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.