Category: Life

Because of my long background as a Protestant, I have to admit that there are a lot things about Orthodoxy that I’ve categorized as “strange.” Don’t misunderstand me. It’s all beautiful and filled with incredible meaning and mystery. In fact, I’m sure it’s “strange” to me only because of my context. The more acclimated I become to life in the Orthodox Church, the more natural everything seems. For example, I can no longer imagine a Christian life or worship without icons, incense, chanting, liturgy and a priest, just to name a few aspects.

But I think the one thing that will take much more time to become natural is being out of sync with the rest of my culture in celebrating Easter. The Orthodox Church uses a different calendar in regards to Easter than pretty much the rest of Western Christianity. So rarely does Orthodox Pascha (Easter) fall on the same Sunday as Western Easter. Some years, like this year, the two Easters are a week apart (Orthodox Easter is April 19th while everyone else celebrates Easter on April 12th). Some years, like last year, the two Easters are almost a month apart. Frankly, it’s really weird.

Both my family and Debbie’s family are evangelical Christians. Many of our friends are evangelical Christians. And so, as we approach this weekend, there have been many well-wishes of a “Happy Easter.” I see signs and banners everywhere for Easter services this weekend. My kids have been on Spring break this week. I even get a 1/2 day holiday at work for Good Friday. We’ll probably get together with our families this Sunday, and maybe even have an Easter egg hunt for the kids.

I’m glad Easter is celebrated in our culture. And I’m so thrilled that many people in our lives truly know and celebrate Christ’s resurrection. But it’s so strange delaying our actual celebration while the “rest of the world” prepares for this holiday. As I just mentioned, we’ll join in some of our families’ celebration, but not fully. For what’s Easter’s joy without first journeying through Holy Week?

While Holy Week is climaxing this weekend for those around us, it’s just starting for my family and parish tomorrow with Lazarus Saturday and then moving into Palm Sunday this coming Sunday. Now that I think about it, it’s going to be odd this Sunday morning when our parish processes outside with palm branches the same day all the surrounding churches will be celebrating Easter. And on that same day, my family will move from Palm Sunday and the anticipation of Christ’s death directly into the joy of Easter with our families and then back into the somberness of Holy Week with our parish through the rest of the week.

This weekend is a microcosm of our family’s life as new Orthodox Christians. We always feel just slightly out of sync with the rest of our Christian family members and friends. I’m not complaining, mind you. Debbie and I value the people God has placed in our lives and we have chosen to live closely with them. So that often means coping with quizzical looks when we try to explain why we pray differently, worship differently, eat differently, celebrate strange feasts days, go to confession, use odd words (like Pascha), and say and do a host of other things that are part of our Orthodox life.

Yet I wouldn’t have it any other way. I love Orthodoxy. I love being an Orthodox Christian. Journeying through Lent this year as part of the Orthodox Church has reminded me how much I need the fullness of Christ’s life that is in Holy Orthodoxy. As I’ve alluded in my last several posts, I sense something has “clicked” inside of me. In fact, it’s probably more accurate to say that something that was hindering me “broke” a couple of weeks ago. As I continue settling into Orthodoxy, I’m sensing increasing clarity and stability in my relationship with God, his people and myself. The fears that have whispered to me these last several years are becoming silent, replaced with a growing confidence to move boldly back into life.

“It is easy indeed to confess that I have not fasted on prescribed days, or missed my prayers, or become angry. It is quite a different thing, however, to realize suddenly that I have defiled and lost my spiritual beauty, that I am far away from my real home, my real life, and that something precious and pure and beautiful has been hopelessly broken in the very texture of my existence.”

Alexander Schmemann, Great Lent

This is the heart of repentance. This is where God’s grace really performs its work during times like Great Lent. Not only do our attitudes, words and actions bob to the surface of my life, but I actually come to grips with the fact that the very waters of my life are turbid and rancid. As Fr Schmemann puts it, I’ve lost my spiritual beauty and something precious, pure and beautiful has been hopelessly broken in the very texture of my existence. I live with this keen awareness during Great Lent. And yet, even this is God’s abundant grace. For it compels my heart to cry out, “Lord, have mercy on me a sinner” and to strain toward the renewed life and creation of Pascha.

“Our culture prefers effortless spontaneity with occasional divine intervention in emergencies.”

So states NT Wright in a recent lecture on Christian virtue called, “Learning the Language of Life.” That one sentence describes most of my early Christian formation, so I feel like I’ve been playing “catch-up” the last decade as a Christian.

One of the reasons why I love Lent is that it exposes my bad habits that interfere with my development into Christ’s likeness — my laziness, gluttony, pride, lust, depression, anger, and greed. And those are just the ones I’m aware of. Sheesh. Most of the time, these things remain hidden in the murky shadows of my heart. But during times like Lent, and especially during Lent, I become aware of this foulness within me.

But to use a sports metaphor, the pain of having these areas exposed is like the soreness I feel when I increase my exercise regimen. The tearing down of my physical muscles is required for the rebuilding of newer, stronger muscles.

It’s similar in the spiritual life. As Wright also states in his lecture, “Everything we do is habit-forming.” Unfortunately, I’ve developed a lot of bad habits. They need to be torn down in order for new ones to be developed. And every year, Lent plays an important role in this ongoing process.

But you may ask, “What about grace?” And the simple answer is that the entire process is grace. By grace, God saw the world’s plight and acted. By grace, God forgives. By grace, God summons us to him. By grace, God immerses us into his Church. By grace, God fills us with his Spirit. By grace, God calls us to participate with him in ours and the world’s continuing renewal.

God’s grace and my effort go hand-in-hand. Not equally, mind you. God’s grace far surpasses any effort I exert. But my exertion and concentration are necessary. It’s how my will, mind, body and emotions actually get face-time with God’s grace. And one day, the proper habits that require so much effort now, will become second nature. They will require less exertion and less concentration as they become deeply embodied within who I am. As that happens, I will be increasingly prepared to live in God’s renewed world, not just in the future, but even here in the present.

I’ve been rereading parts of Bishop Kallistos Ware’s The Orthodox Way, specifically the chapter entitled “God as Creator.”

There are some ideas and quotes in this chapter that keep pinging around in my head. Ware states that God has formed two levels of created things: the “noetic” or “spiritual” level and the “material” or “bodily” level. He then states, “Man, and man alone, exists on both levels at once.” This is fascinating to me. In all of God’s vast creation, humanity alone is created to exist and interact on both levels of creation.

Ware then states that by being designed to participate on both levels of creation, humanity is a microcosm of the entirety of creation. And as such, humanity is also the mediator of creation:

“It is his [humanity’s] God-given task to reconcile and harmonize the noetic and the material realms, to bring them to unity, to spiritualize the material, and to render manifest all the latent capacities of the created order… As microcosm, then, man is the one in whom the world is summed up; as mediator, he is the one through whom the world is offered back to God.”

I love what this implies. At the ontological level, humanity is created uniquely to live and play simultaneously on both dimensions of creation. At the operational level, humanity’s vocation is, in Ware’s words, “to manifest the spiritual in and through the material.”

I am designed to manifest the spiritual in and through all of the details and activities of my material life. Talk about “fear and trembling!” How I talk, relate, work, think, eat, drive, pray, write, listen, play, rest, and much more are to be ways in which I manifest the spiritual in and through the material. That means I must learn to live every part of my life beyond the material or bodily level of my existence — beyond passions, reason, and even will.

But wait there’s more! Not only are humans designed to be miniature creations, the places where the two dimensions of creation — heaven and earth — come together and are offered back to God, but we are also made in God’s image. Ware states, “Man is the finite expression of God’s infinite self-expression.” My life is to reflect the life and character of God.

In other words, we are not only the image and expression of creation to God, we are also the image and expression of God to creation.

There is so much that can and should be said beyond the scope of this simple post. However, my intention was to refocus my own vision back onto what human life and vocation are all about.

I’m ashamed to admit that I’m easily distracted. I too easily let busyness, worries, fears, desires and other “bright and shiny things” distract me. So I’m hoping that during this Great Lent, my Lord takes me a couple of small steps closer to realizing my vocation in his kingdom. My life is to be both the image of creation and the the image of God. My life is to be the place where heaven and earth are stitched back together. My vocation is to participate in Christ’s ultimate vocation of bringing together and reconciling all things in heaven and earth (Eph 1:10 & Col 1:19-20). And my life is to be his life, the very life of Christ surging and spilling out of me like rivers of living water (Gal 2:20 & John 7:38).

Fr Stephen has posted a wonderful excerpt from Dr. Kalomiros’ book, Nostalgia for Paradise. These thoughts on the Orthodox life are so balanced and come to me at such an appropriate time. Just a couple of nights ago, Debbie and I were talking about my self-imposed spiritual disciplines as a Protestant. And just the other day, Fr Patrick was reminding me of our family’s need to spend time learning a new rhythm of being Orthodox.

Now I read Dr. Kalomiro’s words and quite frankly, I just want to cry. I want to cry out of repentance for the pride and hardness created by imposing practices upon myself that were beyond the measure of grace given to me. I want to cry out of joy for the beautiful vision of what a true human life in Christ looks like. And I want to cry out of thankfulness for now being a member of a Church that can actually nurture me with wisdom into the life in Christ for which I have longed. 

There is so much in this short excerpt that grips me. If I were to cut and paste good quotes, I would need to simply paste the entire excerpt. But this one paragraph is the clincher for me. I dream of living this kind of life:

“It is a modest soul that is out of its waters in the limelight of men but blooms in solitude and quiet. It is a heart free to its very roots, impervious to every kind of pressure, far from every kind of stench, untouched by any kind of chains. It distinguishes truth from falsehood with a certain mystic sense. Its every breath offers gratitude for all of God’s works that surround it and for every joy and every affliction, for every possession, and for every privation as well. Crouching humbly on the Cornerstone which is Christ, it drinks unceasingly of the eternal water of Paradise and utters the Name of Him who was and is ever merciful. Such a soul is like a shady tree by the running waters of the Church, with deep roots and a high crown where kindred souls find comfort and refuge in its dense branches.”

Fr Stephen posts a great reminder of how the small thoughts, attitudes and actions in our daily lives are so important. When I was a younger man, my goal was to do great things for God. I dreamt of leaving a magnificent legacy that would far outlive my earthly life. My sight was always straining toward the horizon, waiting for that moment when I would do something big for God.

Now I’m a bit older and hopefully a bit wiser. And with some age, my goals have changed. I strive to be a good husband, a good father, a good friend and hopefully a good man. And this is lived out not by great momentous deeds, but by the many small, insignificant moments in my life. An encouraging smile. An attentive ear. A compassionate hand. And as my gaze shifts from the horizon to the present moment, I can better see what Fr Stephen describes in his closing thought:

“This is the day of salvation. It may come in a thousand discreet moments, every one of which is alive with the fire of God.”

May I learn more and more to be warmed and ignited by the fire within these moments.

Fr Stephen posts a meditation offered by Met. Kallistos Ware. You can read the entire post HERE. The quote below contains the final thoughts of that meditation:

“Do we reflect sufficiently, I wonder, upon the environmental implications of our Lord’s Incarnation, upon the way in which Jesus is ecologically inclusive, embedded in the soil like us, containing within His humanity what has been termed ‘the whole evolving earth story’?

“Do we allow properly for the fact that our Savior came to redeem, not only the human race, but the fullness of creation? Do we keep constantly in mind that we are not saved from but with the world?

“Such, then, is our Orthodox vision of creation; such is our vocation as priests of the created order; such is our Christian reponse to the ecological crisis. Such is the deeper meaning implicit in the words that we say daily at the beginning of Vespers: ‘Bless the Lord, O my soul’.”

I love the thought of Jesus being “ecologically inclusive, embedded in the soil like us.” I am so thrilled that Orthodoxy has such a vibrant understanding of Creation. The Church’s understanding of Christ’s Incarnation provides the ultimate framework for a sound theology of and ministry toward Creation.

In fact, since 1989, much of the Orthodox Church observes September 1, the first day of the Church’s liturgical year, as the Feast of Creation. In a paper called, “Orthodox Liturgy and the Care for Creation,” Bishop Irineu offers the following thought:

“The vocation of humanity, as shown in liturgical theology, is not to dominate and exploit nature, but to transfigure and hallow it. In a variety of ways – through the cultivation of the earth, through craftsmanship, through the writing of books and the painting of icons – humanity gives material things a voice and renders the creation articulate in praise of God.”

Christ’s Incarnation fulfills humanity’s divine mandate in Genesis to be the stewards and caretakers of Creation. He is the ultimate steward of Creation, rescuing both his eternal family of co-stewards and Creation itself from the clutches of brokenness, sin and death. Jesus tramples down death and offers his life, which enables us to embrace our true vocation as Creation’s cultivators and craftsmen that gives it a voice of praise to God.