Two Novembers

Yesterday marked the 46th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy. I was too young to remember much about it, although I recall first hearing of it as I came in from the school playground. My parents, of course, had voted for Kennedy. In those days, we did not spend much time in front of the television, or at least not as a family. But this was different, and I recall all of us watching coverage as events unfolded in Dallas and Washington. I was too young to have known of the passionate hatred directed against Kennedy by many in Dallas and in my part of the state.

At that time, a man who would later become my close friend (and mentor) was in his late 20s, living on his East Texas farm. He had gone to Dallas on business, and returned home on the 21st of November. My friend, also a Kennedy man, remarked to his wife that he was shocked, and perhaps a bit shaken by the vitriol he heard against the President in Dallas. The next day he was driving across his pasture and stopped to speak to a seismograph crew going across the meadow. One of them heard the radio coverage of Kennedy's motorcade from my friend's truck and said, "somebody ought to kill the sonofabitch." Not wanting to hang around, my friend eased on across the pasture. Not two minutes later came the news that the President had been shot. He said had he still been by the seismographers, he would have decked the man who had said that.

My friend and I meet every week for lunch, and have done so for over 20 years now. In that time, I have heard many stories, but he related this one only recently. And the context for the telling of it was the similarity he sees with the current extreme and radicalized political discourse again gripping our region.

And then today, another friend sent me this. The recent edition of Esquire (a magazine I am not in the habit of reading) carries a story comparing Kennedy-hatred of 1963 Texas with Obama-hatred of 2009 Texas. The focus of the story is the U.S. Representative from the city in which I work (I live 150 feet into the next district, though my representative is hardly any better.) The story also contains a letter written from a resident of my city 2 days after the Kennedy assassination. The story and letter are fascinating--and sobering. I'm afraid my region had, and has, much to answer for.

Fr. Jonathan on "Localities"

Olive Chancellor, feminist:

"Don't you care for human progress?"

Basil Ransom, Southerner:

"I don't know--I never saw any."

Taken from The Bostonian by Henry James.


If you believe this to be true, then by all means read this, and this and this. Fr. Jonathan at Second Terrace posts an extraordinary 3-part series entitled "Localities." This is some of his best writing to date, and that is saying something. It is all very, very good. A sampling, below:



"Limits" is not a hard word for Orthodoxy to commend. The liberal political idea is based upon the unfounded certainty that commercial and industrial expansion is limitless. There is a mystical, eschatological belief that human nature has evolved, is evolving, and will continue to evolve into more complex form (and thus of a higher order). The expansion of civilization is a program that becomes the standard upon which all other values are based: local traditions, customs, folkways, family ties, dialects, mom and pop shops, little farms should all be bulldozed by the eminent domain of "progress."

(For progress is what a liberal believes in, not taking care of the poor: don't get excited, neocons and Obama-bashers – you don't believe in conservatism either. You, oddly, are just as progressive. It is not at all conservative to believe in the gospel of democracy, nor in its rather marshal evangelistic methods. It is not even conservative to be capitalistic: once upon a time, long ago and far away, people were rich and were thankful to God and to the poor, and did not presume that their riches were deserved and sacramental, and meant for the secular sanctification of the Western world.)

There is no way that Orthodoxy can believe in progress. The Nicene dogma is stern on this point. The Father is the Maker of all words. Human nature does not evolve: it is polluted by sin and death: it is regenerated by Christ: it is up to you and me whether we want to be human and become like Christ. We should feed the poor because we are Christian, not to make them Christian without knowing it.

Orthodox East Texas

This is what a small Orthodox mission in East Texas looks like (minus about 10-12 of our regulars.)

A Few Thoughts on the Fort Hood Slayings

The recent tragedy at Fort Hood has been much in my mind. This is one of those events that forces inconvenient truths back into the foreground. I have little complaint with the coverage of the massacre. Yes, if one looks hard enough, one can find voices that attempted to avoid or excuse away the apparent motivation behind the shootings. But once the facts came out, most media outlets tended to call it like it was. Unhinged gunman?--yes, but also propelled by Muslim radicalism. Of course Charles Krauthammer would make the accusation that the media avoided the Islamic aspect of the story. That is what he does. But the most egregious violation was not from the pages of the New York Times or another outlet of the "liberal media elite," but from General Casey, in his now-infamous comments about how this might affect diversity in the armed forces.

I am reminded of Huntington's famous turn of phrase, "the bloody borders of Islam." He was, of course, referring specifically to those regions with Muslim minorities that bordered Islamic regimes, and their apparent inability to live under non-Islamic governments (see independence movements in the Philippines, Thailand, China, Chechnya, successfully imposed in Cyprus and Kosovo, unrest in Nigeria, to name a few, and the advance of de facto Muslim self-governing enclaves in France, the Netherlands, Britain, etc.) Huntington's posited that Muslims, due to the particularities of their beliefs and culture, had trouble assimilating into non-Islamic societies, leading to separatism. I find it intriguing this hold of Islam, so much so that the educated elite--even those raised in northern Virginia--are just as susceptible to radicalism, if not more so, than the poor tribesman.


Last week, I recall listening to CNN's Christianne Amanpour interview two Muslim spokesmen about this very thing. I perked up and listened closer when I heard the phrase "cultural humiliation" tossed out. This, of course, gets at the frustration many Muslims feel, assured as they are that their system is superior, all the while forced to acknowledge the backwardness of these very same cultures.

While a valid concept, it is tiresome to hear this continually trotted out as some kind of excuse. But it does approach the real point, and one that nobody can actually really say. It seems to me that the problem with Islam is that we pretend there is no problem with Islam. There is. And I find little support for the notion that Islam can somehow be reformed. It can't really, due to the nature of the belief and the underlying document. It sounds harsh, but all we can do is limit, wherever possible, the expansion and influence of such a culture where it does not already hold sway. It has been said by many observers who we are does not motivate such madness. Rather, it is what we do. And one of the things we are doing is fighting Muslims in 2 foreign countries. While this fact alone might not be sufficient reason to change our course, it is the height of foolishness not to recognize the straight-line correlation between our foreign policy adventures and these acts of domestic terrorism. To use a over-used current phrase--"I'm just saying...."

I have attached links to a few related stories of interest.


Political Islam is an outgrowth of modern secular fascism. In the Middle East, the mosque was the only place you could discuss politics safely, where the government wouldn't touch you, so Islam became politicized. That's the model that the Muslim Brotherhood followed and brought to the United States. They were the ones who built mosques.

This has been a frustrating thing for me as a Muslim activist. Many Muslims disagree with political Islam, but they're not pressured to take on the mosque leadership. So you have discussions in the mosque going far beyond theology and the example of the Prophet; imams use the pulpit, or minbar as it's called in Arabic, to discuss politics. I've sent this over and over again in mosques I've attended.

This from an excellent interview with Syrian-American Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, here.

In 1982, the leftist intellectual Susan Sontag caused a scandal by saying that someone who read only Reader's Digest would have been better informed about the realities of communism than someone who read only leading left-liberal magazines. Similarly, a contemporary American who gets his information about American Islam from a discerning read of the blogosphere will be better informed than the mainstream media's audience.

Rod Dreher, in Will we ever wake up to Islamic radical threat? here.


Saying Islamic terrorists just “hate our freedom,” is a childish and dangerous fantasy that has already led to thousands of deaths, both American and foreign. Saying Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam is a fantasy that is just as childish and just as dangerous, which led to the deaths of 13 innocent victims in Fort Hood last week.

From Casualties of Diversity by Jack Hunter, here.


In the following link, a convert from Islam to evangelical Christianity debates a Muslim spokesman (2007). I am not at all convinced that these sorts of things do much good, but it was enlightening to see just how unused to honest debate Muslims can be. The religion of Islam has never been open to questioning and inquiry in the way that the Christian faith has--and it shows in this debate. We are often accused (rightly) of not knowing much about Islam. If this spokesman is representative, then they know even less about the basic tenets of Christianity.

Is Islam a Religion of Peace, here.


And finally, there is this. Daniil Sysoyev, a Russian Orthodox priest in Moscow, was gunned down and killed in church by a masked assailant. Fr. Daniil ministered to Muslims and believed that it was a sin not to preach to them. He had reported baptized 80 former Muslims. Official Islamic organizations in Russia condemned the killing, as would be expected. One wonders, if such a thing had happened in an Islamic country (such as Egypt), would there be any condemnation? I think not. So yes, there is a problem with Islam.

Bunnies

Per request of scylding, these rabbits are posted so that readers will not be frightened by the picture of Joel Osteen on the previous post.

"Jesus loved money too!"

Hanna Rosin looks for connections between the recent housing crisis and the "prosperity gospel" in Did Christianity Cause the Crash? The short answer to her question is, of course, "No, Christianity didn't."

Approximately 50 of America's 260 largest churches are prosperity-gospel churches. And 66% of all Pentecostals and 43% of "other Christians" believe that "wealth will be granted to the faithful." Clearly, these American believers were, and remain, a receptive market to what the bankers were selling. Rosin looks in particular at Pastor Fernando Garay and his Casa del Padre, a largely Latino prosperity-gospel church in Charlottesville, Virginia. This group is representative of the larger phenomenon, "the shift in the American conception of divine providence and its relationship to wealth."

Obviously, there is enough blame to go around in the housing bubble, and Osteenites were hardly the only recipients of sub-prime loans. Her story, nevertheless, is an eye-opener, with greed and covetousness at both ends of the process. The most surprising aspect was the collusion between lender and pastor. She tells of mortgage brokers and bankers sending speakers to church-sponsored “wealth-building seminars.” There, pastors would be promised a $350 donation for every new congregant mortgage. Of course, in the case of Casa del Padre, the lines were blurred even more. Pastor Garay was a mortgage broker from 2001 to 2007, and served as financial advisor to many of his parishioners.

It can be hard to get used to how much Garay talks about money in church, one loyal parishioner, Billy Gonzales, told me one recent Sunday on the steps out front. Back in Mexico, Gonzales’s pastor talked only about “Jesus and heaven and being good.” But Garay talks about jobs and houses and making good money, which eventually came to make sense to Gonzales: money is “really important,” and besides, “we love the money in Jesus Christ’s name! Jesus loved money too!”

Ah yes, the American way. And who said our immigrant populations would not assimilate?

Rosin ends with a passage from Jackson Lears' Something for Nothing, in which he describes two wildly divergent "manifestations of the American dream." On the one hand, there is this:

The traditional Protestant hero is a self-made man. He is disciplined and hardworking, and believes that his “success comes through careful cultivation of (implicitly Protestant) virtues in cooperation with a Providential plan”....[who] images a coherent universe where earthly rewards match merits.

The alternative, and thoroughly modern version is this:

The hero of the second American narrative is a kind of gambling man—a “speculative confidence man,”...who prefers “risky ventures in real estate,” and a more “fluid, mobile democracy.” The confidence man lives in a culture of chance, with “grace as a kind of spiritual luck, a free gift from God.”

What is important for us to remember is that both of these narratives are, in fact, myths of our own making.

More Runciman: The Emperor Romanus Lecapenus and His Reign

I have just finished reading a bit more of Steven Runciman, The Emperor Romanus Lecapenus and His Reign. The book was first published in 1929, reprinted in 1963, and has now been out of print for a number of years. As always with this author, it is a first-rate read. The subject was not totally unfamiliar to me. A couple of years ago, I had searched and found the Myrelaion, the 10th-century church of the Lecapeni, now the Bodrum Camii in the Laleli District of Istanbul.

When Runciman wrote the work in 1929, he was fighting against the prevailing anti-Byzantine prejudice. As he writes:

At the hands of such prejudice many historical epochs have suffered, and most of all the epoch known as the Later Roman or Byzantine Empire. Ever since our rough crusading forefathers first saw Constantinople and met, to their contemptuous disgust, a society where everyone read and wrote, ate food with forks and preferred diplomacy to war, it has been fashionable to pass the Byzantines by with scorn and to use their name as synonymous with decadence....All the historians in chorus treated of a thousand years of empire as a short sinister unbroken decline.

Even by Runciman's day, that attitude had started to fade, though the historical chronicle still contained many dark corners, one of which is addressed by his study of Romanus Lecapenus. The subsequent 80 years have seen a growing appreciation of Byzantine culture. Even so, the civilization of the Christian East remains largely unknown to the West. This particular work of Runciman examines only the earliest decades of the 10th-century, when Constantinople was undergoing an ascendancy once more. His first chapter, nevertheless, is one of the best summaries I have seen of general Byzantine culture. Those who are just beginning to study Byzantium could do worse than to start with this work.

To take only a few examples, in the areas of meritocracy, education and the role of women, these East Romans presented a stark contrast to the whole of western Europe, not only in the Middle Ages, but into the modern age itself.

But even in the army the poorest could rise on their merits to the top. This lack of snobbishness was characteristic of the whole of Byzantine society. It is true that later chroniclers, wishing to insult Theophano, called her an innkeeper's daughter; but society would have to be very democratic where such a past would not be thought a little undignified for an Empress; while the fact that an innkeeper's daughter could become Empress shows a certain elasticity in the social divisions. It was lack of education rather than lack of birth that was considered a subject for mockery (emphasis mine.) The Byzantines prided themselves on their culture. Every self-respecting citizen could recognize a quotation form Homer or the Bible, and was well acquainted with the works of the Fathers and many of the masterpieces of the classics. The University...radiated intellectual activity throughout Constantinople; and the Court prided itself on the patronage of literature and the arts.

And:

The whole attitude towards women was different from that of Western Europe, but certainly no more degrading. In the West, women were the frail sex set apart by chivalry and owing their privileges to their frailty; but in Byzantium women were men's intellectual equals. Girls usually received the same education as their brothers; and Byzantine history can point to several authoresses of distinction.

The reign of Romanus Lecapenus contains one of the best examples of this "Byzantine difference." The army of the Tsar Symeon of the first Bulgarian Kingdom had advanced to the very gates of Constantinople. The Theodosian walls were the toughest nut to crack, but he was closer than he imagined, and the City was in another one of its innumerable dire straights. The Emperor Romanus sent the following letter to Symeon in his camp outside the gates:

I have heard that you are a religious man and a devoted Christian; but I do not see your acts harmonizing with your words. A religious Christian welcomes peace and and love, for God is love, as it is said; but it is a godless and unchristian man who rejoices in slaughter and the shedding of innocent blood. If then you are a true Christian, as we believe, cease from your unjust slaughter and shedding the blood of the guiltless, and make peace with us Christians--since you claim to be a Christian--and do not desire to stain Christian hands with the blood of fellow-Christians. You are a mortal; you await Death and Resurrection and Judgment. Today you live and tomorrow you are dust; one fever will quench all your pride. What will you say, when you come before God, of your unrighteous slaughter? How will you face the terrible, just Judge? If it is for love of riches that you do this, I will grant your desires to excess; only hold out your hand. Welcome peace, love concord, that you yourself may live a peaceful, bloodless and untroubled life, and that Christians may end their woes and cease destroying Christians. For it is a sin to take up arms against fellow-believers.

Chastised, Symeon broke camp and returned to Bulgaria.

Can anyone imagine such a letter being given--or heeded--in the West? I cannot. The empire cannot be understood apart from its Orthodox faith. And while the emperors (including Romanus) could be brutal in defense of their throne or empire, they remained bound to their subjects by a common belief that permeated all aspects of Byzantine society. That, was the Byzantine difference.

The Ark of Salvation

An explanation, here.

A Border Town is a Border Town is a Border Town

I have found that border towns are all much the same, whether it be Nuevo Laredo or La Jonquera. Some borders have practically vanished. One hardly even slows down going from France to Spain or to Italy or to Germany. Elsewhere, things remain more traditional. And I don't think you have really crossed a border unless you come back with a story to tell. I have a few. Crossing from Bulgaria into Macedonia by foot is not as neat as it sounds. When you disembark from your train at 2:30 A.M. for a visa at the Bulgarian-Turkish border, it is helpful to remember which train to re-board. And Israeli border guards make reaching Palestinian desert monasteries from the Jordanian side a near losing proposition. Even my business partner was detained for 2 hours trying to cross from Montana into Alberta. I have always told him he looked suspicious. With these thoughts in mind, I particularly enjoyed reading this article from The Atlantic Monthly.

Astara sits on a border few of us will every cross, on the Azeri side of the Azerbaijan-Iran border. As one would expect, few Azeris are pouring into Iran, but there is a brisk traffic in Iranians passing through to the north. Peter Savodnik recently visited the town, described as the "gateway to pork products, alcohol, and easy sex" where "no one cares what you do."

This makes the mullahs in Tehran very nervous. Books, DVDs, fashions, and—most important—ideas that are inaccessible in Iran are ubiquitous in Azerbaijan. Iranians line up daily to cross the Astara River to buy and sell jeans, chickens, bras, laptops—and often sex and schnapps and heroin. This commerce, combined with cultural curiosity and shared Azeri bloodlines, has transformed Astara into the Tijuana of the Caspian.

Iranians find the Azerbaijanis’ mildly ironic attitude toward Islam a welcome relief from the stern theocracy of the ayatollahs. During Ramadan many Azerbaijanis do not fast, and the cafés in Astara do a bustling lunch business, serving lamb shashlik, or barbecue, to visiting Iranians.

This reminds me of an anecdote I heard years ago in Izmir, the gateway to the Turkish Aegean beach resorts. I was walking through the airport terminal with a Turkish friend. He told me that wealthy Saudis (is there any other kind?) would fly into Izmir for their holidays. The Saudi woman were often observed to discard their headscarves in the nearest trash receptacles as they rushed through the terminal on their way to the beach.

The last sentence in Savodnik's article is absolutely priceless, but I won't spoil it. Read it for yourselves.

More Front Porch: Mere Krustianity

At the risk of preaching to the choir, I also want to note this post from Front Porch Republic--Mere Krustianity. In this article, Jason Peters takes on American big-box churchianity. There are few things more satisfying that reading something exactly expressing the views one already holds. Nevertheless:

But I have often wondered what this same dispassionate observer would make of those versions of the faith, if “versions” they may be called, that have sprung up either in contempt or in ignorance of tradition—or in contempt and ignorance both. I’m talking about those places, built on a kind of shopping-mall plan, that avail themselves of the word “church” without any regard for its meaning–rather like those who help themselves to connubial privileges without ever uttering the terrifying words “I do.” We know what the hostile observer makes of First Church of the Sprawl. But what would the amiable, if distant, observer make of it?

By “it” I have in mind, for example, a place called “Bible Harvest Chapel,” which is a kind of movie theater retrofitted to a former big box electronics store. I went in it once to see in what ways I might be oriented to something beyond myself. The first architectural feature I saw directing my thoughts heavenward was a Starbuck’s-style coffee shop.

Welcome to Bible Harvest Chapel; would you like to try our Lord’s Day Special?

Was I to dip my fingers in a double-skinny caramel latte and make the sign of the dollar? I didn’t know for sure. The place hardly resembled a chapel. And although there was once a harvest on that spot (for the big box store-cum-ecclesia was built on a cornfield), no one there rejoiced to bring in the sheaves, not even in that robust manner of your hearty Baptist congregation cycling through the hymns it agrees to sing. Even that kind of hymnody, which isn’t quite up to the standards of what Tradition hands down, had been replaced at the Church of the Electronic Jesus. Indeed, the hymnals were flat-screens on the walls of the “sanctuary,” and across these screens strolled the lyrics to songs the drummer kept time to as the guitar-players jammed. The singing was literally off the wall, and I wanted to gyrate my hips before the Lord, as King David had of old.

Recitation of the creed, incense, daily lessons, sacrament: no signs thereof.

And the parking lot, now desertified by asphalt, was full of Lincoln Navigators sporting, at about eye level, “W ’04” bumper stickers . American Christians shopping on Sunday morning. The last great synthesis. Full acculturation. Full interpenetration of marketplace and faith. Marketplace as object of faith, with Jesus and Jeep Liberties for all.

Or, rather, full absorption of the faith by the marketplace—and the obliteration of history.

Well, yes. The article generated considerable response, as it is a little more theologically hard-hitting than what is normally seen on FPR. But the comments quickly devolved into a Catholic vs. Protestant squabble, mainly due to posts such as this:

But I’ll be damned if this lowland Scot turned free soil prairie sod buster presbyterian Calvinist will consent to live under a dictatorial church anymore than I will a dictatorial state.

Give me that old time religion anyday. Its traditionless tradition recites a lineage going back further now than that from Augustine to St. Peter and it tells me its own stories, which are my stories, of faith and sacrifice and binds me to a deeper magic, a deeper authority, than the tightest grip any prelate ever had...

Well, you get the drift. Fr. Jonathan, from Second Terrace, salvaged the conversation with this excellent contribution:

Truly thanks, with no hidden sardonic subtext, because the “Krustian” truncation of “40-yard Christianity” is actually abetting the progressive gods unmoor people away from the land (and Trinity) and hasten them toward the gnostic gas of limitless expansion and consumption.

My old-line Pentecostal associates have no use for the mega-church religion, which has no understanding of grief or joy. The showtime-church avoids unease and seeks fixes of fun and frenzy. It has replaced hope with the wan shades of Republican and Democratic optimism. It has ripped out the Nicene Creek and has embraced psychotherapeutic rituals of self-esteem: no wonder there is no “felt need” for sacrament.

This argument in the comment section has turned ignoble. None of you would want to actually defend the megachurch experience, which is just as separated from the Reformation as it is from the church of “costumes and customs” (a comic note). I look for the Nicene Creed and some acknowledgement thereof to find fellow travelers: I see it here on the Front Porch in spades (do not pardon the pun) — but it is sorely missing in the dead marshes of mega-church-ianity.

Shame. The critique was leveled against denatured Christianity. Not against people who still sing the old 100th.

Jason Peters continues with a follow-up post--“And the Disciples Were Called Krustians First In …” —Acts 11:26, RSV (Revised Suburban Version)--which, if anything, is even better than the first. Here, he "reiterate[s] the dangers of living in contempt of history." Read the comments as well, for the link with Flannery O'Connor.

Heard on the Front Porch: The Romance of Conservatism

I like to check in at the Front Porch Republic from time to time. Ted V. McAllister recently posted The Romance of Conservatism, the transcript of a paper delivered at a conference focusing on Russell Kirk. He speaks eloquently of a number of things--romanticism, mystery, liberty, imagination and abstraction—with Chesterton and Kirk as his touchstones. I found it all to be exquisitely done. I highly recommend the post, as well as the comments. A few selections, below:

G. K. Chesterton declared that faith is romantic, that materialism is not only dull but produces a boredom that leads to madness. Humans are born romantics and they can never fulfill their better natures without cultivating an imagination that accepts and embraces mystery....we need this life of practical romance: the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure. We need to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome. We need to be happy in this wonderland without once being merely comfortable.

Conservatives reject—more properly, they fear—simplifications. Simplifications are usually a result of isolating something, tearing that something from the whole of which it is a part. Simplification is a form of abstraction....The romantic rejects the middle as he demands all extremes—he demands the extremes as they were meant to be, bound together.

The lust for complete freedom produces nihilism. But choice, in the context of order, is liberty....any liberty that is not ordered liberty is just another word for slavery.

Spiritual slavery, which includes being enslaved to one’s most base desires, to be addicted to the satisfaction of easily attained earthly things, is a result of boredom. Boredom is the final and most enervating human disease. It can produce ideological madness, expressed in efforts to remake the world, to deify humans as the authors of their own reality, or it can result in an intense privatism, an indifference to all things public, to all beings outside of one’s pinched world.

A romantic is never bored [emphasis mine], for he occupies a world full of mystery and surprise, a reality understood in complex forms, in traditions, in liturgies, in myths, in complex social fabrics that bind humans together in community and that bind communities together across time. To inhabit such a reality is to see in all simple things the wonder of the universe, to see patterns, to feel connections, to relish in the particular, because in the particular one witnesses, but does not possess, the universal.

A liberty...emerged in a particular historical context to address particular human needs. Liberties were always part of duties, obligations, and even more important, expectations. Liberties that emerge from a long experience, from habits and cultural forms, are part of a much larger moral economy that is reasonably suited to a people. Liberties, understood this way, are not abstract, not disconnected, not due people as a result of some abstract human dignity. They are particular expressions of a particular people.

By contrast, Freedom is a universalist claim, a claim about the human understood abstractly rather than historically. Freedom leads to imperialism—a la George Bush. Freedom is simple, clear—it is a moral slogan that substitutes for the moral imagination.

Because abstract reason is disconnected from imagination, it does not understand beauty. Efficiency, of one sort or another, becomes its master. The drive to simplify is part of this desire for the most efficient means of organizing our lives. Defending equality simply or freedom simply is much easier to do than to talk of ordered liberty or of spiritual equality. The tyranny of efficiency means that the human goods found in our aesthetic nature, our spiritual need for beauty, are sacrificed.

In other words, a bland and efficient architecture atrophies the very imagination that helps people to find their ancestors, to think ahead to posterity and to recognize their moral obligations before a creator.

I particularly noted McAllister's assertion that a "romantic is never bored." A number of years ago, I realized that about myself--that I never recall being bored. As a child, I never had (or expected) to be entertained. As an adult, I could be stuck in a deadly-dull seminar, but my mind would be elsewhere. I am seldom more than an arm's reach away from something to read. Yesterday, my job required that I drive 120 miles into a largely unfamiliar part of the state to me--a region noted for being flat, plain and not at all scenic. And yet, I found it to be a fascinating drive. I made innumerable stops or detours to have a better look at a house, a barn, a field, or to check out a small town. I used to think it odd that I never complained of being bored. Now I know--I'm guess I am just a romantic.

St. Isaac's "Second Part"

Many of us are watching and hoping for the republication of The Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian, now long out of print. Though scheduled for late 2009, I have not heard any progress reports. In the meantime, there is this: Isaac of Ninevah (Isaac the Syrian) 'The Second Part', Chapters IV-XLI, translated by Sebastian Brock. As I understand it, there is no overlap between The Ascetical Homilies and The Second Part. Taking advantage of substantial savings and free shipping during Eighth Day Books' recent 20th anniversary sale, I finally purchased a copy. I have found the work to be a treasure, and one that I expect to be re-reading. A sampling, below:

Chapter XI

11. Thus in this way the variation between assistance and feebleness takes place for a person at all times and at all stages in the ascetic life: it may be in the battles arranged against chastity, or in the varied states of joy and of gloom; for sometimes there are luminous and joyous stirrings, but then again all at once there is darkness and cloud. Likewise with things revealed in certain mystical and divine insights concerning truth: the same variation is experienced by the person who serves (God), with the apperception of the assistance of divine power which suddenly attaches itself to the intellect--or it may be (the apperception of the opposite, where the intention is that he should receive awareness of the weakness of (human) nature, (and realize) what his own nature is, and how weak, feeble, stupid and childish it is--and then, in a single moment, to what heights he is raised in his knowledge, and in the glorious and wonderful things which he perceives in himself!

12. These are the workings of God, and these are forms of assistance employed by His Will towards humanity. But it can be the case, when we cleave to some sin in our minds or actions, that He will bid one of those inquisitors of His, mentioned above, concerning us--those who, as long as we travelled in an orderly way with (our ) will completely (directed) towards virtue, ministered to our benefits--and they will flog us harshly, so that by one means or another we will not became lost far away from God.

13. Now, however, with the assistance that comes from grace; let us conclude these matters and approach the riches of (God's) nature and the ocean of his creative power and the waves and resplendence of his Being.

On Dying Well

S-P posts some of the most insightful thoughts on this subject, here.

A sampling:


A Christian's life may or may not be as moral or healthy or happy or even "blessed" as the atheist's. Evangelism based on God "one upping" lifestyles that lack irony, tragedy and poverty is doomed to attract only the deluded and desperate and can only end in either deeper delusion and ultimately in despondency. The Christian Gospel requires a life of self restraint, sanctity and love for one's neighbor, but the Gospel does not claim that any of it is a talisman against the cosmic assault on our bodies and souls. The Christian is not called to overcome life, but himself. He is not called to live long and prosper, but to live well and be content in any state. He is not called to have a nice day, but as the Psalmist says, to offer up all days wherein we saw evil to God with thanksgiving. And in the end the Gospel points us to consider the randomness of life and the ultimate injustice: death.

Fear-mongering 101

Apparently Congresswoman Virginia Foxx represents the most timid district in the nation. To hear her tell it, her constituents are all cowering indoors, "fearful, frightened and afraid." The clip, here, could also be used as Exhibit A for term limits.

The Stories We Tell...

Richard Gamble, over at Front Porch Republic, has some important things to say about story-telling, the teaching of history, our national narrative and the nurturing of civic virtues, here. And he does so by way of Wendell Berry’s novel, Hannah Coulter. A history professor himself, Gamble wrestles with the role that historical perception plays in the formation of our national character. “I have not settled in my own mind the place of the teaching of history in the formation of character and judgment—I mean the place of real history with all its weightiness, and seriousness of purpose, and messy complexity as opposed to romanticized versions of the past that make us feel good about ourselves and serve some narrow agenda.” I know what he is talking about. Every fall I teach a course in Texas history, a subject particularly susceptible to this romanticized feel goodism.

Gamble begins with the following passage from Hannah Coulter:

But did we tell the stories right? It was lovely, the telling and listening, usually the last thing before bedtime. But did we tell the stories in such a way as to suggest that we had needed a better chance or a better life or a better place than we had?

I don’t know, but I have had to ask. Suppose your stories, instead of mourning and rejoicing over the past, say that everything should have been different. Suppose you encourage or even just allow your children to believe that their parents ought to have been different people, with a better chance, born in a better place. Or suppose the stories you tell them allow them to believe, when they hear it from other people, that farming people are inferior and need to improve themselves by leaving the farm. Doesn’t that finally unmake everything that has been made? Isn’t that the loose thread that unravels the whole garment?

And how are you ever to know where the thread breaks, and when the tug begins?

To the author, Berry is making the critical point that we should not only tell the right stories, but to tell the stories right.

The teacher of American history has the responsibility to do both of these tasks and to do them well. I do not believe that telling the right story means purging the American past of all its unpleasantness. We mourn and we rejoice when we read the American past. The American enterprise was and is a human enterprise, and as such it is filled with everything human: with sin, and the lust for dominion and all that comes with being part of the fallen and selfish City of Man, but mixed in with goodness and self-sacrifice and dedication to principle and real achievement.

Gamble takes a hard look at the themes running through contemporary American conservative thought: nationalism, populism, and imperialism. In the author’s view, “they have slowly destroyed our republic,” and have proven capable, as Berry notes, to “unmake everything that has been made.” Gamble voices concern over the telling of the “American story in such a way that the trajectory toward nationalism, populism, and empire appears preordained, a matter of America gradually becoming more and more what it was always meant by God or History personified to become.”

Gamble concludes with this: Children need to stop being children. The selective story of the American past needs to give way gradually and prudently to the larger story of America, a story fit for grownups and a not a story destined to keep citizens of the republic in a condition of perpetual adolescence. And coming back to Berry, he observes: "Hannah Coulter feared late in life that she and her husband had told their story the wrong way. Even if unwittingly, they had told their story in such a way that they made contentment and thankfulness unappealing and abnormal and restlessness and ingratitude appealing and normal. If we tell the American story in a way that makes nationalism, populism, and imperialism attractive, then we will not cultivate civic virtue with that story."

I couldn't agree more.

Grave-Mounding, Outhouses and other Remembrances

Last Saturday, I took the opportunity to engage in one of my favorite undertakings--taking a long day trip down to central Texas. The Lampasas River Valley is only 3 hours from East Texas, but one definitely passes over into another culture. I have lived my life in what is culturally part of the Deep South—albeit the westernmost bulwark of same. Somewhere between home and the Hill Country, one leaves behind all that sing-songy Southern sweetness and enters into the easternmost regions of the plainspoken West.

I made the trip to help in a cemetery work day, where people gather to clean up a rural graveyard. I have written of this particular spot of ground before, and probably will do so again. This cemetery has always been something of a touchstone with me. As cemeteries go, this one is not particularly old. After many relocations, my grandmother’s grandparents finally settled down here in 1880. Two years later, they suffered the loss of a small son. They buried Uncle Willie under a live oak tree about 250 feet north of the house. 15 years later, my grandmother’s dad was buried in the grove, as well. In time, the cemetery saw the burial of a large number of extended family members, including my grandparents and two uncles. But early in the history of the graveyard, neighboring families started using it, as well. Today, the cemetery contains over 300 graves.

There’s not that much to do at these cemetery workings, as it can often be more of an excuse for socializing. Mainly, I trimmed around the stones and raked the leaves and acorns from underneath that old live oak. It is not really necessary, but we do it anyway. I pay particular attention to 10 graves--my grandparents, grandmother’s dad, the baby of grandmother’s sister (from the marriage we are not supposed to talk about), my favorite uncle, another uncle and his wife, Uncle Willie, Aunt Fannie and the great-great grandparents. About 9 or 10 of us worked that morning, and we made a good showing. We broke up for lunch and met at the old schoolhouse where my dad graduated high school in 1932. (He did not live in that community, but as the school near their home only went to the 10th grade, he lived here in the old house next to the cemetery, with his grandmother, so he could graduate from the 11th grade.)





















After eating, we attended to the business of the cemetery. These things are always much the same, but I am not complaining. We are in good shape financially. Much of the conversation centered around a controversy brewing in the region. The Lampasas River Valley is still relatively pristine, though imperiled. The sprawl from Fort Hood and the resultant Ugliest-City-In-Texas (Killeen) lies just over the hills to the north. The middle-class suburbs of Austin march relentlessly north, catching the region in a squeeze. In the old days, the area was known as the “black corner of Burnet County,” a recognition of its remoteness and of the fact that it was not particularly on the way to anywhere. Now, Oncor is projecting an enormous transmission line that will slice across the valley. The residents are organized (http://www.savethelampasas.org/) and fighting it, but I am not optimistic about their ultimate success.

I enjoyed the discussion over our main item of new business—the replacing our current, and derelict, outhouse. We decided to ask for donated lumber and construct a new one—nothing elaborate, just a one-holer. I wondered out loud why there was ever a need for a two-holer, because it was not as if it was going to be used by more than one person at a time. My kinswoman sitting next to me informed me that one was for the adults and a smaller one was for the children, which makes perfect sense. I whispered to her (in jest) that one option would be to do as our great-great aunt did (according to my dad)—she just had a cane-bottomed chair with a hole cut in the seat that she moved around behind the cedar break.

Upon returning home, I was telling the tale to my wife. She asked me why there was even a need for an outhouse at a cemetery. I had to stop and think about that for a minute, for I had always just accepted it down there. In this part of the state, I have never seen such. In the Hill Country of central Texas, however, outhouses in country cemeteries are not unheard of. In East Texas, as elsewhere, the associations usually hire out the mowing and trimming. Not so, apparently, down in the Hill Country. In my experience, those cemeteries are often cared for by the family members themselves. These people actually spend time in the cemetery, and hence the need for outhouses.

Working my way home, I first stopped at a couple of nearby cemeteries where other family members were buried. The most beautiful is also one of the most secluded, and thus the target for vandals, a situation I attribute to the close proximity of Fort Hood. I was dismayed to see that my great-granddad’s stone was damaged even more than from before.

I then stopped in a nearby town to visit a couple of kins-people. One cousin’s life has been particularly tragic—including the early loss of a daughter and the decades-long disappointment of a son’s life misspent. Now at age 78, my cousin found herself in a nursing home. She was glad to see me, jovial and upbeat, refusing to engage in self-pity. I soon discovered at least one source of her good attitude—the son, now aged 50, had finally stumbled into doing the right thing. He was married again, to an obviously younger woman. My cousin, nearing the end of her earthly existence, was comforted-for the first time-by two grandsons, aged 2 and 1. I left there thinking of the unfathomable mercies of our Lord.

For about 12 years in my early married life, my wife and I made regular visits to see my favorite uncle in Georgetown. Everyone should have an uncle like mine. Our routine rarely varied. He and I would arise very early on Saturday mornings, drink a pot of coffee, eat homemade pecan waffles and talk at my grandparent’s old kitchen table, and then leave out before our wives emerged from their bedrooms. We would usually visit another uncle and his wife in Lampasas. This was a courtesy call. About the length of one cup of coffee was as long as either of us could hang around either of them. We would visit other kin, at this farm or ranch or the other, or search out old family landmarks. Around noon, we would look for a barbecue joint, and after lunch we might even stop in at the Rattlesnake Inn for a beer. But always, without fail, we included a stop at this cemetery. We would have loaded a wheelbarrow and shovel into the truck before leaving. And then, my uncle instructed me in what he learned as a youth. From a pile of sand in the corner of the cemetery, we would haul loads to the graves and carefully mound them up. That is an old but vanishing custom, rarely done, even in that region.

I have heard of this practice before, however, and I believe it a response to an ancient, if not primordial, impulse. Terry Jordan, in Texas Graveyards: A Cultural Legacy, notes : A more likely origin of the southern mounding custom is Britain. The antecedent is probably the “long barrow” grave, a pagan type dating back some three thousand years in the British Isles and succeeded by the grass-covered, elongated mounds so typical of rural English churchyards still today. I remember seeing a number of these barrows or tumuli over there—the most famous, I suppose, being Queen Boadicea’s tumulus in Hampstead Heath. Regardless of its pagan antecedents, the mounding represents a form of remembering--of respecting and perpetuating the memory of those whose bodies lie buried beneath.

As an Orthodox Christian, I find that I have a more heightened awareness of most everything I do. I can continue the discipline of keep these graves mounded, which now also includes my uncle’s, as before. But I now able, and privileged to pray for the souls of the departed.

With the saints give rest, O Christ, to the souls of Thy servants, where there is neither pain, nor sorrow, nor sighing, but life unending.

And, I can sing out “Memory Eternal.” Fr. Stephen Freeman recently wrote on this subject, from which an excerpt following:

I know as well, that our feeble prayers here are joined to the mighty chorus that ascends to God from those who have gone before us and remember and pray for us. That “great cloud of witnesses” sustains the living though we too easily forget this. How is it that the living pass their days with no thought of those who stand witness before God?

Memory Eternal for us all, until the battle is done and everything has found its rest.

It is this kind of rhythm, found in the liturgical life of Orthodoxy, that has been lost from so much of Christianity, where the grief is certainly as great. I know that I could not bear the weight of all I remember were I not able to stand with others and pray God’s eternal remembrance. There are times as an Orthodox Christian that I am not just grateful for the grace God has given, but wonder how I ever tried to live without it.


This trip found the graves to be in good shape. The next time I visit--to do a bit of remembering--I plan to bring my wheelbarrow and shovel.

On Afghanistan

I have avoided taking a dogmatic stance on Afghanistan. But as one who is opposed to war in general, and particularly opposed to involving ourselves in places where we have no business, my sentiments are not hard to ascertain.

Michael Hoh's resignation from the State Department has received considerable attention in recent days. His resignation letter contained in the news story, here, is well worth a read.

I also recommend the open letter of William R. Polk to President Obama, here. This is a man who knows a thing or two about the region.

The same can be said for Thomas Friedman, who weighs-in today with his observations.

It seems to me that one thing unites Hoh, Polk and Friedman. All three address the issue from the standpoint of realism, rather than ideology.

And finally, we should ask why our soldiers are dying to uphold a society where far too much of this sort of thing continues.

Return to Alaverdi

While traveling in Georgia in June, 2007, I visited the Alaverdi Cathedral, near Telavi. The church was founded in the 6th-century, by St. Joseph, one of the 13 Syrian Fathers. We drove in from Sighnaghi that Sunday morning and attended Divine Liturgy. My short time there was a highlight of my Georgian experience.

I was excited to discover this fascinating documentary from 2006. The feast day for St. Joseph is celebrated in September. From time immemorial, pilgrims have come to Alaverdi for the feast. In time, a festival grew up around the observance. During the years of Communist control, the festival continued and grew, though without any religious connotation.

I found the documentary to be absolutely incredible, and quite moving. Now it seems there exists something of a tension between those who come for the feast of the Church, and those who still hold to the habits and patterns of life learned under 3 generations of Communism.

I believe the narrator at the first of the film is Bishop David of Alaverdi, whom I had the honor of meeting in Sighnaghi.

The documentary is in 2 sections--be sure to watch each of them.

A John Calvin Make-over?

In yesterday's Dallas Morning News, columnist and Presbyterian churchman William McKenzie wrote on John Calvin, a man he feels to be under-appreciated, even in this, the 500th anniversary of his birth (story here.) McKenzie believes that Calvin suffers from even worse PR than Dick Cheney, and if people could just get over all that messiness associated with his burning Michael Servetus at the stake, then well, Calvin's reputation could be rehabilitated for the 21st-century.



First the disclaimers: I am not an authority on either Calvin or Calvinism. I have not read the Institutes, nor do I ever plan to do so. I also concur that Calvinism sometimes suffers cheap shots from its detractors, who know less about it than they imagine. And I have observed that you will often find some of the most intelligent and gifted people among its adherents.


That said, I am not a fan. This view does not rise from any dissatisfaction with a previous religious affiliation. Even back in my Protestant days, I was never, ever attracted to Calvinism. When I finally joined a church, my new tribe was equally and decided non-Calvinistic. My mother was the most nominal of Baptists. I always found this affiliation a bit ironic. To the extent that she thought about it at all, she disagreed with every one of the tenets that set them apart as Southern Baptists. I now realize that the things she disagreed with most were those beliefs rooted in Calvinism. And I agreed with her. Despite my lack of experience with Calvinism, I believe I can speak to the obvious fruits of Calvinist thought, not just in the religious sphere, but in the very formation and development of Americanism.


As to McKenzie’s defense of John Calvin, I found it surprisingly limp.

For starters, there's the fact that Calvin had a radical view of education. He thought that, heavens, people should read for themselves, including Scripture. He believed in truth being revealed through the mind, as well as the heart. He particularly had a passion for children learning to read and going to school, not necessarily the way things were done then. He began a school for children that grew into a university in Geneva.

Okay, so Calvin promoted education.

Calvin...embraced the intellect, which he personified by writing his landmark "Institutes of the Christian Religion." (The late historian Will Durant termed them one of the world's 10 most influential works.)

Well, I haven’t read Durant either. This also shows the limitations of list-making. From what I hear, the Institutes would also make the top-10 list for the most mind-numbingly unreadable works, as well.

"Calvin is to theology what Freud is to psychology: Love him, hate him, you have to deal with him."

Talk about being damned by faint praise…

The Frenchman got a closed sewer system built for his adopted hometown of Geneva, Switzerland. Like the pride Lyndon Johnson took in delivering electricity to rural Central Texas, Calvin considered that sewer one of his great accomplishments.

Again with the faint praise...(so far, McKenzie has compared Calvin to Dick Cheney, Sigmund Freud and Lyndon Johnson)

Similarly, his emphasis on the dignity of work is tied in the rise of capitalism. He didn't invent that economic system, but his challenging of the prevailing idea that work was drudgery reshaped the way people approached labor.

So Calvin is responsible for the Protestant work ethic, huh? I have been looking for someone to blame for that. Now I know who.

Like with Marx's communism or Freud's views on the mind, the rest of the world spins around the influence of Calvin, whether we know it or not.

Maybe…but if so, is that necessarily a good thing?

McKenzie closes with the thought that “John Calvin deserves a new look.”

Well, thanks…but I believe I will pass.

[To give equal time to Calvinists, I came across this article, which is actually in response to Jack D. Kinneer's "A Calvinist Looks at Orthodoxy." Apparently Kinneer spent some time at St. Vladimir's Orthodox Seminary. The best I can tell, he takes us to task for supposedly not believing in "Justification by Faith" or "sovereign grace." Basically, he accuses the Orthodox of not being, well, Protestant. Guilty as charged!]