The time of Lent is fast approaching. For us Orthodox it is not just a period of time to be passed in a certain way, or a certain set of rules and restrictions. It is a journey, a journey towards the joy and delight of Pascha---a journey directly into the arms of Christ Himself. It is a journey that must be carefully prepared for---communally and personally. The Church of course helps us to prepare with Cheese and Meatfare Sundays: we go into Lent with no indulgent foods remaining our houses whatsoever. The Fathers advise to, in various ways, turn down the volume in our lives so the voice of God might be heard over the tumult we normally live in. With each person it may vary, depending on what causes the tumult in their lives. Here are the ways in which I personally will be turning down the volume. Perhaps it may help you as well.
-The Canon of Repentance will be prayed on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.
-The Supplicatory Canon to the Theotokos will be prayed every day.
-No music is to be played the first week of Lent. No music is to be played on Wednesday or Friday thereafter, nor after Vespers on Holy Thursday.
-An 8:30 PM curfew will be strictly adhered to. Exceptions made for work schedule only.
-Confession will be made weekly, preferably on Saturday.
-Free time in the afternoon normally spent on Facebook will be spent in reflective journaling.
-No video games are to be played at all.
-At least one day a week will be spent volunteering in some way.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Christ, the True Antheos
My favorite time of the year has always been springtime. The combination of living in Florida and having a March birthday have always made spring the most special time of the year for me. From early March to mid-May, it's as if the landscape tries to make up for how horridly ugly it is in the winter: you can't help but smell some kind of flower every time you go outside even if there are none in sight, and every bush and tree and weed explodes with color.
So you can imagine how dismayed I was when I found out that Lent happens smack in the middle of all this springtime gaiety---indeed, it shall be upon us again soon. My thought was, How am I supposed to go about in sackcloth and ashes while the jasmine is blooming and the weather's getting just warm enough to make the beach enjoyable again? My first Lent being only three months after I was officially welcomed into the Church, I was still thinking of spring and indeed all the seasons in terms of my pagan mindset. Unconsciously, I was thinking of spring not in terms of Pascha, but in the context of Dionysia---and mind you, the two celebrations are not entirely dissimilar; it is how they are approached and their ultimate ends that make all the difference between them (and that is a whole different blog for another day). I was saddened that what used to be a time of joy and a celebration of life for me must now be a time of darkness and guilt. I couldn't see how the Church in all her wisdom could have juxtaposed such a gloomy Liturgical season with such a bright natural one.
Yet as I listened to the Lenten hymns, attended the evening services of the Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified Gifts, and attuned myself (however clumsily) with the strange, gorgeous rhythm that is Lent, I began to see that I was extravagantly wrong. Someone like myself approaching Lent with the attitude that it is supposed to be gloomy and guilt-ridden will likely find themselves very confused, especially with the eleven commemorative Sundays: Four preparatory Sundays leading up to Lent and seven commemorative Sundays during Lent itself. Each Sunday tells a different story, beginning with the Sunday of the Publican four weeks before Lent begins, and ending during Holy Week with Holy Saturday. Though the stories and commemorations may include pain, and even agony and defeat, their ultimate end and meaning is joy---the fierce, wild, tearful joy of the Father running out to meet the long-lost prodigal son, of Mary hearing the newly-risen Lord call her by name.
Each day during last year's Lent, the wisdom of the Church was revealed to me. Its rhythm of life during the Lenten season is on the same note of joy that I knew in my previous life---but infinitely resonant, thrumming so deep that once experienced, existence can never be the same. The repentance by which Lent must be lived is not dark or gloomy or colored by guilt---if it is, it cannot be true repentance. Fasting is a time of abstinence yes, but in that abstinence there is the joy and freedom of breaking free of the slavery of afflicting passions, of waking up, of running back to God with open arms. It is no superficial celebration of the passing seasons or of the return of the sun and flowering earth, though that is a part. Rather, it is the constant blooming of the heart that unfolds toward the Sun of Righteousness, an unfurling of the soul toward a Pascha morning that knows no end.
So you can imagine how dismayed I was when I found out that Lent happens smack in the middle of all this springtime gaiety---indeed, it shall be upon us again soon. My thought was, How am I supposed to go about in sackcloth and ashes while the jasmine is blooming and the weather's getting just warm enough to make the beach enjoyable again? My first Lent being only three months after I was officially welcomed into the Church, I was still thinking of spring and indeed all the seasons in terms of my pagan mindset. Unconsciously, I was thinking of spring not in terms of Pascha, but in the context of Dionysia---and mind you, the two celebrations are not entirely dissimilar; it is how they are approached and their ultimate ends that make all the difference between them (and that is a whole different blog for another day). I was saddened that what used to be a time of joy and a celebration of life for me must now be a time of darkness and guilt. I couldn't see how the Church in all her wisdom could have juxtaposed such a gloomy Liturgical season with such a bright natural one.
Yet as I listened to the Lenten hymns, attended the evening services of the Liturgy of the Pre-Sanctified Gifts, and attuned myself (however clumsily) with the strange, gorgeous rhythm that is Lent, I began to see that I was extravagantly wrong. Someone like myself approaching Lent with the attitude that it is supposed to be gloomy and guilt-ridden will likely find themselves very confused, especially with the eleven commemorative Sundays: Four preparatory Sundays leading up to Lent and seven commemorative Sundays during Lent itself. Each Sunday tells a different story, beginning with the Sunday of the Publican four weeks before Lent begins, and ending during Holy Week with Holy Saturday. Though the stories and commemorations may include pain, and even agony and defeat, their ultimate end and meaning is joy---the fierce, wild, tearful joy of the Father running out to meet the long-lost prodigal son, of Mary hearing the newly-risen Lord call her by name.
Each day during last year's Lent, the wisdom of the Church was revealed to me. Its rhythm of life during the Lenten season is on the same note of joy that I knew in my previous life---but infinitely resonant, thrumming so deep that once experienced, existence can never be the same. The repentance by which Lent must be lived is not dark or gloomy or colored by guilt---if it is, it cannot be true repentance. Fasting is a time of abstinence yes, but in that abstinence there is the joy and freedom of breaking free of the slavery of afflicting passions, of waking up, of running back to God with open arms. It is no superficial celebration of the passing seasons or of the return of the sun and flowering earth, though that is a part. Rather, it is the constant blooming of the heart that unfolds toward the Sun of Righteousness, an unfurling of the soul toward a Pascha morning that knows no end.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Brief Meditation on Silence
"“I have often repented of having spoken, but never of having been silent.”
---Abba Arsenios
Much ado has been made lately about words and the meaning we give them, especially in a political context. It seems in today's world, we are in a terror that things---words least among them---actually do have meaning, and that we should use care in how we treat them. "Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks" (Matt. 12:34). If even for a few moments we paused to delve into the "abundance" of our hearts, I don't think any of us we speak a word for a week at least. Considering what goes on in our hearts on a daily basis---all the calculating, the agonizing, the buzzing, the fretting---this is grave advice, much more grave than it has been made out to be, oft-quoted as it is.
There seems to be an imperative in our culture to always be saying something, or making some sort of noise. We have a horror of silence---especially awkward silences, which we always nervously feel a deadly serious duty to fill with anything we possibly can. Any sort of silence in a conversation is seen as a sort of failure, as though we have run out of things to talk about. But how much good have any of us truly done with our words? I can honestly admit that I have used my ability to communicate to wound and destroy many many more times than I have used it to heal or edify. Is there truly a need to always be saying something? To always be making a point (which is more likely to be opinion rather than any sort of truth, nine times out of ten)? It has been my humble experience that minutes of silence between two people may pass more eloquently and may disclose more than hours of uninterrupted talking. The solution to many of the problems that plague us on a personal, societal, and even global level is to me quite beautifully simple: If you have something of value to say, say it. If you don't, keep silent---and don't feel ashamed about it, either.
---Abba Arsenios
Much ado has been made lately about words and the meaning we give them, especially in a political context. It seems in today's world, we are in a terror that things---words least among them---actually do have meaning, and that we should use care in how we treat them. "Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks" (Matt. 12:34). If even for a few moments we paused to delve into the "abundance" of our hearts, I don't think any of us we speak a word for a week at least. Considering what goes on in our hearts on a daily basis---all the calculating, the agonizing, the buzzing, the fretting---this is grave advice, much more grave than it has been made out to be, oft-quoted as it is.
There seems to be an imperative in our culture to always be saying something, or making some sort of noise. We have a horror of silence---especially awkward silences, which we always nervously feel a deadly serious duty to fill with anything we possibly can. Any sort of silence in a conversation is seen as a sort of failure, as though we have run out of things to talk about. But how much good have any of us truly done with our words? I can honestly admit that I have used my ability to communicate to wound and destroy many many more times than I have used it to heal or edify. Is there truly a need to always be saying something? To always be making a point (which is more likely to be opinion rather than any sort of truth, nine times out of ten)? It has been my humble experience that minutes of silence between two people may pass more eloquently and may disclose more than hours of uninterrupted talking. The solution to many of the problems that plague us on a personal, societal, and even global level is to me quite beautifully simple: If you have something of value to say, say it. If you don't, keep silent---and don't feel ashamed about it, either.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Confessio Ex Maria
"Your birth, O Christ our God, dawned the light of knowledge upon the earth. For by Your birth those who worshiped the stars were taught by a star to worship You, the Sun of Justice, and to know You, Orient from on High. O Lord, glory to You!"
---Apolytikion of the Feast of the Nativity
Today, the 21st of December marks the winter solstice and the Wiccan holiday of Yule. In a few days it will also be the Dionysian festival of Haloa, celebrated by the ever-growing ranks of Hellenic pagans. Curiously, and perhaps disturbingly, I know these dates and the separate but rather similar calendars that reckon them more intimately than the Church calendar. People who know me---especially people at St. John the Theologian---tend to forget or may not even know that I am still clumsily adapting myself to an entirely new rhythm of life---that though I was raised a Christian and have a vast database of general Christian knowledge stored in my brain, until very recently the Christian life was of very little consequence to me and the way I lived my life---I did not consider myself a Christian before converting to Orthodoxy; it was not as though I was merely trading one "version" of Christianity for another as it may seem from the way I usually sequence my conversion for people who ask. No, until very recently, I lived the life of the antichristos.
When I was about 14, I experienced a break with the church I was raised in, i.e. the Methodist church. I really don't know what precipitated it; teenage angst and rebellion as much as anything I suppose. For a while I drifted in along in a sort of vague, uninformed atheism. I was disillusioned, angry, and generally lost. In high school I "discovered" Wicca in the form of a New-Agey Wiccan girl who served on the newspaper staff with me. The information she gave me in passing was enough for me to do some digging of my own, and I became enamored with this new world I had never been allowed a glimpse into. It was all very seductive of course---living in harmony with nature, etc. And it gave me one more cause to feel unique and rebellious and "special". My foray into Wicca and neo-paganism lasted about two years. Eventually, I grew rather bored with it---it was light and fluffy and easy and it did give me a sort of peace for a time. But I was bound to grow bored with it, I think. There is much in it that can give a saccharine sort of comfort and sense of purpose to an insecure 14 year old girl, but not to one who begins to delve into Aurelius' Meditations and The Nichomachean Ethics in her sophomore year of high school. This is not to say I had or have a superior intellect---only to point out that I was becoming more "serious" with what I wanted out of my spiritual and intellectual life. There is nothing intellectually stimulating about Wicca as a religion. It is less than 70 years old; even it's most traditional practices are based on skewed and retooled versions of Anglo and Celtic folkways. It is a religion of historical revisionism, and the budding historian in me was growing increasingly impatient with it. This was the first time I ever even remotely turned my head toward Orthodoxy in anything but an academic capacity.
My first brush with the Eastern Church came in European History class in my sophomore year. We touched on Byzantium only briefly, but it was enough for me to take an academic interest, and that year I made my way through John Julius Norwich's A Short History of Byzantium and Daniel Clendenin's The Eastern Orthodox Church: A Western Perspective. And of course, my hunger for a deeper relationship with, well something was piqued by what I read of and saw in Orthodoxy. Fr. Sergius Bulgakov quite rightly said ""Orthodoxy does not persuade or try to compel; it charms and it attracts." So it was with me. Christ gave me quite literally a glimpse of Himself, and from then on that glimpse became like the flash of the face of an impossibly beautiful stranger seen for a moment in a crowd but never forgotten. Oh, I tried to forget. In the coming years I would test the limit of human consciousness and perception in order to do so.
Shrugging off what I termed a "passing interest" in Eastern Orthodoxy, I quickly found a solution to my problem of a shallow, saccharine paganism that dominated the pagan culture (there is such a thing, trust me). Surprisingly, I found I wasn't alone. Other people, mostly Wiccans and neo-pagans, were getting tired of having their religion treated like a perpetual Renaissance fair and were quite frankly sick of the shoddy history and "cherry picking" that is endemic in Wicca. Many people went and are still going to more sober, academic traditions that try to revive pagan religions of the past with whatever primary sources are available such as the Nordic Asatru and Celtic Reconstructionism. When I found out that Hellenic Reconstructionism---or as its followers call it, Hellenismos---existed, I was overjoyed. It was a breath of fresh air from the cheesy, sentimental, self-indulgent world of Eclectic Wicca. Of course, there was great latitude one could take. The Hellenic pantheon is enormous, with many varied cults to various gods to suit all personalities, spiritual needs, and tastes. However, commitment to Classical authenticity is paramount. You cannot, as they say, "make shit up" as the neo-pagans are wont to do.
I make it a point to clarify that this is not some group of people who just really, really like Greek culture and want to basically cosplay Classical Greece in the modern world. This is a sincere, rather large group of people who honestly believe in polytheism and the various gods and choose to dedicate themselves---for whatever reason---to the Greek pantheon. They are generally well-educated, especially when it comes to ancient Greek spirituality and philosophy, and come from all walks of life. And for quite a long time, I was one of them.
For a while, the basic practice of Hellenismos was fulfilling. You are expected to of course,to always give reverence and worship to the dodecatheon---the 12 Olympians---and to any cthonic deities you may have close contact with (i.e. river gods, nature spirits, etc). But for the most part, if you are not attached to the cult of a certain god, relationship with the divine is rather detached. And so of course, I began to become restless again. And that's when things got serious, in a way that went above and beyond anything I'd longed for. I became very interested in the myths surrounding Dionysos; they are like nothing else found in the mass of the myths of the Greeks. For one, worship of Dionysos is not the detached affair worship of the dodecatheon is. The myths of Dionysos promise direct, mystical contact with the divine in a way that is both beautiful and terrifying. Dionysos is a god of drama, of abandon, of ecstasy. With his wild, ecstatic worship, he bends the boundaries of what is human and what is divine and launches one into states of altered consciousness. It is claimed that through worshiping Dionysos in such a manner, one finds god and one's true, authentic self. And like any deception that is truly dangerous, there is a great deal of truth in that claim.
I pursued the cult of Dionysos avidly. It as exciting, dramatic, strange...it gave me a sense of joy I had never known before. I was pushing the limits of my consciousness and my experience of reality through psychosomatic means, i.e. the trance-like dances of the bacchanals---quite similar to the methods of the "whirling dervish" sufi Muslims. I never thought, in all of my journeys within myself, that I might find something I did not particularly want or have the capacity to see. During this time, I visited St. Augustine with my parents for my 16th birthday. My family I have spent quite a bit of time in St. Augustine, it is one of our favorite vacation spots. But in all the times I visited previous, there was one part of St. Augustine I had never seen before, though I walked past it dozens of times.
It was pouring rain when I stepped into the Shrine of St. Photios. My curiosity was piqued when I saw the words "Greek Orthodox" on the sign, and I feebly told myself it would be an interesting opportunity to see some actual Byzantine art. I stepped inside, and the first thing that hit me like a physical blow was the silence. It was nothing like the mere absence of sound we normally call "silence". This silence was no absence, and I knew it. I almost bolted then. The fledgling darkness and rebellion I was nursing in my heart knew with even greater clarity than I did then of what that silence meant. But I stayed, and drew deeper into the chapel lit only by beeswax candles and the lone vigil lamp on the altar. Somewhere, what I had no idea was the Cherubic Hymn was softly playing, but that somehow did nothing to disrupt the silence---it only deepened it. I had no idea who the people on the richly frescoed walls were---Christ Pantokrator was the only icon I recognized, looking down at me from gilded dome with penetrating eyes. I don't remember much of what I did there---it is such a tiny chapel; I mostly just stood there gazing---but I do remember that I did not want to leave. I remember thinking, something is here. I thought it over and over again. I knew very well that it was not something, but Someone. When I walked back out on the street I was dazed, and remained so for the rest of the day. But still, in that place so alive with Christ's presence that I had to tear myself away from it, I said no. I kept running.
And so I continued going ever deeper into an ecstatic Dionysian haze. It was not unlike a drug habit (though many people do, I never used any kind of drug except alcohol in my practices); I was on a psychosomatic high more or less constantly. I felt ten feet tall and bulletproof almost 24/7. I won't ever deny that what I experienced was real. I will never say that what I was worshiping and exposing myself to didn't exist or that I was "fooling myself". It does exist. It does "work". But who and what makes it real? The theology of angels and demons is a nebulous place that I leave to those wiser than myself, but I do believe that in what I was doing, I was making myself vulnerable to ontological evil masquerading as this wonderful, ecstasy-giving, liberating entity. I was still searching for that indelible image of Christ within myself, but I sought Him by wide and strange roads, treacherous and dim. Certainly there were truths in the Dionysian cult. The salvific nature of the god, his death and resurrection, his qualities as liberator, and guarantor of eternal life, etc. But these were mere shadows of something more enduring.
Eventually I reached a point in my journey of divine self-discovery where I could go no further. I had circled back in on myself, like a serpent eating its own tail. I won't say I had nowhere to go, because I did. But I, ever stubborn, refused. I stayed with Hellenismos, but I had little heart for it anymore. It was my senior year in high school, and quite a lot of disillusioning things happened. It went from the usual teenage fare of desperately dramatic unrequited love and parental clashes to a more alarming violent breakup and finally to the unthinkable and bewildering suicide of a friend. For all of my searching, my delving, my running, in the end I had nothing to show but a shell of a person who nibbled feebly at the edges of stale ideas, aching for the freshness of some irrecoverable springtime.
One day in early March of last year, I was sitting in my room when I started crying. I was weeping and I could not stop. As a 19 year old female, I'd experienced my share of good cries. This was definitely not one of them. This was not a wallowing self-pity, nor the searing, cathartic weeping of depression. It felt as though a dam had burst somewhere in some vital part of my being---like a great pack of ice had melted, ringing in some sudden and unlooked-for springtime. That is the limit in my ability to explain it. Here I will let St. Isaac the Syrian tell it more succinctly:
"The fruits of the inner man begin only with the shedding of tears. When you reach the place of tears, then know that your spirit has come out from the prison of this world and has set its foot upon the path that leads towards the new age. Your spirit begins at this moment to breathe the wonderful air which is there, and it starts to shed tears...the intellect begins to sense something of the things of that other world -- as a faint perfume, or as the breath of life which a newborn child receives into its bodily frame. But we are not accustomed to such an experience and, finding it hard to endure, our body is suddenly overcome by a weeping mingled with joy."
With nothing else to do and nowhere else to go, I ran out of my room and out of my house, and found that in the space of a minute, the whole world had changed. Everything was vivid, alive. Things no longer had meaning or purpose in relation to how they pleased me or what purpose they served me, but simply existed, and in a way more authentic and vital than I knew how to be. It was very nearly unbearable. What indeed did I, a selfish little prig, have to do with all this bright and awful gorgeousness? It was crushing me, that loveliness. God's mercy had run after me, relentless, just as it has run after mankind from Abraham to Moses to David to the Nativity to the Theophany to Pascha to the present moment, "dispersing the stubborn cloud of heathenry" and ignorance. I saw the star shining above the place---the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church---where the Incarnate Lord dwelt, and started running.
And here I am.
“Late have I loved You, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved You. And see, You were within and I was in the external world and sought You there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which You made. You were with me, and I was not with You. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in You, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, You put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted You, and I feel but hunger and thirst for You. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours."
----St. Augustine of Hippo
---Apolytikion of the Feast of the Nativity
Today, the 21st of December marks the winter solstice and the Wiccan holiday of Yule. In a few days it will also be the Dionysian festival of Haloa, celebrated by the ever-growing ranks of Hellenic pagans. Curiously, and perhaps disturbingly, I know these dates and the separate but rather similar calendars that reckon them more intimately than the Church calendar. People who know me---especially people at St. John the Theologian---tend to forget or may not even know that I am still clumsily adapting myself to an entirely new rhythm of life---that though I was raised a Christian and have a vast database of general Christian knowledge stored in my brain, until very recently the Christian life was of very little consequence to me and the way I lived my life---I did not consider myself a Christian before converting to Orthodoxy; it was not as though I was merely trading one "version" of Christianity for another as it may seem from the way I usually sequence my conversion for people who ask. No, until very recently, I lived the life of the antichristos.
When I was about 14, I experienced a break with the church I was raised in, i.e. the Methodist church. I really don't know what precipitated it; teenage angst and rebellion as much as anything I suppose. For a while I drifted in along in a sort of vague, uninformed atheism. I was disillusioned, angry, and generally lost. In high school I "discovered" Wicca in the form of a New-Agey Wiccan girl who served on the newspaper staff with me. The information she gave me in passing was enough for me to do some digging of my own, and I became enamored with this new world I had never been allowed a glimpse into. It was all very seductive of course---living in harmony with nature, etc. And it gave me one more cause to feel unique and rebellious and "special". My foray into Wicca and neo-paganism lasted about two years. Eventually, I grew rather bored with it---it was light and fluffy and easy and it did give me a sort of peace for a time. But I was bound to grow bored with it, I think. There is much in it that can give a saccharine sort of comfort and sense of purpose to an insecure 14 year old girl, but not to one who begins to delve into Aurelius' Meditations and The Nichomachean Ethics in her sophomore year of high school. This is not to say I had or have a superior intellect---only to point out that I was becoming more "serious" with what I wanted out of my spiritual and intellectual life. There is nothing intellectually stimulating about Wicca as a religion. It is less than 70 years old; even it's most traditional practices are based on skewed and retooled versions of Anglo and Celtic folkways. It is a religion of historical revisionism, and the budding historian in me was growing increasingly impatient with it. This was the first time I ever even remotely turned my head toward Orthodoxy in anything but an academic capacity.
My first brush with the Eastern Church came in European History class in my sophomore year. We touched on Byzantium only briefly, but it was enough for me to take an academic interest, and that year I made my way through John Julius Norwich's A Short History of Byzantium and Daniel Clendenin's The Eastern Orthodox Church: A Western Perspective. And of course, my hunger for a deeper relationship with, well something was piqued by what I read of and saw in Orthodoxy. Fr. Sergius Bulgakov quite rightly said ""Orthodoxy does not persuade or try to compel; it charms and it attracts." So it was with me. Christ gave me quite literally a glimpse of Himself, and from then on that glimpse became like the flash of the face of an impossibly beautiful stranger seen for a moment in a crowd but never forgotten. Oh, I tried to forget. In the coming years I would test the limit of human consciousness and perception in order to do so.
Shrugging off what I termed a "passing interest" in Eastern Orthodoxy, I quickly found a solution to my problem of a shallow, saccharine paganism that dominated the pagan culture (there is such a thing, trust me). Surprisingly, I found I wasn't alone. Other people, mostly Wiccans and neo-pagans, were getting tired of having their religion treated like a perpetual Renaissance fair and were quite frankly sick of the shoddy history and "cherry picking" that is endemic in Wicca. Many people went and are still going to more sober, academic traditions that try to revive pagan religions of the past with whatever primary sources are available such as the Nordic Asatru and Celtic Reconstructionism. When I found out that Hellenic Reconstructionism---or as its followers call it, Hellenismos---existed, I was overjoyed. It was a breath of fresh air from the cheesy, sentimental, self-indulgent world of Eclectic Wicca. Of course, there was great latitude one could take. The Hellenic pantheon is enormous, with many varied cults to various gods to suit all personalities, spiritual needs, and tastes. However, commitment to Classical authenticity is paramount. You cannot, as they say, "make shit up" as the neo-pagans are wont to do.
I make it a point to clarify that this is not some group of people who just really, really like Greek culture and want to basically cosplay Classical Greece in the modern world. This is a sincere, rather large group of people who honestly believe in polytheism and the various gods and choose to dedicate themselves---for whatever reason---to the Greek pantheon. They are generally well-educated, especially when it comes to ancient Greek spirituality and philosophy, and come from all walks of life. And for quite a long time, I was one of them.
For a while, the basic practice of Hellenismos was fulfilling. You are expected to of course,to always give reverence and worship to the dodecatheon---the 12 Olympians---and to any cthonic deities you may have close contact with (i.e. river gods, nature spirits, etc). But for the most part, if you are not attached to the cult of a certain god, relationship with the divine is rather detached. And so of course, I began to become restless again. And that's when things got serious, in a way that went above and beyond anything I'd longed for. I became very interested in the myths surrounding Dionysos; they are like nothing else found in the mass of the myths of the Greeks. For one, worship of Dionysos is not the detached affair worship of the dodecatheon is. The myths of Dionysos promise direct, mystical contact with the divine in a way that is both beautiful and terrifying. Dionysos is a god of drama, of abandon, of ecstasy. With his wild, ecstatic worship, he bends the boundaries of what is human and what is divine and launches one into states of altered consciousness. It is claimed that through worshiping Dionysos in such a manner, one finds god and one's true, authentic self. And like any deception that is truly dangerous, there is a great deal of truth in that claim.
I pursued the cult of Dionysos avidly. It as exciting, dramatic, strange...it gave me a sense of joy I had never known before. I was pushing the limits of my consciousness and my experience of reality through psychosomatic means, i.e. the trance-like dances of the bacchanals---quite similar to the methods of the "whirling dervish" sufi Muslims. I never thought, in all of my journeys within myself, that I might find something I did not particularly want or have the capacity to see. During this time, I visited St. Augustine with my parents for my 16th birthday. My family I have spent quite a bit of time in St. Augustine, it is one of our favorite vacation spots. But in all the times I visited previous, there was one part of St. Augustine I had never seen before, though I walked past it dozens of times.
It was pouring rain when I stepped into the Shrine of St. Photios. My curiosity was piqued when I saw the words "Greek Orthodox" on the sign, and I feebly told myself it would be an interesting opportunity to see some actual Byzantine art. I stepped inside, and the first thing that hit me like a physical blow was the silence. It was nothing like the mere absence of sound we normally call "silence". This silence was no absence, and I knew it. I almost bolted then. The fledgling darkness and rebellion I was nursing in my heart knew with even greater clarity than I did then of what that silence meant. But I stayed, and drew deeper into the chapel lit only by beeswax candles and the lone vigil lamp on the altar. Somewhere, what I had no idea was the Cherubic Hymn was softly playing, but that somehow did nothing to disrupt the silence---it only deepened it. I had no idea who the people on the richly frescoed walls were---Christ Pantokrator was the only icon I recognized, looking down at me from gilded dome with penetrating eyes. I don't remember much of what I did there---it is such a tiny chapel; I mostly just stood there gazing---but I do remember that I did not want to leave. I remember thinking, something is here. I thought it over and over again. I knew very well that it was not something, but Someone. When I walked back out on the street I was dazed, and remained so for the rest of the day. But still, in that place so alive with Christ's presence that I had to tear myself away from it, I said no. I kept running.
And so I continued going ever deeper into an ecstatic Dionysian haze. It was not unlike a drug habit (though many people do, I never used any kind of drug except alcohol in my practices); I was on a psychosomatic high more or less constantly. I felt ten feet tall and bulletproof almost 24/7. I won't ever deny that what I experienced was real. I will never say that what I was worshiping and exposing myself to didn't exist or that I was "fooling myself". It does exist. It does "work". But who and what makes it real? The theology of angels and demons is a nebulous place that I leave to those wiser than myself, but I do believe that in what I was doing, I was making myself vulnerable to ontological evil masquerading as this wonderful, ecstasy-giving, liberating entity. I was still searching for that indelible image of Christ within myself, but I sought Him by wide and strange roads, treacherous and dim. Certainly there were truths in the Dionysian cult. The salvific nature of the god, his death and resurrection, his qualities as liberator, and guarantor of eternal life, etc. But these were mere shadows of something more enduring.
Eventually I reached a point in my journey of divine self-discovery where I could go no further. I had circled back in on myself, like a serpent eating its own tail. I won't say I had nowhere to go, because I did. But I, ever stubborn, refused. I stayed with Hellenismos, but I had little heart for it anymore. It was my senior year in high school, and quite a lot of disillusioning things happened. It went from the usual teenage fare of desperately dramatic unrequited love and parental clashes to a more alarming violent breakup and finally to the unthinkable and bewildering suicide of a friend. For all of my searching, my delving, my running, in the end I had nothing to show but a shell of a person who nibbled feebly at the edges of stale ideas, aching for the freshness of some irrecoverable springtime.
One day in early March of last year, I was sitting in my room when I started crying. I was weeping and I could not stop. As a 19 year old female, I'd experienced my share of good cries. This was definitely not one of them. This was not a wallowing self-pity, nor the searing, cathartic weeping of depression. It felt as though a dam had burst somewhere in some vital part of my being---like a great pack of ice had melted, ringing in some sudden and unlooked-for springtime. That is the limit in my ability to explain it. Here I will let St. Isaac the Syrian tell it more succinctly:
"The fruits of the inner man begin only with the shedding of tears. When you reach the place of tears, then know that your spirit has come out from the prison of this world and has set its foot upon the path that leads towards the new age. Your spirit begins at this moment to breathe the wonderful air which is there, and it starts to shed tears...the intellect begins to sense something of the things of that other world -- as a faint perfume, or as the breath of life which a newborn child receives into its bodily frame. But we are not accustomed to such an experience and, finding it hard to endure, our body is suddenly overcome by a weeping mingled with joy."
With nothing else to do and nowhere else to go, I ran out of my room and out of my house, and found that in the space of a minute, the whole world had changed. Everything was vivid, alive. Things no longer had meaning or purpose in relation to how they pleased me or what purpose they served me, but simply existed, and in a way more authentic and vital than I knew how to be. It was very nearly unbearable. What indeed did I, a selfish little prig, have to do with all this bright and awful gorgeousness? It was crushing me, that loveliness. God's mercy had run after me, relentless, just as it has run after mankind from Abraham to Moses to David to the Nativity to the Theophany to Pascha to the present moment, "dispersing the stubborn cloud of heathenry" and ignorance. I saw the star shining above the place---the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church---where the Incarnate Lord dwelt, and started running.
And here I am.
“Late have I loved You, beauty so old and so new: late have I loved You. And see, You were within and I was in the external world and sought You there, and in my unlovely state I plunged into those lovely created things which You made. You were with me, and I was not with You. The lovely things kept me far from you, though if they did not have their existence in You, they had no existence at all. You called and cried out loud and shattered my deafness. You were radiant and resplendent, You put to flight my blindness. You were fragrant, and I drew in my breath and now pant after you. I tasted You, and I feel but hunger and thirst for You. You touched me, and I am set on fire to attain the peace which is yours."
----St. Augustine of Hippo
Monday, August 9, 2010
Splinter
"But seek the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added to you."
---Luke 12:31
The past week was pretty hellish. Not in the sense that I had a really hectic workweek, or that I had to do a round of really boring, time-consuming medical tests, or that Andrew's been away---that's not really "hellish", that's merely day-to-day living. But it was hellish in the sense that I pushed myself closer towards the sort of nonexistence that is lack of prayer and self-will. I've found that when my prayer life starts to falter, my entire existence grows a little pale. I become less of myself because I shut out and neglect what it means to be myself, to be human. Humanity, I think, is less of a given and more of something that we participate in, and the degree of that participation varies wildly from person to person. Not that a persons essential dignity as a creation of God is ever any more or less; nothing can ever change that. But at any given time, a person may only exist as the bare minimum of what they could be in Christ. Which is exactly what I've been doing.
Prayer is a constant upward motion towards God. Every moment, our thoughts carry us upwards to Heaven, or pull us down towards Sheol. It is a little bit like those old cartoons you see of people walking out off of cliffs without realizing it---the second they look down, they start falling. It is like that with us. The second we stop praying, stop focusing on Christ, we go into a free fall back downwards into ourselves, into our anxieties, our idiosyncrasies, our compulsions. And I fell headlong into one of my worst.
One of the worst things I do to myself is let myself be consumed by "what ifs". I think it's one of the worst things anyone can do to oneself, because it distorts one's view of reality so completely that you can end up living in a dozen little "what if" universes all at once. All of these "what ifs"---each one usually more distressing than the last---create their own realities with one of our many anxieties at the center. Not only does one's life then become drastically less Christocentric, but one's sense of reality becomes splintered into different directions as well. We exit the present---where St. Paul says salvation dwells---and enter a sort of nightmare world where everything is a threat, a danger, an opportunity not for salvation, but for a disaster to happen. Even when we scramble to try to put our reality back together again, we only succeed in splintering it more. We comfort ourselves by saying "Oh that could never happen," and give ourselves a laundry list of logical reasons as to why it couldn't, but that never really works, does it?
Even St. Peter was susceptible to this pathology. In the Gospel of John, after an amazing encounter with the risen Lord in which the Lord gives Peter the opportunity to repent for his denial and predicts his martyrdom, Peter goes off asking then what will happen to St. John---and might have asked what would happen to each of the apostles, and maybe a hundred different other things about the future as well---but Jesus cuts him off.
"If I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you? You follow me."
In that simple, blunt, maybe stinging reply is the cure for all those soul-splintering, peace-destroying "what ifs", whether they be about health, relationships, finances, material possessions, whatever. Why should they matter? If, as the Lord Himself said, He gives the wild animals what they need to merely survive, and He values us far more than they, why should any of our anxieties even exist? The closer we clutch these things we think matter---our relationships, our reputation, our health, etc. the closer we get to seeing them all destroyed. The only way we can truly hold onto them is by letting them go, and focusing instead on Christ, in Whom we live and move and have our being. To enter into life in Christ, we have to let go of every single last thing we hold an attachment to. It is terrifying, and most often excruciating. It sounds terribly cruel, and it would be---if it were not for the fact that when we finally enter Christ's life, we find in Him all those things we let go of waiting for us. And in Christ they are not mere attachments and masks and objects we used before to placate our fear of death and lack of faith. They rest in their proper perspective, sanctified, renewed, and whole; not the objects of our anxieties but the living mirrors in which we see the beauty and glory of God reflected back at us.
---Luke 12:31
The past week was pretty hellish. Not in the sense that I had a really hectic workweek, or that I had to do a round of really boring, time-consuming medical tests, or that Andrew's been away---that's not really "hellish", that's merely day-to-day living. But it was hellish in the sense that I pushed myself closer towards the sort of nonexistence that is lack of prayer and self-will. I've found that when my prayer life starts to falter, my entire existence grows a little pale. I become less of myself because I shut out and neglect what it means to be myself, to be human. Humanity, I think, is less of a given and more of something that we participate in, and the degree of that participation varies wildly from person to person. Not that a persons essential dignity as a creation of God is ever any more or less; nothing can ever change that. But at any given time, a person may only exist as the bare minimum of what they could be in Christ. Which is exactly what I've been doing.
Prayer is a constant upward motion towards God. Every moment, our thoughts carry us upwards to Heaven, or pull us down towards Sheol. It is a little bit like those old cartoons you see of people walking out off of cliffs without realizing it---the second they look down, they start falling. It is like that with us. The second we stop praying, stop focusing on Christ, we go into a free fall back downwards into ourselves, into our anxieties, our idiosyncrasies, our compulsions. And I fell headlong into one of my worst.
One of the worst things I do to myself is let myself be consumed by "what ifs". I think it's one of the worst things anyone can do to oneself, because it distorts one's view of reality so completely that you can end up living in a dozen little "what if" universes all at once. All of these "what ifs"---each one usually more distressing than the last---create their own realities with one of our many anxieties at the center. Not only does one's life then become drastically less Christocentric, but one's sense of reality becomes splintered into different directions as well. We exit the present---where St. Paul says salvation dwells---and enter a sort of nightmare world where everything is a threat, a danger, an opportunity not for salvation, but for a disaster to happen. Even when we scramble to try to put our reality back together again, we only succeed in splintering it more. We comfort ourselves by saying "Oh that could never happen," and give ourselves a laundry list of logical reasons as to why it couldn't, but that never really works, does it?
Even St. Peter was susceptible to this pathology. In the Gospel of John, after an amazing encounter with the risen Lord in which the Lord gives Peter the opportunity to repent for his denial and predicts his martyrdom, Peter goes off asking then what will happen to St. John---and might have asked what would happen to each of the apostles, and maybe a hundred different other things about the future as well---but Jesus cuts him off.
"If I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you? You follow me."
In that simple, blunt, maybe stinging reply is the cure for all those soul-splintering, peace-destroying "what ifs", whether they be about health, relationships, finances, material possessions, whatever. Why should they matter? If, as the Lord Himself said, He gives the wild animals what they need to merely survive, and He values us far more than they, why should any of our anxieties even exist? The closer we clutch these things we think matter---our relationships, our reputation, our health, etc. the closer we get to seeing them all destroyed. The only way we can truly hold onto them is by letting them go, and focusing instead on Christ, in Whom we live and move and have our being. To enter into life in Christ, we have to let go of every single last thing we hold an attachment to. It is terrifying, and most often excruciating. It sounds terribly cruel, and it would be---if it were not for the fact that when we finally enter Christ's life, we find in Him all those things we let go of waiting for us. And in Christ they are not mere attachments and masks and objects we used before to placate our fear of death and lack of faith. They rest in their proper perspective, sanctified, renewed, and whole; not the objects of our anxieties but the living mirrors in which we see the beauty and glory of God reflected back at us.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Ekstasis
"Indeed, it is a good wound and a sweet pain by which life penetrates the soul; for by the tearing of the arrow, she opens, as it were, a door, an entrance into herself."
---Gregory of Nyssa
Saturday night I was sitting on my parents' bed after a particularly awful day, whining to God and kind of feeling sorry for myself. You see, He'd kind of gotten in this nasty habit lately of throwing my tendency towards anxiety, fear, and control (or rather, the illusion of it) in my face. And I didn't like it. Not one bit, actually. Which was kind of stupid. Wasn't I the one who had naively prayed the week before for more opportunities to overcome my fear and trust Him? Oh. Right. That was me. Oops.
So there I was. I was sitting on my parents' bed because of a wasp. A wasp that I had discovered right around bedtime, crawling around my icon corner and buzzing. Menacingly. Since I couldn't find it after it buzzed off, and since I refused to sleep in the same room with a creature bearing a stinger, I was in my parents' vacant bedroom they use when they visit.
I had been run out of my own bedroom. By an insect. The bloody creature might as well have stared me down and hissed in a James Mason-esque voice "Where is your God now?" instead of sat there like it actually did preening itself in a way that in hindsight is actually kind of cute. That wasp was the last straw. I was letting my fear control me to the point where a two-inch long barely self aware bug had run me out of my own personal bubble. It didn't even have a skeleton for Heaven's sake.
The next morning I woke up and didn't feel any better. It was cloudy. My eyes were still puffy because I had fallen asleep the night before in mid-cry. I compensated in my usual way with slightly more makeup than usual---I've never really used makeup to make myself look better per se, but more of as a mask to hide behind; a bad habit I've mostly got rid of. Liturgy was a struggle to stay present. It was like St. Michael himself had to keep dragging me kicking and screaming away from all the little chaotic "what ifs" popping off in my head. And there I was demanding that God "show up"!
Right after Communion, something odd happened, some odd little jolt round my stomach and my throat that made me hold my hand to my mouth for a moment. Something in my being had had it. The way I saw it, I had two options. I could continue feeling miserable. Or, I could be strapped into a harness to a cable and dropped a 100 feet or so to the ground.
See, I have this thing with heights, always have. It's not really the heights that scare me, it's the prospect of falling. The possibility alone sent me screaming back to the elevator from the (fiberglas-walled) edge of the Top of the Rock observation deck when I was 15. The windy odyssey atop the Empire State Building I don't even want to go into. Over time, it became more than just heights and falling. It became a symbol, to me, for fear itself---fear, even, of God. And not the good kind of fear. More like the Jonah, hop-into-a-boat-and-run-away-because-I-can't-control-You sort of fear. Maybe a better word is cowardice.
I found Andrew after church. And before I knew it I just said it. "I have to go on the Skycoaster. Like, today. Now." He just smiled.
"Like, NOW, now?"
"Yeah. Like now."
This has been an ongoing thing with Andrew and I. The first time we ever hung out after he came back from California, he randomly proposed we go bungee jumping, or the Panama City Beach equivalent. Either way, it involved heights, falling, and a complete lack of control. A trifecta of pure horror for me. I vehemently declined, and he never let me forget it. For the past year.
I knew once I said I'd do it, I couldn't take it back or chicken out. If it's one thing I do, I don't generally chicken out no matter how much I whine or moan. That's more related to stubbornness than it is any sort of bravery. So I changed out of my church clothes and we headed for the beach. I was going to do that thing where they strap you in a nice comfy safe cage and just drop you. But ohhh no. That would have been too easy. I was going to do something a little different. The Skycoaster is a sort of hang gliding substitute: you're strapped into nothing but a harness, lifted up by a cable to the top of a 100 foot tall tower and then dropped, after which you go flying through the air at about 50 miles an hour. Charming.
Now, to most people reading this, it probably doesn't sound that frightening or dramatic or challenging. However, you have to realize that I don't do things like this. Ever. Prior to this afternoon, just thinking about boarding a plane made dreams of Xanax dance in my head. It was that bad. As we walked to the ticket counter, I fought the urge to swipe Andrew's keys and bolt, my ignorance of how to drive a stick shift be damned. A few minutes later I found myself suspended a few inches above a metal platform with a harness strapped all about me, holding onto the blue metal bar in front of me for dear life. That, at least, was comforting. Something to hold on to. This wouldn't be quite so bad after all.
I had just gotten finished thinking that when the attendant told me to please let go of the blue metal bar. I did not want to let go of the blue metal bar, and I said so. However, it turned out that my beloved blue metal bar giving me some semblance of control was attached to the platform. Which was very firmly attached to the ground. Fantastic.
I let go and I felt that we were being drawn backwards and up. I locked arms with Andrew who had kindly agreed to go with me for moral support, and grasped at the only thing I had left to hold on to. Without even really thinking about it, I started in on the Trisagion while Andrew reminded me to keep my eyes open. And the view, I thought, really was quite lovely. My last "...Holy Immortal, have mercy on us" was abruptly cut short by Andrew Pulling the release cord.
When we were back on the ground, I was still kind of yelling, but it was more out of surprise than residual terror. The fall, the rush of air, release of control---when I actually experienced them, there wasn't any fear, not as I had long experienced it with both feet on the ground. It was something like it; closer to the Greek term for ecstasy, ekstasis, which literally translated means to go beyond, "stand" or otherwise "be outside" oneself. When I took my first breath after being pulled out of the harness, I felt as though a wide space had opened up in me where there had been a tight knot of fear and anxiety. The clenched fist I was had been cracked open, and all those ugly "what ifs" were thrown out with it. In their place something knew started trickling in---a curious thing I'd really once known and simply forgotten. That to love completely---both God and people---you must consent in humility to be subject to a free fall into who knows what. That the only real way of holding on to something worth anything is to simply let go.
---Gregory of Nyssa
Saturday night I was sitting on my parents' bed after a particularly awful day, whining to God and kind of feeling sorry for myself. You see, He'd kind of gotten in this nasty habit lately of throwing my tendency towards anxiety, fear, and control (or rather, the illusion of it) in my face. And I didn't like it. Not one bit, actually. Which was kind of stupid. Wasn't I the one who had naively prayed the week before for more opportunities to overcome my fear and trust Him? Oh. Right. That was me. Oops.
So there I was. I was sitting on my parents' bed because of a wasp. A wasp that I had discovered right around bedtime, crawling around my icon corner and buzzing. Menacingly. Since I couldn't find it after it buzzed off, and since I refused to sleep in the same room with a creature bearing a stinger, I was in my parents' vacant bedroom they use when they visit.
I had been run out of my own bedroom. By an insect. The bloody creature might as well have stared me down and hissed in a James Mason-esque voice "Where is your God now?" instead of sat there like it actually did preening itself in a way that in hindsight is actually kind of cute. That wasp was the last straw. I was letting my fear control me to the point where a two-inch long barely self aware bug had run me out of my own personal bubble. It didn't even have a skeleton for Heaven's sake.
The next morning I woke up and didn't feel any better. It was cloudy. My eyes were still puffy because I had fallen asleep the night before in mid-cry. I compensated in my usual way with slightly more makeup than usual---I've never really used makeup to make myself look better per se, but more of as a mask to hide behind; a bad habit I've mostly got rid of. Liturgy was a struggle to stay present. It was like St. Michael himself had to keep dragging me kicking and screaming away from all the little chaotic "what ifs" popping off in my head. And there I was demanding that God "show up"!
Right after Communion, something odd happened, some odd little jolt round my stomach and my throat that made me hold my hand to my mouth for a moment. Something in my being had had it. The way I saw it, I had two options. I could continue feeling miserable. Or, I could be strapped into a harness to a cable and dropped a 100 feet or so to the ground.
See, I have this thing with heights, always have. It's not really the heights that scare me, it's the prospect of falling. The possibility alone sent me screaming back to the elevator from the (fiberglas-walled) edge of the Top of the Rock observation deck when I was 15. The windy odyssey atop the Empire State Building I don't even want to go into. Over time, it became more than just heights and falling. It became a symbol, to me, for fear itself---fear, even, of God. And not the good kind of fear. More like the Jonah, hop-into-a-boat-and-run-away-because-I-can't-control-You sort of fear. Maybe a better word is cowardice.
I found Andrew after church. And before I knew it I just said it. "I have to go on the Skycoaster. Like, today. Now." He just smiled.
"Like, NOW, now?"
"Yeah. Like now."
This has been an ongoing thing with Andrew and I. The first time we ever hung out after he came back from California, he randomly proposed we go bungee jumping, or the Panama City Beach equivalent. Either way, it involved heights, falling, and a complete lack of control. A trifecta of pure horror for me. I vehemently declined, and he never let me forget it. For the past year.
I knew once I said I'd do it, I couldn't take it back or chicken out. If it's one thing I do, I don't generally chicken out no matter how much I whine or moan. That's more related to stubbornness than it is any sort of bravery. So I changed out of my church clothes and we headed for the beach. I was going to do that thing where they strap you in a nice comfy safe cage and just drop you. But ohhh no. That would have been too easy. I was going to do something a little different. The Skycoaster is a sort of hang gliding substitute: you're strapped into nothing but a harness, lifted up by a cable to the top of a 100 foot tall tower and then dropped, after which you go flying through the air at about 50 miles an hour. Charming.
Now, to most people reading this, it probably doesn't sound that frightening or dramatic or challenging. However, you have to realize that I don't do things like this. Ever. Prior to this afternoon, just thinking about boarding a plane made dreams of Xanax dance in my head. It was that bad. As we walked to the ticket counter, I fought the urge to swipe Andrew's keys and bolt, my ignorance of how to drive a stick shift be damned. A few minutes later I found myself suspended a few inches above a metal platform with a harness strapped all about me, holding onto the blue metal bar in front of me for dear life. That, at least, was comforting. Something to hold on to. This wouldn't be quite so bad after all.
I had just gotten finished thinking that when the attendant told me to please let go of the blue metal bar. I did not want to let go of the blue metal bar, and I said so. However, it turned out that my beloved blue metal bar giving me some semblance of control was attached to the platform. Which was very firmly attached to the ground. Fantastic.
I let go and I felt that we were being drawn backwards and up. I locked arms with Andrew who had kindly agreed to go with me for moral support, and grasped at the only thing I had left to hold on to. Without even really thinking about it, I started in on the Trisagion while Andrew reminded me to keep my eyes open. And the view, I thought, really was quite lovely. My last "...Holy Immortal, have mercy on us" was abruptly cut short by Andrew Pulling the release cord.
When we were back on the ground, I was still kind of yelling, but it was more out of surprise than residual terror. The fall, the rush of air, release of control---when I actually experienced them, there wasn't any fear, not as I had long experienced it with both feet on the ground. It was something like it; closer to the Greek term for ecstasy, ekstasis, which literally translated means to go beyond, "stand" or otherwise "be outside" oneself. When I took my first breath after being pulled out of the harness, I felt as though a wide space had opened up in me where there had been a tight knot of fear and anxiety. The clenched fist I was had been cracked open, and all those ugly "what ifs" were thrown out with it. In their place something knew started trickling in---a curious thing I'd really once known and simply forgotten. That to love completely---both God and people---you must consent in humility to be subject to a free fall into who knows what. That the only real way of holding on to something worth anything is to simply let go.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Spanakorizo Is Spanakorizo Is Spanakorizo.
"Endeavor to attain to a child-like simplicity in your relations to men... Simplicity is man's highest good and dignity."
---St. John of Kronstadt
I really love cooking. I don't know exactly how it started; maybe it was the first time I put rosemary, gnocci dumplings, and sundried tomatoes in a pan together and nothing burst into a pillar of fire. But I thoroughly enjoy it, especially when I get to do it for other people. Whether it's making some nice warm pre-Sunday afternoon nap avgolemono for my boyfriend, or whipping up a big greasy potato-pepper-tomato-onion-bacon fry-up for a few tequila-addled friends at 2 AM, I really like it. As much as I like it, I absolutely hate that term "foodie" that I keep seeing popping up on Amazon and the Food Network (which, curiously, I never ever watch). To me it conjures up images of that one lady on the Food Network whose entire kitchen, cookware, and place setting have to match. Every. Single. Episode. -shudder- It smacks of pretentiousness. I like nice presentation as much as the next person, but please. I just like to cook, okay? As the lovely J.R.R Tolkien put it:
"Beer, cheese, pastry, a little wine, good simple food: none of that cuisine mystique."
I guess, contrary to all my distaste for pretentiousness, I HAVE rather developed my own philosophy on food as I've taught myself to cook in the past year or so, against the backdrop of moving out on my own, joining the Orthodox Church, and inviting more people into my life. For one, I don't like "chick food". I was not raised to nibble matchstick-thin slices of carrot and drink nutrition shakes. No sir. Turnip greens, jambalya, cornbread, sweet tea, and venison; that's where these curves came from. I will never turn my nose up at anything more "gourmet" or more "artsy"...if I'm specifically going to a restaurant like Firefly or Commander's palace, where I know what I'm getting.
As I mentioned before, I like to cook for people more than for myself. To me it is a further extension of my affection and love for the people I am cooking for, one of the most basic acts of hospitality---throughout human history, cooking and eating has been a social event, anchoring a group of people together in one common place, if only for a little while. That is why I like for my food to be simple. My goal is not to visually impress people with what I make, or to make the actual food the main focus of the meal. There is something to be said for serving meals in such ways that create a certain "atmosphere" or aesthetic (I will never ever get over how Commander's Palace serves their creme brulee with a powdered sugar fleur de lis in the middle. Tickles me every time), and I always try to make everything I serve "look nice" (for some reason I have a weird thing with color. Especially in fruit dishes. 0_o). I do like to get a little creative and artsy now and then---but for heaven's sake, it's going on my table not in an art gallery. It would be an offense against hospitality if I sacrificed taste or quantity for trying to make my spanakorizo into a replica of Mount Olympus. Go too far into "food art" territory and you're getting into what C.S. Lewis termed "the gluttony of delicacy": not necessarily consuming every morsel of food in sight, but being so anal retentive about food that you're an absolute terror to cooks and guests and party hosts alike. So WHAT if the avgolemono that I brought to the church New Years' Party wasn't as thick and colorful as it usually is? Along with the ouzo, it made a nice warm comforting dish on a cold evening that everyone enjoyed and thanked me for. Get too fussy about how "creative" your food is, and you're turning what you eat into an edible idol. Which saves one a lot of grief come Lent---if you're pretty unattached to the food you already eat on a regular basis, you won't be that guy who sits there stocking up on almond milk, boca burgers, and soy bacon, completely missing the bloody point of why we're fasting in the first place.
Unfortunately, I don't have many resources when it comes to my idea of simple food. Believe me you, there are a sickening amount of cookbooks out there that would have you believe that the only way to make a good meal is by purchasing eleventy jillion dollars of equipment and selling your soul to Julia Child. Hell, some even begin with "if you don't own -insert latest development in cooking technology here- you may as well put this book down right now." In my desperation I have even turned to the cuisine found in Lord of the Rings, which often has a rustic character to it. That's right. I had to turn to a fantasy novel to find simple food I could cook without having a bionic kitchen. The bible of Greek cooking, Vefa's Kitchen has yielded some happy results for me (such as the avgolemono and spanakorizo I'm so fond of), but a lot of Greek cooking involves extensive salting, soaking, and/or draining periods I just don't have time for, plus a lot of ingredients you will never find in Panama City (lamb's pluck and raw sea urchin? I don't think so).
And then I found this website.
Ok, people, bear with me here. At first when I stumbled across it, I thought I was going to find a bunch of recipes for "Ye Olde Macaronie and Chease", or an academic overview of a whole bunch of complicated recipes in languages only linguistics graduate students could understand. But actually, it's all really simple, fresh, hearty stuff that almost anyone can make, and for an even nicer plus it all looks fairly healthy. If you've always wanted to teach yourself how to cook but have been too intimidated by aforementioned "you-don't-know-Jack-about-cooking-so-just-put-this-book-down-right-now-and-go-nurse-your-withering-self-esteem-in-a-corner" cookbooks, or want to throw a little variety into your cooking, I'd recommend browsing through this site. In the coming weeks, I'll be cooking my way through 14th century France; I'll post each recipe I try out and see what happens. Up next: blancmanger with barley water!
---St. John of Kronstadt
I really love cooking. I don't know exactly how it started; maybe it was the first time I put rosemary, gnocci dumplings, and sundried tomatoes in a pan together and nothing burst into a pillar of fire. But I thoroughly enjoy it, especially when I get to do it for other people. Whether it's making some nice warm pre-Sunday afternoon nap avgolemono for my boyfriend, or whipping up a big greasy potato-pepper-tomato-onion-bacon fry-up for a few tequila-addled friends at 2 AM, I really like it. As much as I like it, I absolutely hate that term "foodie" that I keep seeing popping up on Amazon and the Food Network (which, curiously, I never ever watch). To me it conjures up images of that one lady on the Food Network whose entire kitchen, cookware, and place setting have to match. Every. Single. Episode. -shudder- It smacks of pretentiousness. I like nice presentation as much as the next person, but please. I just like to cook, okay? As the lovely J.R.R Tolkien put it:
"Beer, cheese, pastry, a little wine, good simple food: none of that cuisine mystique."
I guess, contrary to all my distaste for pretentiousness, I HAVE rather developed my own philosophy on food as I've taught myself to cook in the past year or so, against the backdrop of moving out on my own, joining the Orthodox Church, and inviting more people into my life. For one, I don't like "chick food". I was not raised to nibble matchstick-thin slices of carrot and drink nutrition shakes. No sir. Turnip greens, jambalya, cornbread, sweet tea, and venison; that's where these curves came from. I will never turn my nose up at anything more "gourmet" or more "artsy"...if I'm specifically going to a restaurant like Firefly or Commander's palace, where I know what I'm getting.
As I mentioned before, I like to cook for people more than for myself. To me it is a further extension of my affection and love for the people I am cooking for, one of the most basic acts of hospitality---throughout human history, cooking and eating has been a social event, anchoring a group of people together in one common place, if only for a little while. That is why I like for my food to be simple. My goal is not to visually impress people with what I make, or to make the actual food the main focus of the meal. There is something to be said for serving meals in such ways that create a certain "atmosphere" or aesthetic (I will never ever get over how Commander's Palace serves their creme brulee with a powdered sugar fleur de lis in the middle. Tickles me every time), and I always try to make everything I serve "look nice" (for some reason I have a weird thing with color. Especially in fruit dishes. 0_o). I do like to get a little creative and artsy now and then---but for heaven's sake, it's going on my table not in an art gallery. It would be an offense against hospitality if I sacrificed taste or quantity for trying to make my spanakorizo into a replica of Mount Olympus. Go too far into "food art" territory and you're getting into what C.S. Lewis termed "the gluttony of delicacy": not necessarily consuming every morsel of food in sight, but being so anal retentive about food that you're an absolute terror to cooks and guests and party hosts alike. So WHAT if the avgolemono that I brought to the church New Years' Party wasn't as thick and colorful as it usually is? Along with the ouzo, it made a nice warm comforting dish on a cold evening that everyone enjoyed and thanked me for. Get too fussy about how "creative" your food is, and you're turning what you eat into an edible idol. Which saves one a lot of grief come Lent---if you're pretty unattached to the food you already eat on a regular basis, you won't be that guy who sits there stocking up on almond milk, boca burgers, and soy bacon, completely missing the bloody point of why we're fasting in the first place.
Unfortunately, I don't have many resources when it comes to my idea of simple food. Believe me you, there are a sickening amount of cookbooks out there that would have you believe that the only way to make a good meal is by purchasing eleventy jillion dollars of equipment and selling your soul to Julia Child. Hell, some even begin with "if you don't own -insert latest development in cooking technology here- you may as well put this book down right now." In my desperation I have even turned to the cuisine found in Lord of the Rings, which often has a rustic character to it. That's right. I had to turn to a fantasy novel to find simple food I could cook without having a bionic kitchen. The bible of Greek cooking, Vefa's Kitchen has yielded some happy results for me (such as the avgolemono and spanakorizo I'm so fond of), but a lot of Greek cooking involves extensive salting, soaking, and/or draining periods I just don't have time for, plus a lot of ingredients you will never find in Panama City (lamb's pluck and raw sea urchin? I don't think so).
And then I found this website.
Ok, people, bear with me here. At first when I stumbled across it, I thought I was going to find a bunch of recipes for "Ye Olde Macaronie and Chease", or an academic overview of a whole bunch of complicated recipes in languages only linguistics graduate students could understand. But actually, it's all really simple, fresh, hearty stuff that almost anyone can make, and for an even nicer plus it all looks fairly healthy. If you've always wanted to teach yourself how to cook but have been too intimidated by aforementioned "you-don't-know-Jack-about-cooking-so-just-put-this-book-down-right-now-and-go-nurse-your-withering-self-esteem-in-a-corner" cookbooks, or want to throw a little variety into your cooking, I'd recommend browsing through this site. In the coming weeks, I'll be cooking my way through 14th century France; I'll post each recipe I try out and see what happens. Up next: blancmanger with barley water!
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