To The Youth Of My Youth

While I’m sorry for many of the stupid and harmful things I did in my life, I hurt especially for all the times I peddled cheap grace to you in the form of a testimony. As I’ve grown older and watched how many of you have fallen away from the Faith, I fear I may ultimately be judged for it.

We had a pretty nice youth group (what with the big logos, huge sound system, Rick Warren-style programs, rock show worship) that we all felt pretty safe and happy in; our own little microcosm of what we were sure Heaven was like. Every Wednesday night we’d converge for worship, and we laughed together, cried, stretched, prayed. Our youth pastor would dazzle and challenge us, but in retrospect I see that we weren’t really into being challenged. It was just a larger and more organized version of a fellowship group, where all the show choir kids came together, the little group of cheer leaders, and the wannabe punk rock / hardcore kids, too. We had that crazy summer camp, too, and I honestly can’t recall one thing I learned other than that some pastors smoked cigars and drank (because I was 18 and a leader I was admitted into the “inner sanctum” of cleric off-duty time). Oh but I do recall being paraded around at camp (and youth group and other events) to lie to you about how much my life had changed since “being saved.”

Why a High Ecclesiology is Good for Your Worship

One thing remarkably different from most protestant churches is the Orthodox Church’s view of children in service, namely our lack of any form of nursery. We don’t deny any children to come to worship with us. It’s vitally important that children grow up in the Faith with the whole family of God; the Faith isn’t so esoteric and unapproachable that one has to be thirteen to come into it. Why do churches feel a need to separate the children from the adults? Well, sometimes they’re loud, ornery and super obnoxious, and that distracts people from worshipping. This post really isn’t exactly about children, but that the attitude is indicative of much greater problem, and that is the high view of personal, individual experience in worship.

Historically, Christianity was never a religion of the interpersonal relationship between God and one man. Christ’s death reconciled the entire world to God. Of course it’s up to the individual to respond to that salvation offered, but it’s not just a one-time thing. It requires a daily decision and choice to accept that salvation. One can also clearly see in Acts and the Pauline Epistles that there was a very heavy emphasis placed on communal responsibility for salvation, evangelization, and works of charity. Services consisted of communal praise, reading of scripture, a sermon, and Eucharist. There is next to nothing to be said about the individual’s experience, while Paul is very explicit to the Philippians when he writes ‘Work out your (collective) own salvation in fear and trembling; for God is at work in you (all).’ One really doesn’t see a individualistic view of salvation until the 16th century.

Poetry Wednesday – 1/27/2010

I don’t think this is true per se, and I really don’t want anyone to think this is how my life goes. It is a very clever 4-liner.

A Word to Husbands
by Ogden Nash

To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;
Whenever you’re right, shut up.

I’m Official!

Today I went down to Chicago to meet His Eminence Iakovos and I did receive his blessing to go to seminary in the fall. Jennifer wrote a blog about the news, and it’s far better than I could have done. I encourage you to read it!

Meeting the Metropolitan

Fr. Dokos informed me yesterday that I will be able to head back down to the Metropolis house to meet with His Eminence Iakovos this coming Tuesday. It’s great news for Jennifer and me because we’ve been extremely anxious to know if we’re going to be able to head to Holy Cross this coming fall semester. Things sound pretty promising as I’ve already had the chance to talk to His Grace Demetrios, and he told His Eminence that I was a “good boy.” (This sounded hilarious as I’m 28, but to a 82 year old monk I am but a boy.) So I’ll take an Amtrak from Milwaukee down to Chicago around 11am this Tuesday and will meet with His Eminence around 1:30 or so. I should have the decision shortly after that time. Then I’ll get home around 5, and it’s back to the church for Bible study at 6:30. I’m extremely excited; I can hardly wait.

I bought His Eminence some cognac. I've never had cognac before. It has a cute little Panther on it; that's all I know.

Poetry Wednesday – 1/20/2010

This could be the forever note on the fridge. I always eat all the leftovers, all the good food.

This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

Poetry Wednesday – 01/13/2010

I love this poem because how true it rings to my own life. God called me to be a priest when I was 17 after a many-year period of dangerous living. I then spent the next ten years running from the call, making excuses and crafting (what I considered to be) clever workarounds. I would say that I’d go make some money and then be a priest later, or maybe be a deacon so I could have a profession of some nature and live comfortably. Every time I did one of these things my life got frustrated; progress was always stunted, Jenny and I couldn’t conceive, I never made any money and we were never comfortable. And no wonder – in essence I wasn’t doing anything different than the author of this poem. When I finally accepted my charge and went to seminary everything fell into place.

Quid Pro Quo
by Paul Mariani

Just after my wife’s miscarriage (her second
in four months), I was sitting in an empty
classroom exchanging notes with my friend,
a budding Joyce scholar with steelrimmed
glasses, when, lapsed Irish Catholic that he was,
he surprised me by asking what I thought now
of God’s ways toward man. It was spring,

such spring as came to the flintbacked Chenango
Valley thirty years ago, the full force of Siberia
behind each blast of wind. Once more my poor wife
was in the local four-room hospital, recovering.
The sun was going down, the room’s pinewood panels
all but swallowing the gelid light, when, suddenly,
I surprised not only myself but my colleague

by raising my middle finger up to heaven, quid
pro quo, the hardly grand defiant gesture a variant
on Vanni Fucci’s figs, shocking not only my friend
but in truth the gesture’s perpetrator too. I was 24,
and, in spite of having pored over the Confessions
& that Catholic Tractate called the Summa, was sure
I’d seen enough of God’s erstwhile ways toward man.

That summer, under a pulsing midnight sky
shimmering with Van Gogh stars, in a creaking,
cedarscented cabin off Lake George, having lied
to the gentrified owner of the boys’ camp
that indeed I knew wilderness & lakes and could,
if need be, lead a whole fleet of canoes down
the turbulent whitewater passages of the Fulton Chain

(I who had last been in a rowboat with my parents
at the age of six), my wife and I made love, trying
not to disturb whosever headboard & waterglass
lie just beyond the paperthin partition at our feet.
In the great black Adirondack stillness, as we lay
there on our sagging mattress, my wife & I gazed out
through the broken roof into a sky that seemed

somehow to look back down on us, and in that place,
that holy place, she must have conceived again,
for nine months later in a New York hospital she
brought forth a son, a little buddha-bellied
rumplestiltskin runt of a man who burned
to face the sun, the fact of his being there
both terrifying & lifting me at once, this son,

this gift, whom I still look upon with joy & awe. Worst,
best, just last year, this same son, grown
to manhood now, knelt before a marble altar to vow
everything he had to the same God I had had my own
erstwhile dealings with. How does one bargain
with a God like this, who, quid pro quo, ups
the ante each time He answers one sign with another?

See Josh Mock’s contribution and my lovely wife’s.

Poetry Wednesday – 1/06/2010

I’m back again after a busy couple of weeks. Today I wanted to share a poem I wrote in a creative writing class I took. Post up if you’re joining me.

The Trouble With Children’s Poor Dining Etiquette

The door is closing on my life.
I feel my legs burning and
I ponder how terribly hungry
I was and still am. No last meal for me.
Those stupid little brats (my food!)
are now running away, laughing.

I sat in my little forest home,
wishing for something more delicious
than grass to eat. I needed flesh and bone.
Then children arrived and ate my door,
I had finally found what I was looking for.
But these children wouldn’t have it.

What ever happened to obeying your elders?
Oh the attitudes of this new generation!
When I was their age, if an old woman told me
to jump into the oven, I’d do it without question.
Oh you stupid sneaky little brats!
If my muscles weren’t fusing I’d teach you a lesson.

I remember as the flesh falls off my hands
the story that my mother told me;
about the faithful who were burned
but not one man perished in the flames.
They all stood their ground. God protected them.
They all walked out.

I’m not saying I am pious
but at least I could have stopped them.
The fire would not have touched me.
I wouldn’t perish in the flames.
I was hoping the kids were kidding
but I’m left to burn to death.

So far Josh Mock has joined me!

Poetry Hiatus

Very sorry that I’ve missed Poetry Wednesday for the last two weeks. Last week we were trying to get ready for Christmas so I missed it. When we got back from visiting family I got sick, then Jenny got sick, and Adeline is coming down with something as well; I’m pulling double duty as Super Dad/Husband. Next week I will resume poetry.

A Year Ago Today: 12-19-2008

Today Jennifer and I are going through a years worth of videos and pictures that have been haphazardly thrown onto the computer. While going though the December folder I found pictures of Adeline that were taken one year ago today, and I’m completely blown away by how much she’s grown. One day after entering this world Adeline weighed just shy of 5 1/2 pounds; she was certainly a peanut. One year ago she had just started trying to sit up on her own. Now she’s telling me what a duck “says,” that she’d like a “manana” to eat, and is very capable of dancing wildly to any music. Jenny and I are both very blessed to be in the situation that we’re in right now (that being me in seminary and her working part time) where we’ve been able to experience nearly every waking moment in these 16 months of Adeline’s life. It feels very foreign to imagine what life was like before fatherhood; much like it’s foreign to not feel Adeline trying to scale my leg while I’m typing at the computer. I have no wise words nor insights to this. I’m just a very proud, very happy father, who is ineffably thankful to his Father for getting the opportunity to raise and safeguard this little soul.

She's grown to not like being strapped down, preferring instead to use the high chair as a lounger.

Before bed we say goodnight to the Panagia and Jesus. To make it a little easier we've hung an icon at her level. Funny part of this is she'll now venerate the entire bottom row of icons at our church bookstore.