Christ is Risen!

I probably should have taken the time to put this post up on Monday. But Pascha takes a lot out of a person. I was tired, and after having taken a lot of time off during Holy Week I was anxious to get some work done.

Of course, I wouldn't have it any other way. I think church is supposed to take a lot out of you. It is supposed to be demanding, not convenient. I remember when I was a pastor and we made Easter morning into a huge production. There were slides, song specials, and scripture readings, as well as an unusually short sermon. Liturgically we tried to cram Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday into one action-packed 90 minute service. The result was something shallow. Easy, but shallow. It felt very much like the performance it was.

Last Friday morning Stephanie took Kyla to decorate the bier where they would lay an icon of Christ for the service of Divine Lamentations. I stayed home to make preparations to break the fast. In other words, I was cooking what we would eat on Sunday morning.



That night, I took Kyla to the Divine Lamentations service where she stood with some of the teenagers singing around the body of Jesus. She probably could have picked up the tune, but I think she was struck with a bit of shyness.



One of the highlights of the night was when all the young girls were able to march around the church throwing rose petals. (I'll post pictures as soon as I get them).

Saturday morning we got up early to attend Holy Saturday services, where we commemorate Christ's entrance into Hell to release its captives. Several catechumens were also chrismated at this service. Then I tried to get the kids down for a nap (pretty much unsuccessfully) while Stephanie returned to the church to decorate it for that night. That evening, I had to cook some more food while Stephanie started getting the kids ready.

We arrived at church at 10:00. I apologize for the poor quality of these next pictures. I was trying not to use the flash, so it's a little blurred, but I wanted to get an image of the arch that Stephanie helped put together.


At about 11:00 or so the lights were dimmed as the voice of the priest rose above the hushed sounds of the congregation, "Come ye, take light from the Light that is never overtaken by night; come glorify Christ, risen from the dead." (That quote may not be exactly right since it's from memory.) Then we began to light our candles from the flame the priests and deacons were holding. After processing around the church, the priest announced that Christ is risen, while we responded, "Oh Christ is risen from the dead! Oh Christ is risen from the dead! Trampling down death by death and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!" This continues after we enter the church, with the priests marching down the aisles shouting in various languages, "Christ is Risen!" We shouted back, "He is risen indeed!"

These moments in particular were hard for George, who kept falling asleep but then would wake up every time a priest began censing his way down the church (but we finally got him to sleep).



That service lasted about three hours. So by 2:00 in the morning we were all very tired, but ready to continue our celebrations together by feasting.


The good news is that we were able to sleep in the next morning... Except we have kids. Scratch that. George was up by 7:30 and Kyla was up by 8:30.


After a great big breakfast (Pascha bread makes great French toast), we headed to a church-league softball game and then back to church for Agape Vespers. I read the Gospel in German. Others read in Russian, Greek, Japanese, Arabic, French, and Thai. This traditions expresses the universality of the message of the resurrection.

Being Southern and Orthodox we finished our Pascha celebrations with barbecue. The kids had an Easter egg hunt.

Some of the men sat outside enjoying their cigars.


Some of the women were dancing.


We got the kids to bed by 7:00 that night. They were out in a matter of minutes. Stephanie and I also tucked in early.

Of course, the celebrations don't really stop. This week is Bright Week. We will continue to sing Christ is risen until Pentecost, or is it Ascension? In any case, the celebrations will last for weeks, which is only fitting, since the preparations also lasted for weeks. This is the kind of toll church is supposed to exert on our bodies. It is how the church disciplines us, readies us for the Kingdom of Heaven. I have a black belt in Jujutsu. One of the techniques my sensei would use was very much like what the church does. Especially on cold mornings, he would have us do the same drill a hundred times until we were panting and out of breath. Then he would have us spar, but amazingly being so exhausted made sparring seem more natural. The church does something similar. It trains us by asking a lot of us. But the next time (the next Pascha) what we are asked to do doesn't seem quite so hard. The church also lets up on us a little bit. It asks us to sacrifice, but then it rewards our sacrifice with celebration. The fact that we fast before we feast is significant, because in that discipline the material and the spiritual merge together. Our desire for the resurrection is in some ways indistinguishable from our desire to eat together and to celebrate. Right now we are in a kind of special time (what the Greeks would call kairos). When Pentecost comes and we begin to enter normal time (chronos), putting an end to our celebration, but not really ending it, because we know that even as we leave this Pascha behind us, we are already getting ready for the next one to come again.

Lenten Reflection 10: Pascha Bread

It's Holy Friday. George is taking a nap. Kyla and Stephanie have gone to decorate the bier (where the icon of Christ will be laid after he is taken down from the cross). I am home to get ready for tomorrow night. I am making Pascha Bread. I've tried this before with limited success. This is a new recipe, but they are all variations on a theme: lots of butter, sugar, and about a dozen eggs. It's like a large, baked donut.

The bread is rising right now. I am reflecting in the meantime on baking as worship. This is something I struggle with. Baking can be more of a frustrating experience for me. But at times I take joy in preparing food that my family loves to eat. I will make my famous shortbread cookies later, to thunderous applause. OK, it's actually Betty Crocker's recipe, but the point is that there is a kind of sacrifice that goes into the art of cooking, a way you put your soul into every knead.

Orthodox women understand this. For the family matriarchs -- the real power-holders in the church -- cooking is something mystical, maybe magical. I get that sense when I read my Orthodox recipe book, with a list of contributions from families from a church in Massachusetts. It's like cooking something they just know how to do. Asking them to explain the steps to the process reads like asking a spider to explain how she weaves a web. So the directions are always difficult to follow.

But I have learned a couple of things so far. First, I have learned that I need a bigger bowl. My original plan was to double the recipe and save some dough to use later. But I would need a bathtub for that. It's hard to cram 15 cups of sifted flour, a dozen eggs, three cups of butter, and a cup of sugar into the biggest bowl I have. The second lesson I had learned before, but in this case I had forgotten. When preparing traditional Orthodox meals, I need to cut the recipe in half. Not only would the ingredients fit better into my bowl, but I would be able to eat it. Looking at the large ball of dough sitting on my counter top (that I'm praying rises properly), I have no idea how we are going to eat it all.

Actually, we will eat it all, if it turns out OK. We will eat the baked donut, the cookies, eggs, and chocolates, and we will love every minute of it...tomorrow (Sunday, if you want to get technical).

Lenten Reflection 9: Holy Unction

The most beautiful part of last night's Holy Unction service actually had very little to do with the service itself. For the curious, Holy Unction is a sacrament in the Orthodox Church. The faithful receive the sign of the cross made in oil on their foreheads, cheeks, chins, and palms. Its purpose is to strengthen their souls and bodies for the remaining days of Holy Week. I like to think about Holy Unction as a reaffirmation of the Chrismation I received when I joined the Orthodox Church (though the two sacraments are not the same thing). While this probably doesn't count as an official theological explanation, I look at Holy Unction as a renewal of the commitment I made at Baptism.

After a very tiring day watching the children, I gathered the kids and went to church. George had been clingy. Kyla had been ornery (hooking George's ankle with a coat hanger while he tried to get away...It's already begun!). Stephanie was running late from work and would meet us there.

At some point near the beginning of the service I noticed that the priests and deacons, standing around the table where the holy oil was, seemed to be making some rather awkward pauses as they were reading. I also observed that a few people were starting to cough. Then the coughing began to spread, working its way back toward my row.

The service stopped momentarily as Fr. Steven inexplicably walked toward the back of the church (I didn't see where he went). A moment later he walked toward the front of the church, stopping in the middle. I forget his exact words, but they went something like this, "Forgive the interruption brethren, but someone has sprayed pepper spray in the church. That is why some of you are having difficulty. Whoever has the pepper spray needs to take it out now!."

Mothers began to rush their children out of the church. I debated about what to do for a minute, until I felt myself begin to cough. So I took my kids to the narthex and waited with the moms by the front doors. In hindsight I think I was just having a psychosomatic response. The spray probably never got to my row. Kyla, who has some asthma-like symptoms, didn't start to cough until I told her, "Somebody sprayed something that makes people cough in the church."

Once I was confident that the air had sufficiently cleared, I retook my seat with my daughter and son. Stephanie still had not arrived.

A few more minutes into the service, I noticed more commotion near the front of the church. The clergy had stopped reading. Fr. Steven stepped forward and faced the congregation. "Pardon the interruption again, brothers and sisters, but before we continue I need to ask your forgiveness. I allowed myself to become irritated a moment ago. Forgive me." His confession was followed by a full prostration before the entire congregation. Those who knew what to say (I was somewhat flabbergasted) seemed to utter something like, "We forgive you Holy Father." It might have been "I forgive you..." or maybe "God forgives you..." In any case, forgiveness was exchanged.

Personally, I thought he hadn't done anything wrong. When he first warned us of the pepper spray, I thought, "Father is miffed!" But I didn't think it was wrong for him to be upset. Miraculously, the clergy, who seemed to be closest to where the spray was released, continued to lead us in the liturgy. I'm sure they had difficulty too. I figured his irritation was justified!

I supposed that a child had gotten into his mother's pepper spray. A lot of women I know carry pepper spray on a key chain. Stephanie used to have some as well. So I pictured Bart Simpson (with horns beneath his hair) somewhere up in the front row, mischievously turning off the safety, pointing the spray at the floor, and pushing the button to see what would happen. I thought to myself, "Someone is going to get it when they get home!"

But the priest sets the tone for the church. And after he asked for our forgiveness, I felt the tone begin to change. Other scenarios began to play themselves out in my mind. I pictured one of our frazzled Hausfrau's juggling her children, in a hurry, somehow sitting on her key chain and accidentally turning off or breaking the plastic safety and releasing the pepper spray at the same time. I pictured a rather innocent child, with no idea what she was doing, playing with buttons (like my son George does whenever he goes after my wireless router).

I also pictured Bart Simpson, but he began to look much less devilish and much more curious or foolish.

I also imagined the embarrassment of his parents. It occurred to me how I would feel if my daughter did that. By the way, I love my daughter very much. And she would do that (Stephanie constantly reminds me of how much alike we are)! I also thought of how bad she would feel about it after she received a tongue-lashing from me.

I tend not to think of our priests as supermen. I am very aware of how human they are. Maybe it's because I was in ministry for a time. I was a youth pastor for only about three years, so I am hardly an expert. But I have something of a sense of their many, many obligations and commitments, the balancing acts that I have no desire ever repeat (God-willing, I will never be called into the priesthood!). I can barely juggle my two kids!

Nevertheless, the priests are examples. This is what we ask them to be! Last night, before Father's confession, I had been thinking of all the juicy gossip that would take place on the front porch of the church. After his confession, I was much more inclined to be sympathetic. I'll probably end up finding out what happened at some point. The difference is that now I am less likely to do it in a way that follows my own natural inclinations to be gossipy and judgmental towards whom is sure to be my rather embarrassed sister or brother.

Lenten Reflection 8: Palm Sunday

Yesterday marked a passage between times, from the end of Great Lent to the beginning of Holy Week (we don't calculate the days of Holy Week as part of Great Lent). Now the "askesis" of the faithful becomes a little more intense. Our family will try to cut back further from "worldly distractions," attend more services this week, and prepare ourselves for the Resurrection.

Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday, for me a day of celebration tinged with a little sorrow. The church reenacts the entry of Christ into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey's foal. On the Saturday before, Kyla and I took time to decorate her candle for the procession (Stephanie had to work). The next day, after Eucharist, each member of our family took palm branches from the front of the church. Even George got in on the action. He waved the palm around a bit, turned it over, and stuck the stem in his mouth.


After the blessing, the congregation exited the church and formed two lines outside. The acolytes and deacons led a process, while those outside cried (or were supposed to cry) "Hosanna!" as it passed by.


Behind the deacons were the children of the church (who always play a big part in these processions). They were followed by Fr. Steven carrying an icon of the Triumphal Entry of Christ into Jerusalem.


I have to admit, I am always a little befuddled by the proclamation of this event as the "triumphal entry." That word triumph is a kind of mask. Jesus was riding into Jerusalem as a king, leading an "insurrection" that was sure to draw the attention of the Romans. He clearly knew he was riding to his demise, even if the disciples had no idea. Jesus was triumphantly riding to his defeat.

Let me preface what I am about to say by making the following observation: I have never seen any church treat the death of the Incarnate God with as much sorrow as the Orthodox Church. Unlike some well-intentioned evangelical churches I know, we don't cram Good Friday and Holy Saturday into one action-packed Easter Sunday morning. In the coming days we will mourn the death of Christ like we will mourn one of our own. We will sing around his body. The youth of the church will stay up all night to read the Psalter in the presence of his corpse. But nowhere in our theology do we see the "defeat" of Christ on the cross as a failure. It is his triumph, his glorification. Sorrow-joy-sorrow-joy! These are the emotions that hold themselves in an uncomfortable tension in my body until Pascha night/morning. The triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem is also a victorious funeral march, a march to his "glorious" and "life-giving death."

Lenten Reflection 7: Kyla's Confession

The other day my daughter, Kyla, was in the mall with me. We had gone there so she could by a doll for her birthday. It was the day Fr. Steven returned my call about scheduling a confession. After I got of the phone with Father, Kyla began to ask me about what confession was. I explained to her that confession is something we do to get ready for Pascha. We tell Jesus our sins -- the bad things we do -- and we ask him to help us not do them. At that point Kyla declared that she wanted to do confession.

I should add that one of Kyla's little friends has also had her first confession. Nadia is her name. Her older brother, Aiden, made his first confession when a lot of children do (when he turned seven). So I am sure that Kyla would not have been as gung ho had her friend not already done this. On the other hand, she has also genuinely embraced a lot of the festivities surrounding Lent. She might have wanted to do this even if Nadia hadn't already gone before her.

So when I spoke to Fr. Steven at my confession I asked him about Kyla. He explained to me that when small children Kyla's age make confession he keeps it very simple. He asks them if they understand what confession is. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. Then he has them face the iconostasis and tell Jesus what they are sorry for. Sometimes the child goes through a litany of sins. Other times they freeze up and don't know what to say.

Before the Presanctified liturgy I ran into Fr. Steven and asked him if we had time for Kyla to make her confession. He was obviously in a hurry, but he said that we probably had enough time. So he went behind the iconostasis to get his stole (a purple band he wears over his shoulders) while Kyla went up to the front of the church.




I have to admit, it was a little tempting for me to want to overhear what Kyla was saying, but dad did a good job. I kept my nose out of it. The above picture was taken from the back of the church, out of earshot, using the digital zoom (which is why it looks so rotten). Here's one of Kyla being covered with the priest's stole.



I am very pleased and proud of Kyla. I did not prod her into this at all. I may have even tried to dissuade her a little bit. I just wanted her to be sure that she knew what she was doing, as best she could. I also didn't want confession to become like a punishment, something she had to do. But I have to say, Kyla seemed to fully embrace the experience. When it was over, Fr. Steven hugged Kyla and went back behind the iconostasis, while Kyla turned and walked toward me with a great big grin on her face!

Lenten Reflection 6: Confession

Contrary to popular misconception, confession is not a burden Orthodox Christians must endure. Personally, I find it a joy. Being Lent, it is proper to make a confession of my sins before Pascha. Naturally, most of what I confessed is between me and my priest. But I will attempt briefly to convey something of the experience.

In the first place, get images of confessional booths out of your mind. There is no "bless me Father for I have sinned." Instead, I approach the icon of Christ at the front of the church. The priest stands behind me. Any power the priest has to forgive our sins is given to him by Christ. He is there not to accuse or to judge me, but to support me. He "has my back."

Then I begin reading a short confession. The point of this is not to leave no sin unturned, to confess everything just in case I forget something. The point is to be honest with myself and with Christ. One of the prayers prayed during vespers asks God to keep us "from making excuses in sin." This is the worst of all human habits isn't it? To excuse ourselves of our sinfulness. We justify ourselves.

After this the priest asks me if I have any other sins I would like to confess. We are taught to be so private, especially in our culture. Talking about our shortcomings with another person can be excruciating. But every time I have found that I feel relieved, but not because I have unburdened myself of my guilt. The point of confession is to receive some spiritual direction. I am relieved because after making this confession I know how to proceed. I get wonderful advice from Fr. Steven, a man who has read the church fathers not in the same way I do, for theological tidbits to work into a system. Instead, he draws from a storehouse of practical, spiritual wisdom that he brings to bear on my situation.

That's all there is to it. I kneel before the icon of Christ. Fr. Steven places his stole over me as a sign of the forgiveness of Christ, and I receive forgiveness am admitted to the sacraments of the Church.

Once a Protestant friend said that I shouldn't confess my sins to a priest. I just needed to confess them to Jesus, privately. Of course, private confession is part of my discipline. And even confession with a priest is still confession before Christ. It just happens to be within earshot of a person who can help me. That's what I find most helpful about "public" confession. I am not as free to make excuses for my shortcomings when I know that I need to tell them to somebody else. The desert fathers taught that to expose a sin was to rob it of its power. It is in secret, even when they are hidden from ourselves, that our sins can control us. So, rather than make a blanket "just-in-case" confession to Christ, something like "Dear Jesus, forgive me just in case I did anything wrong," I prefer to confront my many, many sins, to expose them, and offer them as sacrifices to One who has the power to save me from them.

Lenten Reflection 5: "Hail O' Sacred Heifer..."

The full line from the title of this post comes from the Friday akathist hymns to the Mother of God. "Hail O' sacred heifer who bore the spotless calf," along with many other "Hails," most of which I cannot remember. When you take the kids to church, tending to them becomes an act of worship in itself. I think there might have also been something about an "seashell" and a pearl.

In that spirit, I want to reflect a bit on the Mother of God. This isn't going to be so much a theological reflection for me, which I can do, but I'd prefer it be more devotional. Perhaps an alternate title for this post would be "What Mary Means to Me."

The Orthodox Church does not consider Mary to have been one out of a pool of randomly selected virgins. "At the fullness of time" Mary was born, miraculously though not immaculately. Subject to original sin,* but not guilty of personal sin, she is not the passive victim of (the male) God's omnipotent will. The annunciation does not read for us, as I once heard a Unitarian student suggest, like a rape narrative. Mary actively receives the Word, giving flesh to God. The heavens themselves hinge upon her answer. In a manner of speaking the kenosis of God begins prior to the Incarnation itself, when the Most High waits to hear the answer of a 14 year old girl.

Accordingly, Mary is for me a reminder of what humanity can be, though not in any kind of positivistic way. Narratives of a steadily progressing human evolution are hardly tenable today. Rather, if grace and nature can interact in such a way as to produce her, then there may be hope for us yet. That should mean a lot coming from someone who's usually so cynical.

Therefore, she is also my personal ideal. When I say that, I hear the voice of Feuerbach rise from the grave to accuse me of projecting ideal, virginal femininity onto the heavens. I suppose anything is possible, but I cannot rightly say that I feel drawn toward Mary as a sexual object in accordance with his theory (perish the thought!). When I think about Mary's ever-virginity, I don't think about a physical purity proper to the Mother of God. That kind of thinking looks at sex as somehow inherently dirty or polluting, which seems not to accord with Scripture or the best of the tradition. I see her ever-virginity, as St. Paul suggested, as an expression of her total commitment to God, which for her is identical to her commitment to her Son. During his earthly ministry she has some understanding that he is divine, though she has to grow into this knowledge. Her virginity is thus less an expression of her physical purity as it is her total devotion to God. She thinks about "how to please the Lord," instead of "how to please her husband." It is in this sense that she is my personal ideal. I have to admit that I don't think much about imitating Christ. For a number of reasons (most of them Feuerbachian), WWJD just doesn't work for me. But when I think about Mary, I think that maybe it is possible for me to give everything I am over to Christ.

Finally, I am given hope for the world when I think about the prayers of the Mother of God on its behalf. A Son listens to his Mother. When the Mother of God prays for mercy, I have hope that God will be merciful to us. Not that we deserve it, but when everything I see with my cynical eyes tells me we are doomed – wars and rumors of wars, the poisoning of the earth and seas, the suffering we inflict upon others, and my own complicity with all of that – I have hope that maybe Christ will not give us – give me – what I deserve. Perhaps, by the prayers of the Most Holy Theotokos, he will have mercy on us all.



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*Some of my readers will probably want to know why I used the term "original sin." It is true that Orthodox Christians tend to prefer the term "ancestral sin" in order to distance themselves from the Augustinian notion that we all inherit the guilt of Adam (which is the basis of his belief that unbaptized infants burn in Hell). Ancestral sin refers to the "structural" conditions of a fallen world that interact with the weakened human condition to produce personal sins. Though I reject the notion of inherited guilt, I have no problem with the term "original sin." I find the term "ancestral sin" to be overly polemical. It perpetuates an Eastern misunderstanding about Augustine's theology. There is much less of a genetic component to Augustine's doctrine of sin than Eastern (and many Western) Christians tend to think. He does not begin to reflect on sin by thinking about a kind of "sin gene," (to borrow a term from Kira Dault) as many Eastern theologians tend to read him. Rather, he begins from the fact of human sinfulness, which he observes begins at a very young age (with a toddler who would deny his infant brother his mother's milk), to a rather complex anthropology that explains this fact. Inherited guilt is a part of that anthropology, but I would argue it need not be an essential component. Furthermore, modern scholars in the Western and Augustinian tradition are also rejecting the notion of inherited guilt to explain the fact of human sinfulness more structurally. So my self-conscious incorporation of a controversial term from the Western tradition into my Eastern lexicon is actually something of an ecumenical endeavor, an attempt to rehabilitate Augustine to the East and to accentuate the common ground between the two traditions.

Lenten Reflection 4: On Pain and Fatherhood

This is my son...



I snapped this picture with my phone during the Presanctified liturgy on Wednesday night. I take him to church in his pajamas so that it is easier to lay him down when we get home. His bedtime is usually around 7:00. The Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts starts at 6:30 and usually goes to about 7:30 or 7:45. Then there is a meal afterward.

My son is a fat baby. I mean that in an affectionate way. I often tickle him by grabbing a handful – a handful! – of fat from his chubby stomach and saying (in my baby voice), "Where's the belly fat?" I'm not sure why this is funny, but George thinks it's hilarious!

I am especially aware of how heavy he is during church. He does not really cling to me when I hold him, and the tireder he gets, the heavier. All the weight tends to collect somewhere toward his compact center of gravity. It reminds me of when I worked at UPS in college. I would literally move thousands of packages a night. The large 100 pound packages weren't that bad. The hardest packages to lift were the small, dense ones, the 30-pounders no bigger than your head. Though he's not quite that heavy, George is small and dense.

So I hold my little 30-pounder during the first half of the service. As he gets tired he begins to squirm and push away from me. So I put him down. But he doesn't want down. He begins to cry. So I pick him up and struggle with him some more, a package that doesn't want to sit or be held but to float in midair.

I have a "baby dance" I use. It works every time. I wonder if I can patent it? There are two variations, depending on how much the baby is fighting sleep. One is a hip-knee swivel. I begin circling my knees, then my hips independently of my knees. I imagine that I look something like a twister gyrating its through Kansas. Not wanting to draw much attention to myself in church, I opt for the more subdued, back-and-forth baby dance. Shifting my weight from left to right in a rocking motion, George begins to drift off to sleep. After a couple of minutes of this I put him down on my jacket, but he wakes up, so I pick him up again.

I continue the dance. Meanwhile my back begins to ache. It's never been right since UPS. My right elbow, once dislocated and fractured, begins to throb. My left shoulder, a new injury, starts to crack and pop as I roll the arm supporting my son's trunk around in its socket in a failed attempt to loosen things up a bit.

I also have to mind my daughter, who last Wednesday was behaving well. She doesn't always. So sometimes I add to my dance a constant up-down motion as I bend over to listen to the questions she's asking me. More often they are arguments she's making, arguments about TV and candy that I know can wait, but are urgent for her.

Then there is the bowing. There's lots of bowing during the Presanctified liturgy. So I stop my rocking, with George in my arms, and do my best to make a prostration (I remind Kyla to do the same). My back pops on the way down...then up again. I probably don't have to bow. After all, I'm holding my son and minding my daughter. Nobody would blame me for not bowing when everyone else does. It would be perfectly understandable if I just sat in my chair with my head low. But I bow...I crack and bow. In a way, I find comfort in the pain.

There are a lot of things I don't do well as a parent. I am impatient and often quick-tempered. I am unsympathetic. I don't have the same perspective on things as Stephanie. I cannot begin to understand what it must be like to carry a child in your body, to literally have that child suck the life out of you. Not many people seem to know this, but when a woman gets pregnant, all the good stuff goes to the baby, then the mother. She gets what's left. Prenatal vitamins help the child, but they also help the mother too. If the Mother does not properly nourish the child, it will take what it needs...without asking! Stephanie suffered during both pregnancies. She was anxious, uncomfortable, often in serious pain. Nerves were pinched. Bones were moved. Her body was forever transformed by what she carried inside her. Yet in spite of this transformation exerted by our two children, she would do it all again. Meanwhile, my back aches.

I'm stronger than Stephanie. No surprise there, right? God gave me bigger muscles and her bigger brains! When she is with me at service (and she's not always with me), I spend quite a bit of time holding the kids. When she's not there I still spend quite a bit of time holding the kids. It is something I can do. I cannot give them by body. I cannot feed them from myself. I can't even comfort them the same way Stephanie can. I'm not good at it. But I can pick them up. I can hold them for long periods of time, usually as long as they want to be held. After I get George to sleep, my patient daughter wants her turn. So I pick her up too. She's heavier than George, but usually easier to hold, more like the big box.

In Orthodoxy, I'm not aware of any stories of stigmata. Taking upon ourselves the sufferings of Christ is not part of our consciousness in the same way it is for the Catholics. While we have stories of monks sleeping on rocks and wearing heavy chains, the point of all this isn't really to punish themselves or to imitate Christ. It's about discipline. But when my elbow throbs and my back aches, I end up thinking about the sufferings of Christ. Holding my kids becomes a kind of self-immolation. I don't want to minimize the cross. My hands are not pierced. I am not abused or mocked. But I do hurt out of love for my little ones.

I am deeply aware of my shortcomings as a father. I love my children, but there are so many things I cannot really do for them. I cook meals. I often lay them down or get them up in the morning. But I don't do it with the same ease and patience as Stephanie. But holding them is something I can do, and when I do it, they know I love them. When church is over and my bones begin to crack and pop, I take comfort in the discomfort. My children may never know how they aggravate old injuries. But for me the extremely minor pains of their father becomes a reminder of the sufferings of another who loved me and let his body be broken for their sakes and mine.

Lenten Reflection 3: Triumph of Orthodoxy

Last Monday I took my kids to the Canons of St. Andrew. I must have forgotten how long the services were. I kept telling Kyla, "I think it's almost over." But we ended up spending a couple of hours at church. Then on Wednesday the family attended a the Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, a midweek Eucharist with lots of bowing. On Thursday I flew out of town for a conference with a bunch of Wesleyans and Pentecostals. I decided to come back Saturday night because of how important Sunday was.

The first Sunday of Lent is the Sunday of the Triumph of Orthodoxy. I'll spare you most of the history and theology of the iconoclastic controversy, the memory of violence that inserts itself into Lent like an unwelcome conversation partner. Of course, Lent is about violence, isn't it? The violence we do to Christ? The violence we do to ourselves for the sake of Christ? But the Sunday of the Orthodoxy is for me a sad reminder of the violence we do to each other.

Briefly, for about 150 years the Eastern Church was embroiled in a controversy over the veneration of images, icons. Icons were torn from the walls of churches and over the city gates. They were burned. The supporters of icons and also their opponents were at times subject to official and mob violence.

The iconoclasts actually had a valid concern. They were worried that images were being worshiped, that icons were idols. There is also some evidence to suggest that people did use icons like amulets and lucky charms. But there really isn't a theological case to be made against iconography, not a strong one anyways. In spite of imperial violence against icon-venerators (iconophiles or iconodules), it was the theological argument made by people like St John of Damascus that won the day. Destroyers of icons (iconoclasts) were basically gnostics. They could not think matter and spirit together. The position that won based its case on the Definition of Chalcedon. If the Logos united himself to matter in Jesus Christ, then matter can receive God. We recognize this when we call the Eucharist the body and blood of Christ, when we eat blessed bread, or are sprinkled with holy water. In Orthodoxy, material things are where we meet God. If God can unite Godself to flesh and blood, or bread and wine, then why not wood and paint?

I teach a Sunday School class. Yesterday I gave my students a kind of mini-lecture on the history of the iconoclastic controversy. One of the things I discussed with them was the narrative of decline most of their protestant friends assume applies to the history of the church. The narrative goes something like this: The first Christians were doing great, until they got close to power, then everything fell apart until Martin Luther rescued Christianity with the Protestant Reformation. One of my students said, "So everything was going alright until the Catholics messed it up?" I hemmed and hawed a bit. "Make no mistake," I responded (probably a bit more eloquently in my memory than in fact), "I disagree with the primacy of the pope. I think Orthodoxy has preserved the purer thread of the tradition" (otherwise, why would I be doing this?), "but the church is made of people. People are people, and they will do bad things. During the iconoclastic controversy, people died...on both sides. There was rioting and there was violence. So historically, bad things happen in any church." I think I ended my point by talking about the violence that came with the Reformation as an example.

The truth is that this cut runs pretty deep for me. Make no mistake, I ultimately agree with the conclusion. Given the circumstances, I'm not sure the church could have done much better. I guess what I am trying to say is that the history of the conflict reminds me of just how fallible we are, just how much we are prone to sin, just how easy it is for the historical church to veer off in the wrong direction, even if she gets on track in the end.

But the first Sunday of Lent is not just a bitter memory for me. It is, after all, a celebration of the triumph of Orthodoxy. I am saddened by the reminder of human fallibility, but I rejoice when I see the tiny fingers of my daughter clasped proudly around the image of her patron saint.

The Sunday of Orthodoxy is a day my daughter looks forward to every Lent. After service the choir begins to sing the trisagion, "Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal have mercy on us!" The children are the first to follow the priests and deacons. We were a little slow getting our icons out of our overstuffed diaper bag yesterday. Kyla was a little panicked, worried that we wouldn't find her St Thecla in time to follow the clergy. But as the line of clergy passed our row in its circle around the church, icons held high overhead, we shoved her icon into her tiny hands and pushed her into a line of processing children. The last words we heard her say were, "But were's my icon?" Then she looked down, realized she was holding it, and began proudly marching with the rest of them. We grabbed our icons and followed in behind the children. George held the icon of Stephanie's patron saint, St Nona. Mostly he chewed on it, which I take to be an infant's form of veneration. He is a little young to kiss the icons yet. But whenever we leave church I bring him in close enough to touch the icons. Seeing the bright colors, he immediately makes a grab for the images, often making a loud "thwapping" sound as he quickly brings his hand down onto the face of Christ or his Mother. But I digress.

My daughter stops with the procession at the front of the church. Fr. Steven instructs the children to raise their icons high, over their heads while the church reads the following,

As the prophets beheld, as the Apostles have taught,...as the Church has received...as the teachers have dogmatized,...as the Universe has agreed,...as Grace has shown forth,...as Truth has revealed,...as falsehood has been dissolved,...as Wisdom has presented,...as Christ Awarded,...thus we declare,...thus we assert,...thus we preach Christ our true God, and honor as Saints in words, in writings, in thoughts, in sacrifices, in churches, in Holy Icons; on the one hand worshiping and reverencing Christ as God and Lord; and on the other hand honoring as true servants of the same Lord of all and accordingly offering them veneration.

This is the Faith of the Apostles, this is the Faith of the Fathers, this is the Faith of the Orthodox, this is the Faith which has established the Universe.

The historian Jaroslav Pelikan has pointed out that this Sunday is really the Sunday of the triumph of Chalcedonian Orthodoxy. It is a triumph of the confession that God and the world "belong" together, that God loves the world as God loves Godself. So it is fitting that the procession ends when the chanter hymns, "Who is so great a God as our God? Thou art our God, who alone doest wonders."

Lenten Reflection 2: Forgiveness Vespers

I have nothing against Ash Wednesday in the Western tradition. I actually kind of like the idea of carrying a visible reminder of my sins on my forehead. But if I had to choose (and I have), I'd much rather start our Lenten journey the way we do in the Orthodox Church.

Lent begins with Forgiveness Vespers. Like any other Vespers service, we gather together to pray. The hymnody is the only visible reminder that we are about to enter Great Lent. Then the lights are cut as we change the colors behind the icons of Christ and the Theotokos, a reminder that we are about to enter the long night of Christ's journey to Jerusalem. But we also don't forget that this journey is ultimately a journey to the empty tomb. As a reminder of what lies ahead we sing the same hymn we do at Pascha (only in more subdued tones), "Christ is risen from the dead..."

After the church is darkened, the clergy face the iconostasis (the icon wall) and prostrate before the altar. They lead the congregation in the prayer of St Ephrem. Then the clergy begin to ask forgiveness from each other. As they do this, they make their way to a corner of the church near the iconostasis and face the congregation. Then the clergy are joined by their families, from whom they also beg and receive forgiveness. People whose Protestant reflexes incline them to think that we elevate our clergy to god-like status need to pay attention to just how much our priests confess their sins to the congregation and ask us to forgive them. They are the first ones to drink from the chalice during Liturgy, and the first one's to beg forgiveness from us last night, because (the church expresses) they are the most in need of forgiveness. (Even during confession the priest reminds us of his own unworthiness to readmit us to Communion.)

When the clergy and their families exchange forgiveness, their families join the line facing the congregation. Then the rest of the church begins to dismiss from the front, forming a center line that also makes its way forward. If this is hard to visualize, I'll try to paint a picture so you can see it. Members of the congregation approach the first line, the line with their backs to the altar/wall, the line facing the center of the church. As members of the second line approach, those in the first line cross themselves and ask for forgiveness. Those in the second line grant it, and in turn ask those in the first to forgive them. And on it goes, a line from the center moving up to the front corner, and then snaking around the church. When someone in the second line exchanges forgiveness with the last person in the first line, she turns around (now with her back to the wall) and becomes part of the first line. The line grows around the church (eventually looking like a donut) until everyone has exchanged forgiveness with everyone else.

Asking for forgiveness can be somewhat formulaic, "Forgive me my many sins and trespasses against you." Or it can be more personal. One priest I rarely speak to put his hand on my shoulder and very gently said to me, "Would you please forgive me if I have offended you in any way this year." I've always had a child in my arms, so my response tends to be a formulaic, "Forgive me a sinner." But I've never felt like the exchange isn't genuine. After exchanging forgiveness people almost always hug each other, even if they don't know each other at all (which often happens because we have so many new members, catechumens, and inquirers). There are no strangers, no enemies, in the body of Christ.

I was holding my son, George, who also became part of the exchange. Those who embraced me, embraced him and even asked him to forgive them. The last people I asked to forgive me before I became part of the first line (now a circle) were my wife and my daughter. I crossed myself, got down on one knee, and said to my little almost-five-year-old, "Kyla, forgive me a sinner." She said nothing back, but she hugged me.

On a humorous side-note, my daughter tends to be shy around people she does not know well. Last night, like many children, she clung to her mother while people asked her to forgive them, occasionally venturing out from behind Stephanie to hug one of her friends. Then a young woman approached. I did not know her, but Stephanie knew her a little from a book study. She was an inquirer, not Orthodox but interested in Orthodoxy. Kyla had no idea who she was, but for some reason, when this woman bent down to ask Kyla for forgiveness, my daughter through her arms around her neck and squeezed. She actually choked her a little. It was as if, at some level, she were trying to say, "Welcome to our church! I like you!" Sometimes we all need to hear that, I think.

My daughter is beginning to learn how the body of Christ relates to each other. One of the great truths of the Orthodox faith – something the church regularly reminds us of – is that our relationship with God takes on the character of our relationships with each other. Just that morning one of my Sunday School students had raised the issue, "What should we say if someone asks us if we are saved?" I told her that most of the time we should try to understand the concern that lies behind the question. We should just say "Yes" and try to move on. But, I added, in Orthodoxy (and in the Bible) the question is not whether or not we are saved, but whether or not we are being saved. This is a journey. If someone asks us if we have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, we should try to think about what they mean. But we should also remember that the phrase "personal relationship" appears nowhere in the Bible. For Paul, for instance, there was no personal relationship to Christ without a communal relationship to the church. So, our salvation is wrapped up in the salvation of the people we bow before, embrace, and ask to forgive us. I hope Kyla will come to understand that they way we love each other is the way we love God.

I also hope that she will come to understand that sin and forgiveness always go beyond our immediate, more obvious actions. One of the great truths of Orthodoxy captured by Forgiveness Vespers is also expressed by Doestoyevsky's character Fr. Zossima. In a nutshell he says we must all take responsibility for the sins of every last person in the world (even animals). The sins we commit never stop at us or the ones we sin against. They ripple away from us and touch lives we never meet. Forgiveness Vespers reminds me of this fact. It reminds me that I need to ask forgiveness from those I barely know, because in some way I *have* sinned against them.

Finally, there's just something about the physical closeness that I enjoy about Forgiveness Vespers. Not being Greek or Arabic, the kiss of peace in our church tends to be more like a holy hug. We hug each other because we are family. As a theologian, I tend to think in very hifalutin ways about the church. I develop complex arguments about the relationship between the earthly and the heavenly, between church and society, the head and the body, etc. But in the end, the church is kind of about the holy hug. I don't want to minimize the hifalutin aspects of the church. If the church were just hugging, then Care Bears and hippies make the best Christians. On the other hand, Forgiveness Vespers reminds me that behind all the high and lofty talk about the church, behind the vestments, the colors, the icons and vigil lamps lie the pressed together bodies of real people, people with their hopes and their dreams, people with their problems and their sins. And in the church, these people, these sinful people (of whom I am chief) find forgiveness from God and forgiveness for each other.

Lenten Reflection 1: The Prayer of St Ephrem

One of the prayers Orthodox Christians utter most during Lent comes from St Ephrem.

"O Lord and Master of my life,
Take from me the spirit of sloth,
faint-heartedness, lust of power and idle talk.
But give me rather the spirit of chastity,
humility, patience and love.
Yea O Lord and King,
grant me to see my own sins
and not to judge my brother;
For Thou art blessed unto ages of ages. Amen."

I intended to go to church last night, just like I intended to go to Vespers last Wednesday too. But life got in the way. One of my goals during Lent is to slow life down as much as I possibly can, to make time where there is none. I don't want church to become just one more activity that we cram into our schedule. Part of the purpose of the fast is to help free up time. To simplify. To slow down.

I am going to try to pray this prayer daily. Maybe I can teach it to Kyla. There is bowing in it. She likes to bow. Maybe we can all bow and pray together, each day, before we leave the house. Maybe again before we go to bed.

I am also going to try to begin to memorize the Psalter. This is one of my life-long goals. I've been enamored with the idea ever since I heard a priest tell a story about his grandfather, who every day would rise early, put on his best suit, stand and recite the entire Psalter, which he knew by heart. I hope to be able to memorize one a week. I used to be pretty good at that sort of thing. We shall see.

Lenten Reflections: The Backstory

One of my New Years resolutions was to be more spiritually serious. I am an Orthodox Christian. In many ways I am a little peculiar in my community. My family has grown to love our church. It is both orthodox and southern at the same time. Southern Fried Orthodoxy, we call it. I am also an academic, attending a notoriously liberal institution. One of the first things people began asking me when they got to know me (and one of the first things new friends still do) is, "Isn't Vanderbilt a liberal school?" I can always detect a bit of alarm in the question. I remember one conversation with a man who later became a good friend. He was very kind, but he was also somewhat flabbergasted that I was a Vanderbilt theologian and that I was interested in Orthodoxy. "Why Vanderbilt?" he asked. Or maybe it was "Why Orthodoxy?" The point is that the two seemed irreconcilable. (He is probably still flabbergasted.)

Of course, I've always enjoyed being a self-contradiction. So I don't fault the alarm or confusion. It's my own fault. I am not sure if I should be considered theologically liberal or not. I guess it depends on who is asking. I am socially conservative. I would probably say I am fiscally conservative as well. But I've not voted for Bush in either election. I once voted for Nader, simply as a protest vote against a two-party system. But this was when the state I was living in was sure to drown my little green vote in its red sea. I casted it in the hope that the Green Party could get enough of the popular vote to get more federal funding (it didn't), not that I'm a member of the Green party, or even aligned with its positions. Call me crazy, but I just think that the clearest solutions to problems arise when a number of different voices are included in the debate.

That's me, politically liberal, socially and fiscally conservative, theologically (probably) liberal enough Orthodox Christian.

I think, at least I hope, that those who know me well know that in all things I try my best to be a dutiful son of Mother Church (to use the phrase coined by early African Christians). I usually fail. St. Paul talked about running the good race, but I tend to limp more than I lope.

Like I said, this blog is my attempt to keep one of my New Year's resolutions. I'm not really sure myself what I mean when I say "spiritually serious." I probably mean that I should pray more, attend more services, keep up with the daily readings. Try to include some edifying books in all this "hifalutin" theological stuff I read. At the beginning of the year I also envisioned something like a public forum for me to engage during Lent, a space for me to reflect on my experiences. Making it public will hopefully keep me accountable to journal through this 40+ day journey (it's actually closer to 60 when you crunch the numbers). So this blog is more for me than for anyone.

Orthodox Lent (Great Lent) will begin in about two weeks. I will try to post something every few days to once a week. For theologians like myself, abstraction can be a defense mechanism. So as much as I possibly can I will try to keep my thoughts refined, but I will also try to focus on the nitty-gritty of everyday practice. One thing I will not talk about is fasting. For some reason this seems to be the one aspect of Orthodox spirituality that people find most interesting. Of course, eating is important, but it is not the most important part of the fast. A person can avoid all the right, or in this case wrong, foods and still not fast properly. I will use the word, and I may talk about "the fast," but don't expect a daily menu from me. I am the kind of person who can turn what I do and do not eat into a cause for boasting. (But if someone is dying to know, yes I fast, and God willing you will never know about it.)

Forgiveness Vespers is the beginning of Great Lent. Orthodox Christians do not practice Ash Wednesday. But we do begin our journey by remembering our sins and by begging forgiveness.