Pendulum

A few weeks ago, in May, I typed up the following. Rereading it in June I decide, perhaps foolishly, I will post it. If anybody wishes to come over to my house and engage regarding my subjects, I'll fix tea and toast. (You may wish to come by and egg our front window instead, and I wouldn't blame you, but we won't have tea. Just toast. Well, maybe some Oregon Chai.)

It is Ascension, and I am observing my philosophy.

What I mean by that sentence’s first part is that today Orthodox Christians remember Christ’s leaving-taking of His apostles by rising from where they stood, with a cloud hiding Him from their sight. A couple of beings appeared as this happened and told the apostles that Jesus, who was taken up from them into heaven, would “return in like manner as you saw Him go.”

Stumble into St. John’s today and you’ll hear people saying, “Christ is ascended!” Others respond, “From earth to heaven.”

Along with Christians everywhere, I’ve long been familiar with this piece of the biblical narrative. I’ve categorized it as pretty straightforward. Today, because of the unfamiliar, two-part greeting I just mentioned, I pause and consider it further. If I weren’t a Christian, I suppose to me this would be another facet of an ancient myth. I’d see the role of this ascension chapter in the story as explaining why Jesus Christ, having risen from death and being understood as now living an eternal life, is not seen. He is somewhere else, the narrative explains.

This isn’t the story of an invisible creature kept in shirt pockets or a genie’s lamp. There is no “tending” necessary of this Being. Whatever He is doing, so the story goes, it isn’t up to the ones who know Him to make sure He is comfortable or happy. The followers, from the biblical account, have roles to play in the spread of the message about this One, who was on earth but rose into heaven.

I find, in my continuing immersion into Orthodox Christianity, numerous additional tools for understanding the context of that time around the Ascension, which I believe, in my Bible-as-true mindset, is a true historical happening. Of course I have the option to accept or reject the new/old things I learn from Orthodoxy as being myth or history. I’m definitely in a credulous state at this point. I mean, I’ve investigated other stories from other Christianity-related groups. The ones I studied before had a certain defensive sheen to them, a particular packaged feel. My conclusions about those groups’ accounts were that they made up things about Jesus/faith/practice and then invented narratives or additions to Scripture to go with them, to enhance their credibility among adherents.

All I can say about the Orthodox Christian accounts so far is they’re darn consistent, internally and with the Bible as I have understood it. These tools/interpretations/aids to context get shared mainly in the church services, each of which continues to be an amazing journey whenever I venture in.

Which, I know, might mean I am experiencing an emotional high, an infatuation with liturgical situations. Or it could mean there’s something so real going on I have overcome my natural allergy to ritual in order to get at it. An analogy might be the picture of disciples following Somebody who spoke and interacted with people they were naturally allergic to, such as “sinners” and Samaritans, even the odd Roman official. It must have made their families wonder if they had always secretly wished to convert to paganism.

But, ugh. You can hear my defensive sheen, can’t you? I do not rise to the quality and consistency — nowhere near — that I’ve been finding in the Orthodox services. I’m a poor choice to keep listening to about this way. Yet I keep talking about it.

The other, related aspect of today for me is stated in my opening sentence: I’m observing my philosophy. Having stepped back, or made a pendulum swing, from viewpoints I had lived in, I’ve been working with the idea of argument as my standard. I feel the need to sell and to persuade — is such a trait peculiar to Western thinking? This is what I wonder. Involved would be the idea that even a desire for stirring up gentle intrigue in people is a form of salesmanship.

Yet the Apostle Paul did that, my understanding says. He stood up in Athens to speak to the crowd, using ideas with which they were familiar. The unknown god. The quest for something new. Paul had truly experienced something new. Maybe more significantly, he had been sent with a message about it. Not a performance, study, workshop, or self-help infomercial. An experience he believed had happened with a Person. He couldn’t help but speak.

Sea of great mercy

Reading more and more lately, I still feel as though I have moved perhaps a half-inch inside the doorway of a boundless library. Naturally, I choose volumes close at hand. These tend to be by other folk who are also newbieish to the room, to the cavern abundantly full.

One such account, by a traveler to Mt. Athos in Greece, is Short Trip to the Edge: Where Earth Meets Heaven--A Pilgrimage. Scott Cairns is a poet, memoirist, and essayist, whose name I have long heard around a Christian literary publication with which I've helped out.

Far into the book, Cairns makes a distinction that rings true to me regarding salvation in the Orthodox Christian understanding. This is what I'll quote below. (He doesn't say anything about passion flowers, but there is one my son coaxed to blooming in our backyard, and I will share it below, as well.)

For the Orthodox, salvation, or "being saved," indicates a process rather than a moment. It is a process of being redeemed from separation from God, both now and later. It has very little to do with the popular sense of "going to heaven." The Orthodox have insisted, from their earliest canons on the matter, that salvation belongs to all humankind, not just to members of the Orthodox Church. Of course, they also insist that the most trustworthy road to participation in the saving life of God is revealed in the traditional teaching of that church.
~ Scott Cairns 

ministrations

Such an amazing time. I say this having sat opposite my future son-in-law one recent evening, enjoying his full laughter after I read from my journal something Victoria said at age six that just had to be shared. (Moms of little ones, write things down.) I say this having received today my final paycheck from the nonprofit job I took a little more than two years ago. (Now I'm really nonprofit.)

I say this having jotted thoughts today in my notebook about dear, Old Testament Job (whose name, I've learned, may have been shortened from Jobab) and then having written in my essay-in-progress about biking along the still winter-wide river one unseasonably warm morning (last week). "I pick out the notes of finches. Gentle airstreams carry a rose garden's fragrance." We'll see if those sentences remain intact or get edited away. Either way, I am working in the fields where I most yearn to labor. Finally, once more.

And so my blogging frequency may take a nosedive. As happens periodically, anyway. Before I flit off into my own writing and a certain wedding-approaches land, I wanted to let you know how our finch family fares.

Wifey has taken seriously her new role as mama finch. A couple weeks after she settled in, we spied the first nascent face. A tiny nestling.



Both parents share their duty, though I've only seen mama feed the brood and then sit on them. Papa goes off to rest somewhere. He spends other time periods chirping his vigilance, and then he returns with more for the hungry.



I think there are three. Growing, in bird fashion, swiftly. Receiving their ministrations, their sitting-upons, their first experiences of changeable weather (yesterday, thunder and raucous wind). They don't know they are leaving me much to ponder, food for my essays. They will simply do what they're interested in, what happens no matter how long a particular fledgling may take in creation to do so. They will test the warmest breezes, and they will fly.