Orwell believed that there were "some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them." Roger Kimball takes this line of reasoning and has some fun with it in his Lives of the Mind: The Use and Abuse of Intelligence from Hegel to Wodehouse, published back in 2002. The dust-jacket promises "a delicious study of genius and pseudo-genius," a study which asks "When does a love of ideas become a dangerous infatuation?" or "What antidotes are there for the silliness of unanchored intellect?"

Frankly, I have never read much in the way of intellectual history. I can aspire to becoming a scholar, and I may have a certain knack for piecing together tidbits of history into a coherent picture. Intellectualism, however, is beyond me. My mind just does not work that way. If given a choice, I have always chosen to keep my head buried in the likes of Herodotus, or Carlyle, or Parkman, or Thucydides, or Prescott, or Macaulay, or Gibbon, or Comnena, or Runciman, or Lukacs and the like. I never gave any attention to intellectual historians and their theories--the ideas of Descartes, or Hegel, or Schopenhauer, or Marx, or Kierkegaard, etc.

That is why Kimball's book was such a satisfying read. For example, I now have some vague idea of the meaning of the term "Hegelian" without having to (God forbid) actually read Hegel. (Were this term removed from the vocabulary of intellectuals, I firmly believe most would be rendered mute.) On the whole, Kimball's essays cover an interesting lot, and both he and his subjects are eminently quotable. A selection:

Kimball on Aron: Busyness-that curiously modern bane that mistakes movement for progress.

Aron: Marxism is undoubtedly a religion, in the lowest sense of the word.

Kimbell on Aron on Hegel: His was a sober and penetrating intelligence, sufficiently curious to take on Heel, sufficiently robust to escape uncorrupted by the encounter.

Bagehot: Nothing is more unpleasant than a virtuous person with a mean mind.

Scruton on Hegel: His work is like a beautiful oasis around a treacherous pool of nonsense, and nowhere beneath the foliage is the ground really firm.

Kierkegaard: The curious fact that those who do not bore themselves usually bore others, while those who bore themselves entertain others.

Kimball on boredom: The dark side of a life devoted to amusement, pleasure, diversion. What happens when amusement palls and pleasure fails to please? Boredom yawns before one, a paralyzing abyss.

Kierkegaard: A passionate tumultuous age will overthrow everything, pull everything down; but a revolutionary age, that is at the same time reflective and passionless transforms that expression of strength into a feat of dialectics--it leaves everything standing but cunningly empties it of significance.

Bertram Russell on sex to first fiancee: As to frequency, I am sure it ought not to be great.

David Stove: Not to understand religion is ...not to understand nine-tenths of human history.

Stove on Darwin: Darwinism says many things, especially about our species, which are too obviously false to be believed by any educated person, or at least by an educated person who retains any capacity at all for critical thought.

Wodehouse by way of Jeeves to Bertie after a close brush with matrimony: It was her intention to start you almost immediately upon Nietzsche. You would not like Nietzsche, sir. He is fundamentally unsound.

Peguy: Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics.

Kimball is good at this sort of thing. I remember his work back when I used to read the New Criterion. And yet, I group him with Theodore Dalrymple, another writer I admire. Both are excellent at chronicling our slow descent. None are better in the Decline-of-the-West genre. And yet, both pull back in the end, watching and tabulating as the vines of our age pry loose the bricks of our edifice, one by one. Neither will acknowledge the true nature of the Crisis before us, or its remedy.

Some Books (1)--When Church Became Theatre

2011-05-02T20:37:00.001-07:00

I have been making good progress in winnowing-down my book stack. I am anxious to finish with them so I can begin on the next pile, which already awaits my attention. In the next week or so, I hope to report on a few of the books enjoyed over the last few months.

Anyone who looks at the contemporary side-show of American mega-churchdom and wonders how Christianity came to such a pass will gain valuable insight from When Church Became Theatre: The Transformation of Evangelical Architecture and Worship in Nineteenth-Century America by Dr. Jeanne Halgren Kilde. As the title indicates, this is not simply an architectural study, but an overview of evolving patterns of Protestant worship during the 1800s, and specifically how this was shaped and transformed by purposeful innovations in the traditional worship space. She "explores the complex relationships between space and worship, architecture and meaning, religion and society." This is a masterful work, and essential reading for an understanding of 19th-century American religiosity. As Kilde demonstrates, the calculated "revisioning of Protestant worship space," as well as the "reinvention" of a Christian past gave shape to a number of dynamic trends within Protestantism that are in evidence even today.

Briefly put, since the early 1800s, popular American church architecture has gone through four phases: the Gothic Revival, the neomedieval auditorium, the Late Gothic Revival, and finally, today's auditorium church. On the Gothic Revival:

"The hegemony of the Gothic as the generic Christian style was overwhelming at midcentury despite the fact that it seemed to contradict evangelical history and ideology in several ways....With its nave, chancel, choir and transepts, [the Gothic church] was ideal for establishing and maintaining the mystery of the Mass and the power of the clergy in the Eucharistic sacrament. It was inimical, however, to Protestant worship that focused on the sermon."

But as Kilde notes, "in their search for Christian coherence, evangelical Protestants separated the architecture from its liturgical function and imagined (emphasis mine) a generic Christian origin....Gothic design...was hailed as the only truly Christian building style precisely because it embodied Christian (i.e., generic Christian) principles...that these were pre-Reformation Christians did not greatly trouble [them.]" These churches "looked to a newly reconstructed past for their legitimacy, which a historicized Christian architectural style, the Gothic, provided," and "the appropriation and reinterpretation of the past for the purpose of reshaping and reformulating the Protestant church to respond to contemporary situations."

As one Christian writer noted in 1858: "The tendency of the structure must be continually upwards...leading the mind to the infinite above, which conveys the idea of the presence of God...Its interior must ...elevate the mid above all earthly thoughts; its forms must be filled with a spirit which in its development leads the mind toward the high undefinable ideas of that All-seeing and unseen God..."

To the Orthodox mind, this is strange and abstract language. I am not qualified to speak authoritatively about the significant of Orthodox architecture, but I do know enough to contrast it with the view above. There is no sense of pulling our thoughts upward, to some "infinite above," for the Triune God is there with us. The dome symbolizes the heavens, to be sure, but Christ Pantocrator is there, looking down on us. And with the iconography of the church, one has a sense of being literally enveloped into the mystical worship and adoration before the Throne.

I am reminded of Father Stephen Freeman's series of lessons (and now, book) on the "Two-Storey Universe" where, according to Protestant thought, God is imagined as "up there somewhere," on the second storey.

By mid-century, Gothic Revival had been largely abandoned in favor of the neomedieval auditorium churches which abandoned downtown for suburban locals, where they "strove to preserve and maintain the goodwill of wealthy members." Concern for the poor and needy often gave way to programs for "the family, " as they "adapted more fully to the growing consumer-oriented industrial culture." Kilde noted a process that "transformed audiences into voyeurs."

By late century, the pendulum had swung again, away from the neomedieval to the Late Gothic Revival. At this point, Kilde asks an important question:

"One must ask whether evangelical religion was simply colonized by capitalism during the peak of the U. S. industrial revolution. Were these churches merely the gilded totems of a capitalist age? Were they artifacts that furthered the ideology of wealth and consumption, bathing it in a glow of sanctified virtuosity and thus justifying it and the materialistic lifestyle it encouraged as sacred?"

Saint Tamar

2011-05-02T06:39:00.000-07:00

Commemorated on May 1

In 1166 a daughter, Tamar, was born to King George III (1155–1184) and Queen Burdukhan of Georgia. The king proclaimed that he would share the throne with his daughter from the day she turned twelve years of age.

The royal court unanimously vowed its allegiance and service to Tamar, and father and daughter ruled the country together for five years. After King George’s death in 1184, the nobility recognized the young Tamar as the sole ruler of all Georgia. Queen Tamar was enthroned as ruler of all Georgia at the age of eighteen. She is called “King” in the Georgian language because her father had no male heir and so she ruled as a monarch and not as a consort.

At the beginning of her reign, Tamar convened a Church council and addressed the clergy with wisdom and humility: “Judge according to righteousness, affirming good and condemning evil,” she advised. “Begin with me--if I sin I should be censured, for the royal crown is sent down from above as a sign of divine service. Allow neither the wealth of the nobles nor the poverty of the masses to hinder your work. You by word and I by deed, you by preaching and I by the law, you by upbringing and I by education will care for those souls whom God has entrusted to us, and together we will abide by the law of God, in order to escape eternal condemnation…. You as priests and I as ruler, you as stewards of good and I as the watchman of that good.”

The Church and the royal court chose a suitor for Tamar: Yuri, the son of Prince Andrei Bogoliubsky of Vladimir-Suzdal (in Georgia Yuri was known as “George the Russian”). The handsome George Rusi was a valiant soldier, and under his command the Georgians returned victorious from many battles. His marriage to Tamar, however, exposed many of the coarser sides of his character. He was often drunk and inclined toward immoral deeds. In the end, Tamar’s court sent him away from Georgia to Constantinople, armed with a generous recompense. Many Middle Eastern rulers were drawn to Queen Tamar’s beauty and desired to marry her, but she rejected them all. Finally at the insistence of her court, she agreed to wed a second time to ensure the preservation of the dynasty. This time, however, she asked her aunt and nurse Rusudan (the sister of King George III) to find her a suitor. The man she chose, Davit-Soslan Bagrationi, was the son of the Ossetian ruler and a descendant of King George I (1014-1027).

In 1195 a joint Muslim military campaign against Georgia was planned under the leadership of Atabeg (a military commander) Abu Bakr of Persian Azerbaijan. At Queen Tamar’s command, a call to arms was issued. The faithful were instructed by Metropolitan Anton of Chqondidi to celebrate All-night Vigils and Liturgies and to generously distribute alms so that the poor could rest from their labors in order to pray. In ten days the army was prepared, and Queen Tamar addressed the Georgian soldiers for the last time before the battle began. “My brothers! Do not allow your hearts to tremble before the multitude of enemies, for God is with us…. Trust God alone, turn your hearts to Him in righteousness, and place your every hope in the Cross of Christ and in the Most Holy Theotokos!” she exhorted them.

Having taken off her shoes, Queen Tamar climbed the hill to the Metekhi Church of the Theotokos (in Tbilisi) and knelt before the icon of the Most Holy Theotokos. She prayed without ceasing until the good news arrived: the battle near Shamkori had ended in the unquestionable victory of the Orthodox Georgian army.

After this initial victory the Georgian army launched into a series of triumphs over the Turks, and neighboring countries began to regard Georgia as the protector of the entire Transcaucasus. By the beginning the 13th century, Georgia was commanding a political authority recognized by both the Christian West and the Muslim East.

Georgia’s military successes alarmed the Islamic world. Sultan Rukn al-Din was certain that a united Muslim force could definitively decide the issue of power in the region, and he marched on Georgia around the year 1203, commanding an enormous army.

Having encamped near Basiani, Rukn al-Din sent a messenger to Queen Tamar with an audacious demand: to surrender without a fight. In reward for her obedience, the sultan promised to marry her on the condition that she embrace Islam; if Tamar were to cleave to Christianity, he would number her among the other unfortunate concubines in his harem. When the messenger relayed the sultan’s demand, a certain nobleman, Zakaria Mkhargrdzelidze, was so outraged that he slapped him on the face, knocking him unconscious.

At Queen Tamar’s command, the court generously bestowed gifts upon the ambassador and sent him away with a Georgian envoy and a letter of reply. “Your proposal takes into consideration your wealth and the vastness of your armies, but fails to account for divine judgment,” Tamar wrote, “while I place my trust not in any army or worldly thing but in the right hand of the Almighty God and the infinite aid of the Cross, which you curse. The will of God--and not your own--shall be fulfilled, and the judgment of God--and not your judgment--shall reign!”

The Georgian soldiers were summoned without delay. Queen Tamar prayed for victory before the Vardzia Icon of the Theotokos, then, barefoot, led her army to the gates of the city.

Hoping in the Lord and the fervent prayers of Queen Tamar, the Georgian army marched toward Basiani. The enemy was routed. The victory at Basiani was an enormous event not only for Georgia, but for the entire Christian world.

The military victories increased Queen Tamar’s faith. In the daytime she shone in all her royal finery and wisely administered the affairs of the government; during the night, on bended knees, she beseeched the Lord tearfully to strengthen the Georgian Church. She busied herself with needlework and distributed her embroidery to the poor.

Once, exhausted from her prayers and needlework, Tamar dozed off and saw a vision. Entering a luxuriously furnished home, she saw a gold throne studded with jewels, and she turned to approach it, but was suddenly stopped by an old man crowned with a halo. “Who is more worthy than I to receive such a glorious throne?” Queen Tamar asked him.

He answered her, saying, “This throne is intended for your maidservant, who sewed vestments for twelve priests with her own hands. You are already the possessor of great treasure in this world.” And he pointed her in a different direction.

Having awakened, Holy Queen Tamar immediately took to her work and with her own hands sewed vestments for twelve priests.

History has preserved another poignant episode from Queen Tamar’s life: Once she was preparing to attend a festal Liturgy in Gelati, and she fastened precious rubies to the belt around her waist. Soon after she was told that a beggar outside the monastery tower was asking for alms, and she ordered her entourage to wait. Having finished dressing, she went out to the tower but found no one there. Terribly distressed, she reproached herself for having denied the poor and thus denying Christ Himself. Immediately she removed her belt, the cause of her temptation, and presented it as an offering to the Gelati Icon of the Theotokos.

During Queen Tamar’s reign a veritable monastic city was carved in the rocks of Vardzia, and the God-fearing Georgian ruler would labor there during the Great Fast. The churches of Pitareti, Kvabtakhevi, Betania, and many others were also built at that time. Holy Queen Tamar generously endowed the churches and monasteries not only on Georgian territory but also outside her borders: in Palestine, Cyprus, Mt. Sinai, the Black Mountains, Greece, Mt. Athos, Petritsoni (Bulgaria), Macedonia, Thrace, Romania, Isauria and Constantinople. The divinely guided Queen Tamar abolished the death penalty and all forms of bodily torture.

A regular, secret observance of a strict ascetic regime--fasting, a stone bed, and litanies chanted in bare feet--finally took its toll on Queen Tamar’s health. For a long time she refrained from speaking to anyone about her condition, but when the pain became unbearable she finally sought help. The best physicians of the time were unable to diagnose her illness, and all of Georgia was seized with fear of disaster. Everyone from the small to the great prayed fervently for Georgia’s ruler and defender. The people were prepared to offer not only their own lives, but even the lives of their children, for the sake of their beloved ruler.

God sent Tamar a sign when He was ready to receive her into His Kingdom. Then the pious ruler bade farewell to her court and turned in prayer to an icon of Christ and the Life-giving Cross: “Lord Jesus Christ! Omnipotent Master of heaven and earth! To Thee I deliver the nation and people that were entrusted to my care and purchased by Thy Precious Blood, the children whom Thou didst bestow upon me, and to Thee I surrender my soul, O Lord!”

The burial place of Queen Tamar has remained a mystery to this day. Some sources claim that her tomb is in Gelati, in a branch of burial vaults belonging to the Bagrationi dynasty, while others argue that her holy relics are preserved in a vault at the Holy Cross Monastery in Jerusalem.

St. Tamara is commemorated on the Sunday of the Myrrh-bearing Women in addition to her regular commemoration on May 1.

An American Pascha Basket

2011-04-25T06:30:00.000-07:00

Christ is Risen!

Living my life within a liturgical year is still fresh and new to me, this my 6th Orthodox Pascha. And I suppose I enjoy the feast in the hall afterwards as much as anyone. I find that after 4 years of doing this, our mission is falling into its own rhythm, with small traditions taking shape.

American convert Orthodox remain a self-conscious and self-absorbed bunch--at least we of the online variety, where we often fret about many things, become angst-ridden, and issue dire prognostications about the impossibility of American converts ever really becoming Orthodox (it's all hopeless play-acting, don't you know, etc. etc. etc.) And I'll be the first to admit, we have a ways to go. We will know we will have arrived once we stop thinking and talking about it so dang much.

With the ethnic Orthodox, the preparation of a Pascha basket was no haphazard accumulation of meat, cheese and egg dishes. Every item was prepared in a way to symbolize, in some manner, a truth of the Resurrection. Well, we American converts are not there yet. From my study of Church history, it seems apparent that Orthodoxy takes a long time to gel with a particular culture. Before discounting where we are now, I would suggest checking back in 200 years, to see if we've made any progress or not. That is not a particularly long span in Orthodox time.

The preparation of my own Pascha basket was not carefully planned-out, to be sure. And yet, I found the contents interesting--containing something of a nod to the older traditions, but incorporating foods of my native South, as well. The contents (following) may say as much as anything about the adaptability of an Orthodox ethos in this strange clime.

1. Georgian wine, specifically Khvanchkara. The Georgians claim they invented wine--and I won't argue the point with them. I am not a wine connoisseur, but simply enjoy a smooth, modestly-priced red wine that goes down well with a meal. Khavanchkara is a winner on all three counts, and each year I make new disciples. Having the Khvanchkara at our post-Pascha feast has now become a tradition at our mission. In the weeks leading up, different ones will inquire whether I have ordered the Georgian wine yet. There's a liquor store in D.C. that has the American distributorship, I suppose. I send them an email, and in a few days time, a case of this wonderful stuff arrives at my door.

2. Tsoureki. This is Greek Pascha bread. The recipe, attached to an email I received from an Orthodox friend, stated that it dated back to "Byzantine times." Truth be told, I am something of a Byzantine nut. Attach the word to most anything, and I'm a buyer. If Detroit came out with a new sports car called the "Byzantine," I would somehow convince myself that I needed one. This love of Byzantine history is separate and apart from my being Orthodox--in fact, it came first. Perhaps someday I may tell of my humiliating episode with the "Byzantine" coins at the archaeological site in Syria. Maybe. But back to the bread--once the recipe mentioned the B-word, I knew I had to give it a try. The theological symbolism is not hard to figure out in this bread, with the yeast "rising again," the eggs, and each loaf consisting of 3 intertwined braids. But I also see why it is generally baked only once a year. The process takes the better part of a day, as well as taking-over the entire kitchen. The two loaves could have fed a small Byzantine city through an extended siege. To add another Orthodox element, I stirred the mixture with the hand-carved wooden spoon I picked up at a stall right outside the Bachkovo Monastery in Bulgaria. But I chose not to put the decorative dyed eggs atop the bread. My Protestant wife kept walking through--not a little skeptical of the whole thing and a bit alarmed at the usurpation of her kitchen--with barbed questions as to why I was doing this or that, and why didn't I do it this other way, etc. I figured putting the eggs atop the bread would have exceeded her level of allowable foolishness. But the proof is in the pudding, as they say, and the Greek gentleman sitting next to me at the feast said that I got the taste just right.

3. Salami and cheese. Our city has a new frou-frou grocery store determined to out-do Whole Foods at that game. The establishment is certainly impressive, but perhaps not the place for everyday shopping and everyday budgets. But I did spring for a bit of higher-grade salami. The butcher with the fake Italian accent tried to sell me on the really expensive stuff, assuring me that it would "melt in my mouth." I did not say it, but I didn't want it to melt in my mouth. I wanted to chew it up. Anyway, I settled for salami I could afford. I chose a Gouda cheese to go with, but one that was made in Granbury, Texas.

4. Natchitoches meat pies. I think every agrarian culture develops some variation of a meat pie. In this part of the South, the meat pies became identified with this old French town on the Cane River. Meat pies and hash browns are my favorite Saturday breakfast, so I always include some to break the fast after Pascha.

5. Buttermilk pie. This is a Southern staple that tastes oh so much better than it sounds. I make the pie and the crust from scratch, and it is one of the easiest pies to throw together. My buttermilk pies have come to be expected at these gatherings.

6. Red-dyed eggs. I was the logical one to supply the dyed eggs this year, as my chickens and guinea hens are now laying big-time. This turned into more trouble than I thought, as I discovered at this late date that I really do not know how to boil an egg properly. At age 56, I can't recall ever having done it before. But by the last batch, I about had it down. For the egg-cracking game, those in the know would reach for the smaller guinea eggs, whose shells are much harder than the chicken eggs.

Martyrs of the Kvabtakhevi Monastery

2011-04-10T17:34:00.000-07:00

Commemorated on April 10

In the 14th century, during the reign of King Bagrat V (1360–1394), Timur (Tamerlane) invaded Georgia seven times. His troops inflicted irreparable damage on the country, seizing centuries-old treasures and razing ancient churches and monasteries. Timur’s armies ravaged Kartli, then took the king, queen, and the entire royal court captive and sent them to Karabakh (in present-day Azerbaijan). Later Timur attempted to entice King Bagrat to renounce the Christian Faith in exchange for permission to return to the throne and for the release of the other Georgian prisoners. For some time Timur was unable to subjugate King Bagrat, but in the end, being powerless and isolated from his kinsmen, the king began to falter. He devised a sly scheme: to confess Islam before the enemy, but to remain a Christian at heart. Satisfied with King Bagrat’s decision to “convert to Islam,” Timur permitted the king to return to the throne of Kartli. At the request of King Bagrat, Timur sent twelve thousand troops with him to complete Georgia’s forcible conversion to Islam. When they were approaching the village of Khunani in southeastern Georgia, Bagrat secretly informed his son Giorgi of everything that had happened and called upon him and his army to massacre the invaders. The news of Bagrat’s betrayal and the ruin of his army infuriated Timur, and he called for immediate revenge. At their leader’s command, his followers destroyed everything in their path, set fire to cities and villages, devastated churches, and thus forced their way through to Kvabtakhevi Monastery. Monastics and laymen alike were gathered in Kvabtakhevi when the enemy came thundering in. Having forced open the gate, the attackers burst into the monastery, then plundered and seized all its treasures. They captured the young and strong, carrying them away. The old and infirm were put to the sword. As the greatest humiliation, they mocked the clergy and monastics by strapping them with sleigh bells and jumping and dancing around them. Already drunk on the blood they had shed, the barbarians posed an ultimatum to those who remained: to renounce Christ and live or to be driven into the church and burned alive. Faced with these terms, the faithful cried out: “Go ahead and burn our flesh—in the Heavenly Kingdom our souls will burn with a divine flame more radiant than the sun!” And in their exceeding humility, the martyrs requested that their martyrdom not be put on display: “We ask only that you not commit this sin before the eyes of men and angels. The Lord alone knows the sincerity of our will and comforts us in our righteous afflictions!” Having been driven like beasts into the church, the martyrs raised up a final prayer to God: “In the multitude of Thy mercy shall I go into Thy house; I shall worship toward Thy holy temple in fear of Thee. O Lord, guide me in the way of Thy righteousness; because of mine enemies, make straight my way before Thee (Ps. 5:6–7) that with a pure mind I may glorify Thee forever….” The executioners hauled in more and more wood, until the flames enveloping the church blazed as high as the heavens and the echo of crackling timber resounded through the mountains. Ensnared in a ring of fire, the blissful martyrs chanted psalms as they gave up their spirits to the Lord. The massacre at Kvabtakhevi took place in 1386. The imprints of the martyrs’ charred bodies remain on the floor of the church to this day.

Michael Scheuer on Looking Ahead to Next Year in the Middle East

2011-04-03T20:20:00.000-07:00

The current issue of the American Conservative contains an important and cogent article by Michael Scheuer, former CIA operative now Georgetown University professor and noted author, writer and lecturer on the Middle East. I first become acquainted with his scholarship while reading Imperial Hubris back in 2005. I find Scheuer to be one of the clearest-headed analysists of our predicament in that part of the world. There is little danger that American political leaders--of either faction--will pay much attention to what Sheuer has to say. But it is important that it be said as much as possible. A few selections for the article, below:

A year from now, we will find that most Arab Muslims have neither embraced nor installed what they have long regarded as an irreligious and even pagan ideology—secular democracy. They will have instead adhered even more closely to the faith that has graced, ordered, and regulated their lives for more than 1400 years, and which helped them endure the oppressive rule of Western-supported tyrants and kleptocrats.

As new Arab regimes develop, Westerners also are likely to find that their own deep sense of superiority over devout Muslims—which is especially strong among the secular left, Christian evangelicals, and neoconservatives—is unwarranted. The nearly universal assumption in the West is that Islamic governance could not possibly satisfy the aspirations of Muslims for greater freedom and increased economic opportunity—this even though Iran has a more representative political system than that of any state in the region presided over by a Western-backed dictator. No regime run by the Muslim Brotherhood would look like Canada, but it would be significantly less oppressive than those run by the al-Sauds and Mubarak. This is not to say it would be similar to or more friendly toward the West—neither will be the case—but in terms of respecting and addressing basic human concerns they will be less monstrous.

The West’s biggest surprise a year out may well lie in being forced to learn that Westernization, secularization, and modernization are not synonyms. The postwar West’s arrogance—dare I say hubris?—has long held as an article of its increasingly pagan faith that these concepts are identical, inseparable, and the proudest achievement of superior Western culture. Well, not so. Muslims make an absolute distinction among the concepts.

At day’s end, the success of the United States and its allies in concluding their war with the Islamist movement depends on an adult assessment of the Muslim world. The basis of this analysis must be a realization that modernization, Westernization, and secularization are not interchangeable terms….We must begin to recognize that while America’s neoconservative and progressive thinkers fallaciously prattle on about the Islamists being on the verge of Islamicizing the West, it is the West’s half-century campaign to impose and then maintain secularist tyrants on Muslim states that has supplied the main motivation for the growing number of Muslims who believe themselves and their faith to be at war against the West. Continued failure to make this simple and clear semantic distinction will bring the late Professor Huntington’s concept of a clash of civilizations much closer to fruition.

The Silly Season: Fearless Political Prognostications for 2012

2011-03-31T08:16:00.000-07:00

With a little over a year and a half before the next Presidential election, I thought I would have a little fun with the current crop of aspirants. Of course this time around, all the buzz will be on the right, which will be righter right than it has been in quite some time. And while no one has yet announced, the race is clearly underway. The lead pack--Newt, Haley, Sarah, Mike, the Donald, Michelle, Rick and Herman-- has already swarmed Iowa, where they are all busy burnishing-up their birther creds.

Newt keeps the hypocrisy meter spinning, and can say with Groucho Marx: "Those are my principles, and if you don't like them...well, I have others."

Haley is a GOP candidate right out of Democratic Central Casting.

Were Mike to be elected, the inauguration would have to be in Jerusalem.

And the Donald...well, as a born-again birther, he has been making the rounds, giving his testimony. I watched a clip of a recent interview he had with Bill O'Reilly. The Donald scoffed at the idea that the family would place a notice announcing little Barack's birth in the Honolulu newspaper, noting that "even the Rockefellers don't do that." Well, Donald, maybe the Rockefellers do not, and maybe your other neighbors on the Upper West Side do not, but in real world America, this practice was commonplace for many decades. The announcements were a public service, and the general practice was for the hospital to release the information to the local paper if so desired. The Donald doesn't mind being the butt of jokes when he is in on the joke, but here he appears clueless. But with 51% of GOP primary voters believing this fantasy, this may be a wise move for Iowa, where the percentage is no doubt much higher.

With these guys in the running, it has had the unintended consequence of making Michelle seem a bit saner.

None of these Dancing Demagogues could remotely win the GOP nomination, unless the Tea Party crowd totally subsumes the Establishment Republicans. What they are doing, however, is using up all the oxygen in the room and preventing any traction for the Sane and Sensible Centrists. For the life of me, I had trouble coming up with any candidates for this category--John H., I suppose; Mitch, who is probably not running anyway, and Ron P. when he is talking foreign policy.

The final category is the Establishment Electables, consisting of only Tim and Mitt. Tim would like to play with the Dancing Demagogues, but cannot yet bring himself to go the birther route. He is certainly trying to compensate, however, with his wild-eyed foreign policy proposals. But at the end of the day, he is even more boring than mild-mannered Mitt. And besides, it is Mitt's turn, a cherished GOP tradition.

So there you have it--it'll be Mitt vs. Barack. Oh yeah, and the VP nominee will be Marco Rubio, protestations to the contrary.

I am not one of these people who can take the high road and disregard it all for the foolishness it is. I am hard-wired for voting, and will do so as long as I am able. I do not think I will live long enough, however, for the GOP to ever convince me to vote their way again. But, if they were to do so, they would first have to nominate a candidate that did not insult my intelligence. So, that particular moral conundrum is at least 5 years out.

Unlikely Headlines

2011-03-27T19:55:00.000-07:00

'

National Tea Party Leaders Endorse Obama Re-election Bid

Up: The New Down

Pope Benedict Confesses to being Closet Methodist

Mike Huckabee Exposed as Secret Hamas Agent

And then there is this:

Calvinism Declared by the Church Fathers

Such a claim can be found here. The author maintains that Calvinism, as it has come to be called, is simply a nickname for historical Christianity. But, of course. Although I do not really follow Calvinism, or neo-Calvinism, I have a vague recognition that it is enjoying something of a boomlet here in recent years. Even so, this seems like a new tact.

A writer over at Orthodox Apologetics, among others, is taking such bold-faced revisionism to task. He notes (rightly) that a bit of context and sourcing would have been nice for the carefully cherry-picked quotations assembled by the Calvinist site.

Say what you will about Calvinism, but don't blame it on the Church Fathers!

New Book by Fr. Alexis Trader

2011-03-26T15:28:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to pass along news of a new book by Fr. Alexis Trader. The premise certainly sounds interesting. Fr. Alexis explains about the book on guest blogs here and here. By all means, check out what Fr. Alexis has to say.

The False Dream

2011-03-12T14:56:00.000-08:00

I have never been one to speak of the "American Dream." I was always a bit skeptical of the concept, and thought it silly to collectively define ourselves by some "dream." The phrase is often utilized by politicians on the make and other demagogues. If someone is talking about the American Dream, you can generally expect it to be accompanied by flag-waving, cheap sentimentality and appeals to questionable historicism.

As I understand it, the "Dream" is simply the belief that each generation of Americans will enjoy a richer, more prosperous life than their parents--bigger, better, more. And that is supposed to be good thing--never mind the social, cultural, moral, financial and ecological wreckage resulting from 65 years of unrestrained consumerism. And yet, I am not convinced that this was necessarily the "dream" of our forebears. We Americans have always been money-crazy, to be sure (if you have any doubts, just brush up on your de Tocqueville.) But I think earlier generations simply wanted to make a good life for themselves. And they wanted their children to have a good life as well. The idea that each succeeding generation must be more prosperous and comfortable than the one before is very much a child of the 20th-century, I think. The hard times of the Depression years and the sacrifices during the Second World War gave way to a new era, one where, buoyed by incredible technical advances, America found itself at the top of the world. Americans seemed ready and eager to make up for lost time, hence the "Dream."

My parents fell in with most everyone else during that time. My dad and mother started off with absolutely nothing, and with no resources to fall back upon. But they knew how to work hard, and my dad knew how to put things together. In 1953, they built the big house -(for that day.) In 1963, they bought the first Cadillac--which they used to go on our first vacation. But having known poverty, they were never comfortable with any type of outward show of wealth. We always kept chickens, milked cows and had a big garden. My mother spent the summers working in the garden and canning. My dad always seemed to have a bunch of hay on the ground. Growing up, I suppose my "dream" was a summer not spent in the hayfield. About 1960 or 61, pursuit of the American Dream meant that my dad bought a Yellow Jacket ski boat for my brother who was in high school at the time. This was back in the day when such boats were still wooden, and I will have to say that it was a sharp looking outfit. Very young at the time, I vaguely remember being on the lake in the boat a couple of times at best. But one of those times stands out in my memory, for on that occasion I watched as my nearly 50-year old father tried his hand at water-skiing. Of all the images I have of my dad, this is one that clearly does not fit! Pursuit of the American Dream can put you in odd places. Looking back, I can see where I bought into it at times, myself. (I will, ahem, skip over the ridiculous places it took me.)

But at its core, the Dream is rotten. And now, in some quarters, there is a growing recognition of its basic emptiness. I recently watched an interview with Suze Orman, the colorful financial advisor on television. She is not someone I normally follow, but she was hawking her new book on MSNBC's Morning Joe, which is hands-down the best news show going, and the only television I watch with regularity. Ms. Orman had some wise things to say about how the American Dream--which she labels a false dream--has been redefined since 2008. What she describes as the "new dream" is something I could live with. I highly recommend the interview, here. (Unfortunately, the first 5 minutes of this segment are devoted to the latest idiocy out of the mouth of Newt Gingrich. Scroll forward if possible.)

The Either/Or-edness of Things

2011-03-06T17:22:00.000-08:00

I recently engaged in some spirited correspondence with an old friend from back in my Church of Christ days. In that past, we shared a mutual frustration with our church, and often talked of what might be. Even after all these years, I find him every bit as discontented as he was 10, 15, 20 years before. And yet, he is still on the fence, you might say, contemplating which way to go. My friend talks of chucking church altogether and devoting his time to a homeless shelter, soup kitchen, or some other community service. He now chafes at their emphasis on "attendance" at church services, finding it not only unimportant, but actually distracting from what God really wants--"doing good."

I found the whole conversation a bit odd. I suppose our discussions were hampered by the fact that we no longer speak the same language. In Orthodoxy, we have a throw-away line that usually says something to the effect that it is not that Orthodoxy has different answers, but that it asks different questions. I believe this to be true, but it is awfully hard to explain without explicating 2,000 years of church history. And yet, I felt this was exactly the position I was in with my friend. His burning concerns have no real meaning to me any longer. Take for example his beef with "attendance." However one characterizes Orthodox services, the word "attendance" is not a factor. One attends a concert. One attends a class. One attends a lecture. In every case, the attendee is part of an audience. One participates in an Orthodox liturgy.

But this would have been hard to explain to my friend, and would have come across as just more know-it-all triumphalism of which we are sometimes guilty. And I am afraid it comes across that what in print, as well. But the differences are real and substantive. The thing that really frustrated me, however, was my friend's either/or approach to his dilemma--he could either "attend" church or he could "do good." I asked him why he could not do both. In truth, there is no either/or solution. The question is really one of yes/and. He, in turn, was disturbed by my insistence that his anti-communal, individualistic go-it-alone approach was a dead end.

My friend's attitude put me in mind of something Flannery O'Connor once wrote--"The good thing about Protestantism is that it always carries the seeds of its own reversal. It is open at both ends--on one end, to Catholicism, and on the other to unbelief." I sympathized with his frustrations on the limitations of the church he knew--the general churchiness that characterized his worship experience. And having once been there myself, I knew exactly that to which he was speaking. My response that worship did not have to be that way was met with a good bit of incredulity. He could not image anything outside the general context of his experience--Protestant/fundamentalist/evangelical. My concern was with what O'Connor noted--the open end he was tumbled out of was the one which led to unbelief.

And along the way, he was leaving himself wide open to anything and everything--from the fluffy nothingness of Philip Gulley to the latest hot-shot televangelist. He actually convinced me to read Gulley's If The Church Were Christian. He assured me that it would change my life. The book did, in fact, bring tears to my eyes: first because I could never regain the time I had wasted reading the book, and secondly because a small forest was sacrificed to publish that trash. After that, he wanted me to listen to the latest podcast by David Jeremiah. That is where I drew the line. Like I say, different languages.

The either/or dichotomy is not unique to just Protestantism. I came across the following on a Catholic blog:

Anyone who says, "We don't go to Mass, but we are really good people" have missed the Christian bus big time. They don't get it and so greatly don't get it that they are almost uneducable. Their misunderstanding is so profound that you couldn't even say to them what they haven't got because they don't know what they don't know. The astounding blind ness of such folks is that nine times out of then they then turn around and blame the people who do go to Mass for being hypocrites. Their lack of self awareness and spiritual awareness reveals the depth of their own hypocrisy for they think they are good, and never see that the essential prayer--the prayer at the heart of it all is the sinner's plea, "Lord Jesus Christ, Have Mercy on me a Sinner."

This prayer, so simple and so profound is the prayer that truly liberates. See how free and how child like you can be if you simply say this prayer? Within this prayer is the soul's freedom and the soul's joy. Within this prayer is the simple trust in God on which everything else depends. Therefore, "Being good or Going to Mass" is a totally false dichotomy.

As one of the students said, "You can't really go to Mass and mean it and be bad, and if you don't go to Mass you can't really be good."

And so, the false dichotomies play out in Catholic circles as well.

My friend's situation has been on my mind for some time now, but only recently did I read of a theory as to why these questions are so common in Western Christendom, whether Catholic or Protestant. Andrea Elizabeth has undertaken a series on Dr. Joseph Farrell's God, History and Dialectic. This is my introduction to this work, which, unfortunately, can be obtained only by e-book. Dr. Farrell examines the difference courses taken by what he calls the First Europe (the East) and Second Europe (the West.) The following is an excerpt from the Introduction, which is available online:

Why did the western half of Christendom split along so cleanly dialectical lines during the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation? Why, for example, is it not only convenient but possible to describe that split by a series of polar oppositions: Faith versus works, Scripture versus Tradition, “private conversion stay-at-home-and-watch-television religion” versus “public, sacramental, institutional” religion; predestination versus free will, Kernel versus Husk, Kerygma versus Dogma, Luther versus Zwingli, Calvin versus Arminius, Whitefield and Edwards versus the Wesleys, Henry VIII versus the Pope? It has its secular counterparts as well: Empiricism versus Rationalism, Materialism versus Idealism, Science versus Religion, Creation versus Evolution, hard versus soft disciplines, and so on. One could
cite an endless litany of similar oppositions. Indeed, theologians, philosophers, and
historians of the Second Europe have long written about this or that pair of these eitheror
polarities, but astonishingly, have either done so in isolation of an examination of the
paradigm of dialectical opposition itself, or they have accepted that paradigm as an
inevitability of Christian theology or of Judeo-Christian civilization itself. The
phenomenon of this acceptance is therefore deeply rooted, and must be accounted for.
These essays argue that the paradigm is itself a direct consequence of Augustine’s
formulation of trinitarian doctrine. But the movement from the specifically Augustinian
formulation of the Trinity to these cultural consequences is certainly not an easy one to
recount, and thus, many theologians — those most adequately equipped to undertake
the task — fail to do so, for they view the original dispute between the East and West
over that formulation as a dispute about words. The troublesome questions multiply:
Why did a Church and a culture, which believed absolutely in the complete union in
Christ of the utterly spiritual and the completely material, without separation and without
confusion, lose sight of the implications of that belief in the movements of the dialectical
deconstruction of its thought and institutions? Why did the same Church, which, heir to
the doctrine of the Trinity, ought to have believed in the “both-andness” of Absolute Unity
and Utter diversity find itself embroiled in life-and-death constitutional struggles between
the Empire and the Papacy, or more fundamentally, between endless contests between
One Pope and Many Bishops? (p.11)

Dr. Farrell would say that the either-or approach of my friend--as opposed to a "both-andness" view--is hardwired into the very makeup of western Christendom, manifesting itself in an endless progression of controversial counterpoints. I believe that to be true. The real question, though, is how does one move past that mentality? We have become accustomed to the rut we are in. Western Christendom steadily declines with the endless re-reforming of the Faith these last few hundred years. There may be no way out until we hit bottom first.

Mike Huckabee is a Buffoon

2011-03-03T07:05:00.000-08:00

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MIKE HUCKABEE IS A BUFFOON, Part One:

HUCKABEE: [O]ne thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, very different than the average American. When he gave the bust back to the Brits –

MALZBERG: Of Winston Churchill.

HUCKABEE: The bust of Winston Churchill, a great insult to the British. But then if you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather.

LARISON:

Almost everything Huckabee said in this part of the recent interview was false, but he said it because it fits into the tiresome narrative that Obama disrespects and “snubs” allies. It appears that Huckabee was also directly channeling Glenn Beck’s view on the subject. It’s hard to imagine Huckabee saying this without the two-year drumbeat of nonsensical foreign policy criticism coming from both mainstream conservative pundits and talk radio.

MIKE HUCKABEE IS A BUFFOON, Part Deux:

Fischer: You know, I was struck by the fact that when he made his tour to Indonesia, he made a point of going to an Indonesian memorial that celebrated the victory of Indonesians over British troops – again, part of that anti-colonial thing. And so I’d like you to comment on that; you seem to think that there is some validity to the fact that there may be some fundamental anti-Americanism in this president.

Huckabee: Well, that’s exactly the point that I make in the book....And I have said many times, publicly, that I do think he has a different worldview and I think it is, in part, molded out of a very different experience. Most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings and, you know, our communities were filled with Rotary Clubs, not madrassas.

LARISON:
Ah, yes, the heroic Indonesian fight against the British. Who can forget that one? There were just a couple small problems with this. As far as I can tell, Obama did not visit any memorial during his Indonesia trip, and Indonesia was formerly a Dutch colony. Not that it will matter to Huckabee, but Obama didn’t attend a madrassa when he was in Indonesia. Of course, there is that famous Punahou madrassa in Honolulu, but everyone knows about that one.

Update: Obama did visit the Indonesian national war cemetery, which is what one would expect during a state visit to another country.

I wrestled with the title of this article. The obvious wording--"Mike Huckabee is an Idiot"--seemed somewhat lacking in Christian charity, what with Great Lent upon us and all. And so, I opted for the softer, kinder Buffoon, meant of course, in the nicest John Hagee-ish sort of way.

Bacevich on Being Irrelevant

2011-02-22T18:01:00.000-08:00

If the Muslim masses demanding political freedom and economic opportunity prevail, they will do so not thanks to but despite the United States. Yet by liberating themselves, they will also liberate us. Our misbegotten crusade to determine their destiny will finally end. In that case, we will owe them a great debt.

I have come to believe that just about every word Andrew Bacevich puts to paper is worth reading. This article is no exception.

There'll Be No Butter in Hell!

2011-02-15T19:25:00.000-08:00

A favorite of mine--from Cold Comfort Farm. Flora Poste accompanies her cousin Amos Starkadder to hear him preach at the Church of the Quivering Brethren.

Met. Hilarion Speaks at Highland Park Presbyterian, Dallas TX: No One Has Ever Seen God

2011-02-15T15:25:00.000-08:00

Met. Hilarion Speaks at Highland Park Presbyterian, Dallas TX: No One Has Ever Seen God

The Impasse

2011-02-12T19:47:00.000-08:00

The following is an excerpt from The Impasse by Fr. Touma Bitar, Abbot of the Monastery of St. Silouan the Athonite in Douma, Lebanon. I recommend the entire article posted here, on Notes on Arab Orthodoxy (h/t to Samn!) If we believe Fr. Touma to be correct, then the question for us becomes--what do we do with this?

Man’s egoism and self-love preceded his love of money. Love of money gradually progressed into a system of consumption, and the system of consumption made man a prisoner of the logic of profit. The logic of profit transformed the earth’s resources into financial calculations and financial calculations loosened the reins of the passions of soul and body. The passions of soul and body became an uncontrollable harlot and in the absence of internal restraints within people’s souls, the ladder of values and traditional moral restraints collapsed and value and morals came to be centered on purported individual freedom and man’s worship of himself. Then individual freedom and self-worship caused people’s aspirations to become greater than his environment’s capacity to pump vital capital into them and so heaven and earth could no longer match people’s wild cravings. Their storehouses started to be depleted and their balance was thrown off. The environment became ill on account of the illness of man’s heart and the unleashing of his passions beyond any limit.

And now what remains? Souls have become addicted to consumption. Man has become an instrument of consumption! Today man’s worldly identity is in what he consumes! Wills have become feeble and souls have become weak! Man has tasted this number of varieties of selfish freedom and self-worship. He no longer desires or is capable of repentance – that is, of a change of mentality and behavior. For him repentance is identical to death. For this reason he starts to live off of his fantasies, his dreams, his self-esteem, his accomplishments, and his cravings until death. He sees that he is approaching an unstable precipice and he is unable to stop before it, and he doesn’t care! He has become addicted to himself and death has become less painful than resisting his addiction. In letting loose his passions, his will to live starts to die. Death becomes life for him, and he has no other life!

Americanism as Religion, Plainly Stated

2011-02-09T18:54:00.000-08:00

I really should stop reading the local newspaper as it is not good for my blood pressure. I live near the most right-wing city in the nation. (If you have other contenders, let me know and we will compare statistics.) Not surprisingly, we are also the tightest notch on the Bible Belt. This makes for some interesting submissions to the "Letters to the Editor" section on the opinion page. (When I can stand it no longer, I occasionally write to the paper myself. This amuses my friends and probably drives away potential clients.) Today's paper contains a gem of letter, where the writer addresses the apocalypse he believes would surely ensue were the health care plan to take effect. Along the way, he expounds upon compassion as he sees it, and in so doing, succinctly sums-up the Americanist religion. He writes:

Let's set the facts straight regarding Jesus' compassion while on this earth. I can't recall where Jesus said that feeding the 5,000 hungry followers was the responsibility of government, nor did He see the blind, deaf, dumb and lame as the responsibility of the taxpayers. He healed them so they could go to work and provide for themselves.

Wow. So Jesus Christ healed so that people could work hard and be self-sufficient? Wonder how the Apostles and the Church Fathers missed that insight. The sad thing is that this letter is typical of what one often hears and reads around here.

John 6:60+

2011-02-07T19:29:00.000-08:00

The Teetotaler engages in a bit of exegesis on John 6:60-63, 66. He quotes from the MSGV (More Spiritual than God Version.) A sampling, below:

John 6:60-63, 66 Therefore, many of His disciples, when they heard this, said “This is a hard saying; who can uncerstand it? When Jesus knew in Himself that His disciples complained about this, He said to them, “Does this offend you?” What then if you should see the Son of Man ascend where He was before? Anyway, I was just jerkin’ around with you with that “eat my body, drink my blood” stuff. It’s all figurative. Y’all know, don’t ya, that Christianity will be all about angels’n'feelin’ good about yourself? … From that time, many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.

Read the full post, here. It is a good one.

Conspiratorialists of the World, Unite!

2011-02-04T14:44:00.000-08:00

One disturbing thing I noticed when I first began to travel in Turkey was their penchant for believing the most bizarre conspiracy theories afloat. My acquaintances over there--largely intelligent, well-informed and college-educated--would nevertheless fall for any crackpot theory making the rounds. Alternative reality scenarios for 9/11 were believed almost unquestioningly. One was convinced that the Israelis were building an airbase in Kurdistan. The Armenian Genocide had become the Turkish Genocide. And I was surprised to learn that the New World was actually discovered by...the Turks. At the time, I would shake my head about this sort of thing. Well, no longer--not because they were right, but because we are just as bad. Exhibit A has to be this, the latest lesson from Glenn Beck, in which he charts the course of the coming Islamic Caliphate. That there are some Muslim extremists who dream of a restored "Caliphate" is a fact. Beck's speculations, however, are pure fantasy, perfectly attuned to a fearful audience who know little of people different from themselves.

The Joke is on Me

2011-02-04T06:57:00.000-08:00

The other day my son and I were talking about books. He keeps about a dozen books going at the same time. One is T. E. Lawrence's original manuscript, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Yesterday, I had to be in Shreveport for the day, with several hours to kill. After pancakes at George's Grill, I found a place with a few shelves of used books for sale. I was impressed, as they had a selection of books that real readers read, not the usual fare one finds in these places. One that caught my interest was a nice hardbound, modestly-priced Revolt in the Desert, the abridged (and sanitized) version of Lawrence's The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. I already have both versions, but thought my son would like it. The previous owner, obviously a great admirer of Lawrence, had scribbled notes throughout--even outlining major points from the book. A folded article on Lawrence was stuck between the pages. I like that sort of thing. But what really caught my interest was the inscription on the frontispiece: To my good and humble friend and protege, __. ___. Muellenkamp. T. E. Lawrence. I have never been one to collect books just because they were signed by the author. (We do have a signed To Kill a Mockingbird, no mean feat considering the reclusive nature of Harper Lee. A 2005 birthday present from our son to his mother, she claims it will be what she grabs as she runs out the door if the house catches fire.) I had to realize, however, that this was a pretty incredible deal for the price. And so I walked out with it, as well as a history, The Kingdom of Armenia. And yet, in the back of my mind, something was gnawing at me. I looked at the book again, and there it was. This particular volume was published in 2004. T. E. Lawrence died in 1935. I laughed out loud at myself. I had not exactly succumbed to the spirit of greed--for I did not make the purchase based on the monetary appreciation an overlooked signed edition would have--but I would have to admit that the spirit of acquisitiveness was undoubtedly at work. We do things for funny reasons sometimes. I am glad I have the book, though, for it is a Muellenkamp. I am curious to know more of this strange man and the strange world in which he lived that would cause him to forge a signature 70 years after the author's death.

Taybeh's Plea vs. the Likes of Mike Huckabee

2011-01-31T17:51:00.000-08:00

We've trimmed our magazine subscriptions in recent years. The wife still gets Good Housekeeping and Southern Living (which I also read,) and I am hanging on to the Oxford American, Southern Cultures and Road to Emmaus. The last, billed as a "Journal of Orthodox Faith and Cultures," I consider to be essential reading for all Orthodox Americans. Published quarterly, each issue usually highlights Orthodoxy within a specific region, including some that would not naturally come to mind. I highly recommend the journal.

The current issue focuses on Jerusalem, St. Sophronius, and the village of Taybeh (biblical Ephraim,) the last all-Christian village in Palestine. The mayor is David Khoury, but the interview is with his wife, Dr. Maria C. Khoury, noted Greek-American educator, author, lecturer and advocate for Palestinian Christians. After the Oslo Agreement of 1993, the Khourys returned from the U.S. and founded Palestine's only micro-brewery. Against incredible obstacles, the business survives today.

Before 1948, Christians comprised anywhere from 13% to 25% of Palestine's population (50% in Jerusalem itself.). Now the Christian population is less than 2% in Gaza and the West Bank, and less than 2% in Israel itself. The Palestinian Christian population has been forced to leave the region in even greater percentages than their Muslim neighbors. Their plight is largely overlooked, even by their American Orthodox brethren, of whom many seem as ignorant and ill-informed as the average American. Dr. Khoury recounts lectures to American Greek Orthodox audiences where they would express surprise to learn that all Palestinians were not terrorists, or that there were "good" Palestinians.

The Christians there endure the same indignities as their Muslim neighbors, with 80% affected daily by the 26-ft. high, 280 mile concrete wall which slices through their world. What was once a 10 minute trip into Ramallah to their children's school for the Khourys became a harrowing 2-hour journey each way, through innumerable Israeli checkpoints, with no guarantee of success. Sometimes, they were turned back in sight of the school. Jerusalem is only 25 minutes away, but if they want to send a shipment of Taybeh Beer to the city, they first have to drive to the commercial checkpoint which is 3 hours away. There, the beer is handed off to an Israeli driver and an Israeli truck for the 3 hour drive back to Jerusalem. A simple delivery takes 2 drivers, 2 trucks and all day. Both David and Maria Khoury hold American passports, but they are not able to fly out of Tel Aviv to visit relatives in the U.S. They were told that Israelis do not like to see Palestinians in the airport. Instead, they must spend 2 days, traveling to the King Hussein bridge into Jordan, where they have to fly out of Amman (I have gone through this checkpoint, recounted here.)

The Israelis have undertaken a systematic destruction of the olive groves in the region, as this had provided employment for Palestinians. The Khourys had 12 trees bulldozed by the Israelis. These olive trees had been in the family for many generations and were between 500 and 700 years old. Dr. Khoury and her husband were finally able to cross the border into Egypt and visit St. Catherine's Monastery--after 25 years of making application. Travel is severely limited everywhere, and the Palestinians are not permitted to drive on the roads that the Israelis maintain. Teybah has no water on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays, but the 3 Israeli settlements which ring the village have water 24/7.

They cannot visit the Church of the Holy Sepulcher without a permit into Jerusalem (arbitrary and difficult to obtain) and then a specific permit for the church itself (equally difficult.) Christian pilgrims from the U.S. are discouraged from visiting Bethlehem. If they insist, they will not be allowed to shop in the local Christian stores, but whisked back to the malls in Jerusalem. Dr. Khoury states that in the early 1990s, perhaps 1 woman in 10 in Ramallah would be dressed in the Islamic manner. Now, not 1 in 10 is not. The Christians now find themselves caught between the vice of fanatical Muslims on the one side and the equally fanatical Israeli zealots on the other. I had never before read of the horrific martyrdom of the Archimandrite Philoumenos by Zionists in 1979; nor had I read of the specific targeting of Christian churches in southern Lebanon in the latest war; nor the defecating on their altars as the Israeli troops moved in; nor of the harassment of the monks and nuns who try to maintain the holy sites.

Dr. Khoury on Christian Zionism:

Zionism, a political movement founded by Theodore Herzl in the the 19th century to lobby for a secular homeland for the Jews, took on a Christian religious context when 20th-century evangelical Christians , mostly in America, began linking Zionism to their interpretation of Old Testament passages. Now there are many American evangelical Christians, whom we call Zionist Christians, who believe that modern Israel with the guns, the gunships, the bulldozers, the bombers, is the New Israel of our gospels. According to their thinking, once Israel has a 100% Jewish homeland and gains complete control, then Christ will return. They are trying to hasten the Second Coming.

We Orthodox Christians don't hold this view. Our New Testament Israel is a spiritual homeland because the Messiah came and we have been baptized into Christ. Jesus Christ became man through that Hebrew ethnicity, and when we sing and chant in our services about Israel, we Christians, (the Church) are the New Israel. The New Israel is not the physical Israel with its guns. We believe that the Lord has only told us to be alert, to watch, to be ready, but there is nothing we have to do to bring about Judgment Day. That will come in His own time. Yet this grave misinterpretation drives many evangelical Christians to blindly support Israeli policy.

Case in point, there is this:

Potential 2012 U.S. presidential candidate Mike Huckabee told Jewish settlers Monday that attempts to prevent them from building in east Jerusalem are as outrageous as housing discrimination in the United States.

"I cannot imagine, as an American, being told I could not live in certain places in America because I was Christian, or because I was white, or because I spoke English," he said.

Huckabee dismissed the notion that Jewish settlements on land the Palestinians want for a future state are obstacles to peace. Instead, he backed the settlers' view that they have the right to build anywhere in "the place that God gave them."

The Jerusalem Reclamation Project, a group that promotes settlements in an attempt to bolster a Jewish presence in mostly Arab areas, hosted Huckabee and actor Jon Voight on the first day of their three-day visit.

Huckabee visited the Shepherd Hotel, the former residence of the mufti of Jerusalem that was destroyed in early January to make way for Jewish homes. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had rebuked Israel for knocking down the hotel - a position Huckabee brushed off.

"I think we ought to be more concerned about Iran building bombs than Israelis building bedrooms," Huckabee said.

I am an unapologetic voter. This is something of a family thing on my dad's side--many generations of what I consider to be principled voting. I am not ideologically driven. We've seen where that's gotten us in the early years of this century. In national elections, I always vote foreign policy. Domestically, we are such an ungovernable muddle, that I do not think it really makes much difference. And the same argument can be made with foreign policy as well. What differences there are are just matters of degree. But these can be crucial. Mr. Huckabee's smug worldview is normative for his party--and that frightens me.

Israel's Palestinian policies have been made possible by the uncritical and unquestioning support that Christian Zionists and the Israeli lobby force on Congress. We are equally culpable in this tragedy. No amount of letter-writing to our congressional representatives will make much difference. The die is cast. I believe our foreign policy misadventuring will one day bring us low. Only then, perhaps, will our folly become apparrent and change occur.

What we can and must do is pray for Christians in Palestine--and their oppressors, the fanatics of both the Muslim and Jewish persuasion.

We can also support journals such as Road to Emmaus, and make sure the story of our Palestinian brethren gets wide circulation. The ignorance and/or indifference of the American Orthodox on this issue is shameful.

Also, if you have some spare change, you might consider http://www.saintgeorgetaybeh.org/.

There are 30 Orthodox Christian families there who have had their homes appropriated by the Israelis. Homes are being built so that they can remain in Taybeh, and perpetuate an almost 2,000-year Christian witness.

Tulips Istanbulli

2011-01-31T17:36:00.000-08:00

My friend Hakan posted this close-up of tulips on his fb page. The Theodosian walls of old Constantinople make for a nice backdrop.

St. Ephrem the Syrian

2011-01-28T14:13:00.000-08:00

St. Ephrem the Syrian is commemorated today. In June 0f 2006, I visited the ancient Meryamana Kilisesi--the Church of the Virgin Mary, one of the very oldest churches in the world (my full account, here.) A few Suriani families hold on here in a walled compound in the midst of Kurdish Diyarbakir. This is the only icon hanging in the church--Mar Efram. I have never before seen an icon of St. Ephrem in this style.

Day and Night in the Middle East

2011-01-27T17:54:00.000-08:00

JORDAN, here:

For nearly 50 years, Wadi el Kharrar served as a highly militarized border zone — littered with land mines — between the Israeli–occupied Palestinian West Bank and Jordan. Only after Israel and the kingdom entered into a peace treaty in 1994 did the Jordanian authorities de–militarize, de–mine and open up the area to experts. Then in 1997, Dr. Waheeb’s team of archaeologists conducted a survey of the site. Recognizing the religious importance of the valley, the Hashemite royal family soon launched an ambitious plan to develop it as a major destination for pilgrims. Unlike other religious sites, however, they decided to preserve the Wadi el Kharrar as a naturalist park rimmed with modern churches and pilgrimage facilities. The plans to restore the baptismal site belong to the royals’ larger goals of preserving Jordan’s rich religious patrimony and making it a destination of choice for pilgrims to the Holy Land.

The Baptism Site Commission, a nonprofit organization headed by Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad, currently manages the area. That a member of the Hashemite family is responsible for the Christian holy site should come as no surprise. Since the kingdom’s establishment in the 20th century, the Hashemites have enforced a strict policy of religious tolerance. Jordan’s constitution guarantees the freedom of religion, providing for the rights of Christians in particular to build churches and participate in civic life, including the governance of the nation.

SAUDI ARABIA, here:

We Saudis are not particularly eager to look for pre-Islamic artifacts. There's a prevailing opinion among the conservatives that items not Islamic belong in the ground because displaying them risks a tacit endorsement of the culture or religion the artifacts represent.

We have a habit sealing off ancient sites….We have been known to neglect or destroy them. Saudis don't want to run the risk of turning a site into a place of idolatry.

It's right that churches are not permitted in the Land of the Two Holy Mosques. But what's less certain is whether crucifixes, if found, should be destroyed or hidden. More precisely is the issue of whether Christian or Jewish artifacts can be displayed in the proper context in a Saudi museum as an acknowledgment of a people who called pre-Islamic Arabia their home.

My guess is that most Saudis will say no. Many Saudis believe there is no place in the Kingdom for such relics.

The Associated Press the other day reported that Sheikh Mohammed Al Nujaimi said non-Muslim artifacts "should be left in the ground." He said that Muslims would not tolerate the display of non-Muslim religious symbols. "How can crosses be displayed when Islam doesn't recognize that Christ was crucified?" he said. "If we display them, it's as if we recognize the crucifixion."