I've added a link to Telford Works' excellent blog, Clutter from the Desk of Telford Work over on the left. As someone who has read, profited from, and mentally argued with the work of theologian Stanley Hauerwas over the years, I refer you to Work's site for links and reactions to the controversy over some remarks of Hauerwas' post (and pre-) 9/11. Work also has some interesting comments on the stagnation of Islamic world. Let me quote a passage that goes to the heart of the matter:

It took only a few centuries for the Muslim empires to burn through the cultural capital it inherited from late antiquity. Early Muslims relied on Jewish and Christian expertise to administer their territories (John of Damascus, for instance, worked for a while as the Christians' representative to the caliph). Early modern Muslims, unable at first to incorporate themselves into businesses, needed people free from the sharia to be engines of economic ingenuity.

I would follow this up by asserting that Islam is a fundamentally parasitic faith. It is tempting to quote a comment attributed to Samuel Johnson about a new work he had read; "Your manuscript is both good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is orignal is not good." The great vitality of the Muslim empires came from a prodigious borrowing from their non-Muslim predecessors. In addition to the Jewish and Christian influences mentioned by Work, there was also the influence of Persia, a great empire with its own heritage, and the material and cultural treasures of the Hindu-Buddhist kingdoms of Northern India. What we call "Arabic" numbers, including the zero, were adapted from Hindu mathematicians. The Buddhist statues destroyed by the Taliban were some of the last relics of a civilization annihilated by the Islamic "religion of peace." Islam flowers in the aftermath of the rape of a higher culture. With the end of conquest comes stagnation.

Today we worked with the lambs set aside to show at the Warren County Fair. Nothing special, just normal sheep "maintenance"; worming, trimming hooves and generally checking them over. They were not enthusiastic about the hoof trimming. I always manage to bang, scrape or cut some appendage of my own when I do this. My right hand looks like I've taken up bare knuckle fighting as a hobby. It will heal in a few days and be none the worse for the wear. I'm afraid my hands are in the awkward in-between stage; not callused enough for a real farmer, but too beat up for a proper lawyer.

Compared to Catholics and Calvinists, there are very few Orthodox bloggers. One reason may be that they are all hanging out at Livejournal.com, writing on-line diaries. Here are two: Seraphim's LiveJournal prints the reflections of retired Orthodox Bishop Seraphim Segrist. Dasha's LiveJournal, in both Russian and English, offers cross-cultural thoughts from New York.

With the end of June, July has taken us into what feels like deep summer. A week of thunderstorms, a few days of relief, and now nearly unbearable heat and humidity. Handling fifty pound grain sacks leaves my clothes wringing wet at evening feeding time. Shade is a grace and a breeze a foretaste of glory. There are some other consolations as well. Fireflies are everywhere. Driving home after dark on Saturday, one landed on my windshield wiper and stayed, flashing out his lovelorn semaphore at 50 miles per hour down Browntown Road. Beast, the black cat, was on the porch last night, nearly invisible, his eyes glowing green in the twilight, surrounded by the blinking green of a half dozen fireflies. If I weren't so tired, I would go out and catch some in a jar, and let them light my way home.

The latest controversy in the Anglican world surrounds the status of Rowan Williams, now Archbishop of Wales, as front runner for appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury. The choice of Williams, known to support both the ordination of women and revision of church teaching regarding homosexuality as well as being an outspoken pacifist, has stirred vehement protests from the evangelical wing of the Anglican church, both at home and abroad. For a sample of the conservative reaction, see this editorial by Episcopal "muckraker" David Virtue.

As an Orthodox Christian, and a former Episcopalian, I share some of their misgivings. At the same time, Williams is the one figure on the "liberal" wing of the church that I read and admire. His early work on Christian spirituality, The Wound of Knowledge, has repaid repeated readings over the years. He is aware of and knowledgeable about Orthodoxy, both through study and some first hand experience. In one interview, he describes how regular use of the Jesus Prayer is part of his own discipline of prayer. He has written on major figures in Russian Orthodoxy and his latest book is a meditation on several Orthodox icons of the Virgin.

A vital part of Williams' work is his engagement with Tradition. As distinguished from such figures as John Spong, who facilely rejects Tradition with all the sophistication of an old fashioned village atheist, or Frank Griswold, who grazes through the Tradition, picking and choosing like a banquet line, Williams wrestles with it. He is a sensitive, acute reader who listens to the voices of the great Christian thinkers of the past. Yet, at the same time, his engagement with Tradition is still, in a sense, from the outside. Where Tradition conflicts with the apparent needs and pains of persons before him, Williams feels free to abandon or change it. Perhaps this comes when one confronts the Tradition embodied in books, rather than monks. In the Roman Church, the magisterium speaks on behalf of the Tradition (at least as it developed in the West). In Orthodoxy, monasticism and the liturgy serve the same function. The Anglican church was born in the rejection of a magisterium, the destruction of the monasteries and the radical simplification of the liturgy. As a result, when even as sensitive and intelligent a scholar as Williams reads the Church Fathers, he is engaging in an imaginative recreation of a past world, much like those ensembles devoted to early music. In Orthodoxy, the Tradition is a living music.

If Williams is chosen as the symbolic leader of the Anglican Communion, we have the irony, as Orthodox, of dealing with a man who is both closer to and further away from us than Archbishop Carey, his Evangelical predecessor. It would be a further irony if Williams, a man devoted to peace and reconciliation, were responsible for a final schism within the Anglican Communion.

I would like to welcome another Orthodox blogger, James Ferrenberg, a convert from pentecostal protestantism, who maintains the thoughtful Paradosis site.

Susan laughs at me for my frequent checks of the stats for this site. Perhaps it is a sign of excessive vanity on my part. I am curious though, when I launch these messages in a bottle out onto the cyber-sea, to know what shores they have washed up on. I can understand the three hits from Bulgaria because of the Orthodox connection, but the hits from Singapore, Brazil and Japan leave me at a loss. I wonder what they were looking for, and what they thought of what they found here?

This Sunday is the feast of Pentecost in the Orthodox calendar. For a meditation on the hymns from Vespers for the feast, go here to David Melling's consistently edifying Arimathea site.

While packing some clothes for a short trip tonight, I found a ticket stub to a production of The Fantasticks at Wayside Theatre in Middletown. Susan and I saw it together in April on a much overdue night out. We met in 1988 when we were amateur actors together in a Front Royal Little Theatre production of the show. In what was a clear case of casting against type, I played "El Gallo", a mysterious and romantic figure. If I resembled anyone in the play in real life, it was Matt, an earnest character, young, love-struck and a little ridiculous. The love-struck part happened shortly after Susan walked into rehearsals. Matt, the serious twenty year old, says in his opening speech,

I'm grown up, stable,
Willing to conform.
I'm beyond such foolish notions.
And yet -- in spite of my knowledge --
There is this girl.

She makes me young again!
And foolish.

At what I thought of then as the mature age of 33, I laughed with the script at the follies of young love. Thirteen years later at 46, I have to laugh at the foolish young lover I was. Nonetheless, I still watch Susan when she doesn't know I am looking, and think, how undeserved a grace love is, how lucky I am, and say, like Matt, "There is this girl. She makes me young again! And foolish".

From the troparia of Matins for the Sunday of the Fathers of Nicea:

Creation, seeing God crucified in the flesh, was dissolving in fear; but it was firmly held together by the sustaining hand of the one who was crucified for our sake.

Coward death, destroyed by death, lies lifeless; for unable to endure the divine assault of life, the strong one is put to death and resurrection is bestowed on all.

(Translation by Archimandrite Ephraim)

I have changed the blog description you see on the left, new wording courtesy of David Yeago.

Susan and I were up just after sunrise this morning, together with her father, loading wool bags onto the truck. Five bags packed full, towering ceiling high, plus one partial bag. Just over eight hundred pounds of wool altogether, or so say the scales for the Mid-States Wool Growers Cooperative Association. The local pool ships our clip out to the mid-west for bulk sale. Wool used to be packed in jute bags, like giant burlap sacks. Now we are required to use clear plastic. It makes sense for the buyers, letting them see what they are getting. Looks odd though, to see the fleeces from some 140 sheep going out looking like Brobdingnagian sausages. We should clear somwhere around $80.00 if we are lucky. The wool market has not been good, and our Hampshires produce a short, coarse fleece in any event. Truth be told, we are happy just to have someone take it off our hands. It does tend to take up space. Susan had a conversation once with a fellow at a shepherd's seminar who didn't bother selling his. "Well, what do you do with it all?" "It makes a pretty good garden mulch. As for the rest, it'll burn pretty good if you put enough diesel on it."

My family tolerates (barely) my love for Country music. I look at it as the last vestige of popular verse in America. The kinds of sentiments you used to read in poetry in newspapers are now found only on the radio dial. Sure there are some songwriters who can't get past the usual cliches, but they are cliches because they capture certain home truths in a simple way. Here is a Country song in the making; the story of a woman with a heartache so bad it burned down Colorado.

At dusk coming from up from the barn, I see the crescent moon and below, to the right, Venus. But what's that floating between them? Firefly!

The nuns of the Protection of the Holy Virgin Monastery in Colorado are requesting prayer, as wildfires draw closer. See the latest report at OCA - News Headlines

You can find a useful article on the Jesus Prayer at the St. Vladimir's Seminary website. It says much of what I have said, only better, and includes a good bibliography at the end.

The Suburban Ascetic

Further Notes on the Jesus Prayer

Here is some wisdom from Bishop Kallistos Ware: Being so very short and simple, the Jesus Payer can be recited at any time and in any place. It can be said in bus queues, when working in the garden or kitchen, when dressing or walking, when suffering from insomnia, at moments of distress or mental strain when other forms of prayer are impossible: from this point of view, it is a prayer particularly well adapted to the tensions of the modern world. It is a prayer specially recommended to the monk, who is given a rosary as part of the habit at his profession; but it is equally a prayer for lay people, whatever their occupation in the world. It is a prayer for the hermit and recluse, but at the same time a prayer for those engaged in active social work, nursing, teaching, visiting in prisons. It is a prayer that fits every stage in the spiritual life, from the most elementary to the most advanced. (From the introduction to The Art of Prayer, An Orthodox Anthology)

The best use of the prayer for the beginner is just what Bishop Kallistos has illustrated above. It is the perfect prayer to bring yourself back to what is truly important in the midst of the daily crisis. What does the prayer tell you? First, that Jesus is Lord. This seems trite, but unpacking that statement is the work of a lifetime. To acknowledge that there is a Lord is to say against the sentimental nihilism that is the spirit of our age that life has meaning and purpose, that the solipsist is a fool, and that the world is not governed by our desires. To say that this Lord is Jesus, and that he is the Son of God, is to proclaim that the meaning and purpose behind the world is love, and that this love is stronger than death. To call out for mercy is to proclaim that death and futility are not the final answers in your own life. It is to acknowledge that grace exists, and that it comes to the humble, that is, to sinners like yourself. Quite a lot to handle while passing time on hold, or waiting for your turn at the register.

Many Orthodox find that a set time to pray the Jesus Prayer is useful and make it part of their daily devotions. It is customary to use a prayer rope (the "rosary" referred to by Bishop Kallistos) to aid in keeping focused on the prayer and to return you to it when the inevitable distractions arise. The quiet repetition of the prayer has its own fruits, but is only the first step towards that deeper prayer that the Fathers call "prayer of the heart." That takes us beyond my own experience and I can do no more than point you to the writings of those who have been there.

(Coming soon; fasting, and a basic bibliography on prayer)

Those who are interested in reading more about the Jesus Prayer may want to sample Monachos.net's collection of resources on the subject. I will be posting a further list of resources and suggested readings in the near future.

The Suburban Ascetic

Notes on the Jesus Prayer

Anyone who studies the Orthodox spiritual tradition will eventually run across that wonderfully odd little book, The Way of a Pilgrim. Whatever you call it, memoir or spiritual novel, parable or spiritual instruction, the heart of the book is the practice of unceasing prayer by repeating "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." The humble figure of the Pilgrim has inspired Orthodox Christians for the past century. The Pilgrim and his Way may seem alien to us westerners, although perhaps he (and it) should not. The heart of the prayer should be familiar to anyone who has attended an evangelical rally or service complete with altar call. The following was taken from the Billy Graham organization web site:

Dear Lord Jesus,
I know that I am a sinner and need Your forgiveness. I believe that You died for my sins. I want to turn from my sins. I now invite You to come into my heart and life. I want to trust and follow You as Lord and Savior.
In Jesus' name. Amen.

As you can see, the "sinner's prayer" of American Evangelicalism is, at heart, the same prayer as the Pilgrim's. The difference comes in the function of the prayer. In classic Evangelicalism, the ideal is to pray the "sinner's prayer" as a once-in-a-lifetime event. This one experience should give you the grace, energy and momentum to go forward through life as a Christian, strong in the Lord. It is not unlike being shot out of a cannon. The problem comes when the momentum runs out and the convert hits ground. Typically there are a number of different responses. Reload the cannon (I'm rededicating my life to the Lord!). Get a bigger cannon (You need to get baptized in the Holy Ghost and speak in tongues!). Study cannon design (For the intellectually inclined). The most common response may be to simply ignore the impact and pretend (at least on Sunday) that you are still sailing through the air. This is obviously a caricature, and not fair to the many mature and faithful Evangelicals out there. The point is that repentance is not a one time only affair.

The Orthodox ideal is not to say the Jesus prayer once, but to say it with every breath and every heartbeat. The goal is to live in a place of repentance, continually conscious of God's grace and your need for it. The Jesus prayer is news that always stays news. You cannot, by definition, out grow it. Is He still Lord? Are you still a sinner? If so, then the prayer outlines the place where you live. This is what distinguishes the Jesus Prayer from the "mantra" of Eastern religions. In a mantra, the sound and the repetition are key to its effects. Content is less important. In the Jesus prayer, the content always stays with you. It is a prayer, addressed from a person to a particular person we recognize as Lord.

The Pilgrim was given special instructions by his elder on reciting the prayer repeatedly and combining it with his breathing. The tradition states that while these techniques can be useful, they should be used only under the supervision of an experienced elder. Saint Gregory of Sinai says in the Philokalia, "Thus, if you hear about or are taught this discipline, and want to practice it, but are not under spiritual direction, you will experience one of two things: you will either force yourself to persist, in which case you fall into delusion and will fail to attain healing; or you will grow negligent, in which case you will never make any progress during your whole life." (Gregory of Sinai: On Stillness, The Philokalia Volume Four, page 269) In short; kids, don't try this at home.

(Coming soon, some thoughts on appropriate use of the prayer by layfolk not blessed with a local elder.)

Blogger seems to be letting me make template changes again. I have added a search function. Give it a try and let me know how it works! If everything stays stable, I will start posting again in earnest.