absurdity regained

Lately there's an aspect to my life -- no, it's a quality; perhaps a foundation -- whatever it is, my mind keeps saying to define it I should use the word absurd.

Not absurd in the same sense that an expiration date on the package bottom of my cat's kibble treats is absurd.

Not absurd in the sense that all political machinations are absurd.

Not even absurd in the sense that my fleeting desire to comment on blogs and state my case and defend myself and say so, there, ha! is absurd.

It's the sense of absurdity (for lack of the better word I haven't yet discovered) I felt decades ago at college, when Grandma Edna would invite me for a Sunday afternoon drive, I would tell her I had midterms to study for, and she'd promise to get me home soon. After three, maybe four hours into her possession, having visited the Coburg truck stop to meet Uncle Jim, a pause at somebody's Aunt Irmine's place, and detours down alleys I'd never known existed, Grandma Edna would realize she needed to be sure and pick up my cousin in Roseburg (an hour away south) by 5:00, and the bus back to campus would put me there no later than six, she was certain, so here you go, big smiles, Bye, Darlin'. Of course my day would be shot. But of course I could only grin a small grin in something like amazement.

I mean, somehow I recognized that soon I would forget most every informational tidbit my midterm would show I had memorized. Yet the days with Grandma Edna, the wondrous absurdity of her joy while unintentionally restructuring my plans, and her wide-brimmed black hat's tilt atop her pearly hair, would always remain with me.

The love in Grandma Edna's smile and the fullness of adventures we had encountered surrounded me with a quality of joy -- an illumination. I saw the amazing absurdity of living real life.

Maybe I experienced the tiniest smidge of what I sense Jesus gave Himself over to -- being in the moment, being footsore, carrying crippled children, waiting for an apostle to pack loaves of bread baked by women dwelling at the edge of town.

My current Sunday mornings are like this. Absurd in the fullness of old ladies' embraces and kisses, and of tiny children toddle-stepping/dancing, drawn to the Nave's front, their baby running shoes lighting up pink neon, their mothers like zephyrs inevitably behind them, their bright faces toward an altar, a communion of souls with reality.

blanketed

Candles in the window and depth outside. A garden disappeared. Glances into gray that kept sending white.

Not used to snowstorms, I loved the change. The easy banter on social networks -- something to say! But what will nature do to us? New growth chilled. Ah, only for those two days. Amazing how so much springs back.

Yet last week my heart had lifted at the sight of Rosewood Avenue's "popcorn tree," its snowy blossoms captivating.


Today it is no more.

Since the Gospel was preached in this world, all attempts to go back to a pure "pagan joy," all "renaissances," all "healthy optimisms" were bound to fail...And it is this sadness that permeates mysteriously the whole life of the world, its frantic and pathetic hunger and thirst for perfection, which kills all joy...


Yet, on the other hand...through the Cross, joy came into the whole world. This joy is pure joy because it does not depend on anything in this world, and is not a reward of anything in us. It is totally and absolutely a gift, the 'charis,' the grace. And being pure gift, this joy has a transforming power.
~ Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World

The prejudice of me

I’m not one who can evaluate anything while it’s going on; not until I’ve had some time to look back on it. And what I mean by evaluating the thing I’m looking back on is putting it into words.

This past year I’ve had something going on, and a lot of related somethings, and there are still a billion more somethings I can glimpse up ahead. So it’s difficult to put any of it into words. But some of the somethings are in hindsight coming clearer into focus. Thus another stab at vocabulariness.

One of the Orthodox prayers includes this phrase: “Dispel the prejudice of the nations.” When I take time to reflect, those words blow me away. What an amazing thing to ask for. Of course it’s impossible. An impossibility for men, for the human race, the fleshly nature. But, wow, wouldn’t it be something? What if…

(I’ll insert here a thought I had last month or thereabouts regarding prayer. Praying in the Orthodox Christian context has led me to conclude that, perhaps, prayer is simply speaking truth and asking for a blessing. This fits what I have seen in the past, as I was being tutored in how to learn ultimate concepts. This fits what I now see, hear, handle, breathe, and speak. It’s the pattern in Orthodoxy; it is how you pray. Scripture is woven throughout Orthodox prayers, as it is within the services. Also the New Testament, according to Orthodoxy, is sprinkled with earliest prayers — benedictions and so on — of the Church.)

Back to the question I started above. What if prejudice could be dispelled?  What I’ve seen so far regarding prejudice, as it's dawning on me these days, is that prejudice doesn’t come down to me from lofty, political positions. It doesn’t seep over to me, either, from small-minded family traditions in backwoods communities. The prejudice I need to have dispelled comes from within myself.

It involves assumptions. Maybe assumptions are the bricks that stack themselves precisely, solidly, into barracks of prejudice. Yet assumptions aren’t the evil deal. The evil comes from my choices to remain blind and asleep. This is where Jesus’s words can become wrecking balls, or a surgeon’s blade. Pain is the result (at least for a space in the commencement of healing). Fortunately, Jesus only seems to wish to wreck the wrong-headed assumptions of men, rather than to crush the personalities of people; the nature of persons.

It takes travel to another land to grasp the ephemeral possibility of my own prejudice. It would require immersion in another culture to begin to believe heretofore unknown things. Relatedly, I have surprised myself by saying, “Oh. Jesus wasn’t an American.” Duh.

People, of course, being themselves everywhere, salt and pepper one another with prejudice, then gobble one another up; this has happened throughout Church history, on every side, in every quadrant. But, even so, I am unable anymore to escape my prejudice, that now I think I held in the past when I believed this statement someone else has made: “The history of Christianity is the history of a steady drift away from the gospel message of Jesus.” (There is a context for this statement; it’s a good, loving, well-meant context.)

I want to speak the truth and ask for a blessing. I want to continue to learn, in honesty, and from the most original sources.

The church denomination I grew up in, which good-naturedly hoped to eliminate confusing traditions of men about God, has a history dating from the 1800s. That same century brought us The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and The Watchtower Society, both groups containing folks weary of what sounded, from man’s traditions, like nonsense about God. That same century some Roman Catholics decided that their Pope was infallible and that the Virgin Mary was immaculately conceived.

Three hundred years before them, in response to horrendous gobblings by powerful people, bloodshed that lasted a century and more commenced in the name and cause of Reformation. All of these people responded to the reality of error being in their midst. Perhaps they, like myself, were prejudiced against the idea that many Christians have been sundered from the original gathering of the disciples. Not, per se, from certain objects or phrases or practices, but from the meaning. From the apostolic kernel of truth. From sound doctrine given by Jesus and maintained via the work of the Holy Spirit.

(The Reformers eliminated books of Scripture, in a twist, maybe, on the Pharisees’ habit of adding more and more practice so as to narrow their chances of error. They longed, as I have longed, to master the truth. To say, there. I’m done. I’ve got it. Here you go.)

mystery

If I'm learning anything, it's that mystery, in truth, is not:

sophisticated,
put-together,
altogether reasonable,
lofty,
grand,
popular,
attractive,
restful,
calming,
or even beautiful.

It's that, in truth, mystery is:

difficult,
shrouding,
plain,
unassuming,
frustrating,
meek,
unavoidable,
yet hidden.

It is the square brown chest behind file boxes in the attic, containing a grandmother's embroidery and whatever lies beneath it.

It is the tug of time-sense on a street corner, where instead of SUVs there were Model As, there were slow hoof-beats and cart wheels creaking, there was the river in flood and the valley green, verdant under a June sky, there were women carrying clothes to the rocky shore.

It is the smell of sweat in a field, the muscle ache of another shovelful. The sound that wasn't there last try, the clank and reverberation of something under soil, something foreign, something laid there. It is, "Oh. I didn't know about this before."

first Saturday

Mm, I'm starting to feel better. I joyfully overdid this weekend, and then Sunday evening, when I had planned to rest, Tim wanted to go to a movie, because that's how he rests, and so I said no, which he accepted, but then yes because I wanted to see him rest. Which he did. So then I worked Monday and Tuesday (Monday night going to bed at 6:00 p.m., I kid you not), and today I've only needed one extra nap so far.

But, wait. I said I joyfully overdid this weekend. Is this me? The woman of exceeding small energy, who can see coming those times of activity which will be too much, and who bows out graciously, or if she can't, goes ahead and overdoes, all the while grumbling and griping inside, knowing the difficult recovery time looms?

But I wanted to do the first Saturday breakfast again. When I went last time, in February, energy higher and my weekend not filled, I discovered the wonder of weathered faces. Men and women, whom I sort of helped serve, but who were truly served by the regular crew, who the day before had set long tables, with flowers in vases, tableware wrapped in white napkins. The people filed in, laying down backpacks, removing coarse gloves. They were waited on. They were treated to an egg/cheese/meat dish called Strata. Not super fancy, but sustaining. They were asked if they'd like seconds, and they were waited on again.

I helped that time in the kitchen, keeping sweet potato hash in a pan stirred, while Ella dished fresh plates for eager servers and asked me to taste and see if her previously-cooked concoction (from ingredients bought and some donated) was thawed enough. Amazing flavor, even for me who often passes on sweet potatoes.

This time for the March breakfast, I felt the tailwind of teens who'd shown up to serve, who were at the elbows of our attendees the moment they sat down. I settled in to a patrol of tables, watching for those needing seconds, listening to an experienced woman on the crew ask, "Sir, would you like some juice? Another helping?" I ran for tabasco sauce upon request. Despite my never having waitressed well (fired after one week back at age 19), I kind of caught the drift of how this art is supposed to bloom. I visited briefly with people. I lifted folding chairs.

Sunday I lifted chairs, too, after the lunch we were in charge of after church, and my body complained, but only with accompanying gratefulness, surprising me. I sensed I was headed for recovery days, and therefore I was supposed to be finding fault with reality, blaming anyone close enough to somehow qualify. Yet, as harmonized birds hopped between walnut branches above when I made at last for our car, I didn't mind shuffling like a 90-year-old.

Probably the 90-year-olds who help with such serving as these breakfasts rarely shuffle at all.

From someone else's mind

The Church welcomes the lenten spring with a spirit of exultation. She greets the time of repentance with the expectancy and enthusiasm of a child entering into a new and exciting experience. The tone of the church services is one of brightness and light...There is nothing gloomy here, nothing dark or remorseful, masochistic or morbid, anxious or hysterical, pietistic or sentimental. The lenten spirit in the Church is one of splendor and delight...

How sad that people misunderstand the significance of the lenten spring. How distressing that so many take this time "given by God, our Crucified Christ" as a season for sentimental devotions, anxious introspections and pietistic pseudo-sufferings "together with Jesus". And how depressing that others naturalize and rationalize the time spent with tepid explanations about the psychosomatic benefits of abstinence with arguments drawn from one or another therapeutic theory. And how totally tragic that still others reject the whole affair, often with good reason because of its distortion, as a barbarous hangover from the dark ages to be radically rejected in these liberated and modern times.

~The Lenten Spring: Readings for Great Lent by Thomas Hopko