Christos Anesti! Alithos anesti!

Christ is risen from the dead trampling down death by death and upon those in the tombs bestowing life!

Blessed Pascha!

One Of My Favourite Things

This is a story that Jim Forest tells in his lovely book Praying With Icons, a little gem I’ve been reading for over the past few months as I’ve been exploring the Orthodox church. I’m finding a difficult time praying these days. I just can’t seem to find the words. There was a time in my life when my prayers would just flow, swift and sweet. These days I hardly know what to say in front of God. I don’t know how to approach Him. I don’t know what my desires are.

It’s an annecdote that I’ve connected with – it makes sense to me. However there is a disconnect. I have a desire to slow down, to savour every moment, to be present. Yet I’m a 21st-century American, and I feel a compulsary need to keep pace with the world around me.

Enough already, here’s the damned story:

Another obstacle to prayer is preoccupation with time, living as we do in a culture in which the clock has become not only a helpful tool of social coordination, but too often rules our lives. In fact the clock can even be seen as one of the primary symbols of the secular age.

I remember an experience I had during the late sixties when I was accompanying Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk and poet from Vietnam who was in the United States giving lectures. On this occasion, we were at the University of Michigan, waiting for the elevator doors. “You know, Jim,” he said, “a few hundred years ago there would have been a crucifix there, not a clock.”

My roommate noted a few weeks ago when I shared this story with him that I was the one who just bought two new clocks for our apartment (despite my preoccupation with time I am perpetually tardy). And this is a tension that I feel within me. I desire to slow down, to live my life not by the clock but by faith, by prayer, by stillness and simplicity. We are symbolic creatures and, as a society and as a culture, we have traded the symbols of faith and inner satisfaction for the symbols of outward existence, matter, and face-value productivity. The true depth of the paradox is that by giving up the inner (personal) meaning for the outter (explicit) meaning, we lose the marrow, the true stuff of life, that which truly sustains and satisfies.

Pleae note that I am not arguing that the inner, personal meaning exists in a vacuum devoid of others who share these inner sentiments (read: faith communities) nor am I saying that that which is explicitly outward and material will necessarily lack any personal inward meaning or sentiment. I can’t clarify myself much more at the moment – I’m tired and I just downed a Killian’s. (So much for a strict fast this Lent.)

All that to say that I like this little story a lot. It’s one that I want to carry around with me for a while. Maybe use it in a book some day. Who knows…

Also I talked to Marina at church today and she recommended a book to me: Slowing Down to the Speed of Life by Richard Carlson and Joseph Bailey. Maybe I’ll read it some day. Probably after graduation when I’ll feel more like I’m able to slow down and be present, right?

But for tonite: some deep-breathing, meditation, and then bed.

Top Five For This Moment…

Well it has been years and years since I’ve updated this baby. Thought I would give all of you faithful readers an update on what is happening in my life, what I’m thinking about, what I’m doing.

1. I took the GRE a couple of weeks ago.  Yep friends, that’s the Graduate Records Examination. I am planning on going to graduate school at some point in my life to eventually get a doctorate in clinical psychology.

2. Also a couple weeks ago–I randomly went into a yarn store downtown as I was waiting with a group of friends to get a table at a restaurant and, coincidentally, it was the one night a month that the store hosts a men’s knit night!  So I will be joining these gents in a week as we sit around, eat junk food, and knit to our hearts content!  And the stuff that these guys were working on was incredible…

3. I’ve been interning at a residential treatment facility for people experiencing mental illness.  I love it.  The folks there are really great–both staff and residents.  I’m excited because I think they might want to hire me after my internship is up.  I would love to be able to be there.

4. I am crushing majorly on a girl.  And she knows it.  It’s pretty sickening.  I love it.

5. This is maybe the thing that I’m excited for the most.  I’ve been going to an Orthodox church for the past couple of months.  I was raised in Protestant Evangelical churches and spent most of my main growing-up years in a Baptist church.  I loved this church and the community that surrounded me there.  I love that my understanding of God grew so much in my years there.  However, I felt no real sense of connection or commitment to the Baptist church.  When I first started college, one of my hopes was that I would be able to visit many different types of churches and eventually find a denomination that felt like home to me, and now, for the first time in my life, I feel like I have found a home.  Though Orthodoxy is not simply another “denomination”–it’s so much more.

More to come.  Thanks for reading.