Hwin's Prayer

"Then Hwin, though shaking all over, gave a strange little neigh, and trotted across to the Lion. 

'Please,' she said, 'you're so beautiful. You may eat me if you like. I'd much sooner be eaten by you than fed by anyone else.'

'Dearest daughter,' said Aslan, planting a lion's kiss on her twitching velvet nose, 'I knew you would not be long in coming to me. Joy shall be yours.'"

+ From the Boy and his Horse, The Complete Collection of the Chronicles of Narnia, p 298

Dealing with each other

"Let us be very sincere in our dealings with each other and have the courage to accept each other as we are. Do not be surprised at or become preoccupied with each other's failure; rather see and find the good in each other, for each one of us is created in the image of God."

+ Mother Teresa

Fundamentalism as a Modern Distortion

"The caricature of Christianity, some of which has been made possible by Christian fundamentalism (itself a caricature of Christianity), is generally too incorrect to be addressed by a serious Christian...The great tragedy, of course, is that contemporary Christianity has been so “gutted” by those who claim to be its reformers, that a central doctrine of the faith can now be used by non-believers in an effort to undermine a modernized Christianity that was only invented a few years ago."

+ Fr Stephen Freeman, A Faith That Cannot Be Defended

"For the sake of harmony, I for one am more than willing to acknowledge that the God described by the new atheists definitely does not exist; but, to be perfectly honest, that is an altogether painless concession to make.

Would that I could, however, lay the blame for many of these misunderstandings entirely to the charge of the atheists. I cannot, sadly. Late modernity in the West has been marked, as no other period ever has, by the triumph of ideological extremism. The twentieth century gave birth to fundamentalism in religion, but also in politics, social theory, economics, and countless other spheres of abstract conjecture and personal commitment.

The Syrian Fraction

The Syrian Fraction For the Feasts of the Cross And Standard Days

Thus truly the Logos of God suffered in the flesh, was slain, bowed on the Cross, and His soul parted from His body, even though His divinity never parted, either from His soul or from His body.

He was pierced with the spear in His side, out of which flowed blood and water for the forgiveness of the whole world; His body was smeared in them, and His soul came and was reunited with His body.

In place of sins which engulf the world, the Son died on the Cross and turned us from the way-of-life on the left to that on the right.

He made peace through the blood of His Cross, uniting and reconciling the heavenly with the earthly, the people with the peoples, and the soul with the body. And on the third day He rose from the tomb.

One is Immanuel, who is indivisible after the union, and undivided into two natures [ie. persons]. Thus we believe, thus we confess, and thus we affirm that this Body belongs to this Blood, and this Blood belongs to this Body.

You are Christ our God, who was pierced in His side on Golgotha at Jerusalem for our sake.

You are the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Forgive our trespasses, and remit our sins, and make us stand at Your right-hand side.

O God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed by the cherubim, hallowed by the seraphim, and exalted by thousands of thousands and ten thousand times ten thousand of rational servants; who sanctifies and completes the gifts and the fruits that have been brought to You as a sweet savor; sanctify also all of our bodies, souls, and spirits, so that with a pure heart and an unashamed face, we may call upon You, O God, the Father who is in the heavens, and pray, saying,

Our Father....

Trisagion Hymn

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1KA9alS-Vo

Holy Ascension Orthodox Parish with Bishop Basil

The Fruit of Love

"The daily discovery of the "true self" that marks the path of salvation, is the fruit of love. It is the constant realization that my life is not my own, but is rather found both within and somehow outside myself. Or perhaps it is more correct to say that "outside myself" is something of a false concept. We must say "something of a false concept," for the true self is not the loss of identity, a blending of the self with all else: it is communion.

The sacraments, then, are not discrete actions of the Church designed to enhance our spiritual experience: they are revelations of the way of life. For in every case, the sacraments are the life of communion, whether Ordination or Eucharist, Baptism, Chrismation, Matrimony, etc. It is for this reason that Patriarch Bartholomew can observe that "the whole creation is a sacrament."

...Communion is not a quality or an activity of life - it is the very essence of life - its sine qua non. For this reason the faithful are taught to pray for the departed, to know and share in the prayers of the saints, and to believe that we are helped by their prayers and they benefit from ours. In such things we are not being taught how to pray, we are being taught how to live."

+ Fr Stephen Freeman, Are we connected?, http://glory2godforallthings.com/2013/07/16/are-we-connected/

Funeral Hymns and Beauty

"lead me back to be refashioned into that ancient beauty of Your likeness."

There's so much that Orthodox funeral rites (in this case the funeral rites of the Byzantine Orthodox Rite) actually say about life and our relationship with God. Metropolitan Anthony Bloom mentions that encountering God is both beautiful and terrifying, salvation and also judgement. Beauty is beheld and our fallen state is put under direct light, we are made aware simultaneously of the distortions we have inflicted on ourselves and the immense beauty that is the masterwork of God in us.

Which is why Liturgy done beautifully brings us to the Kingdom. Remember us O Lord.

http://youtu.be/9SNIuHcg_zA

Concerning the Dependence on Projector Screens and Texts in the Liturgy

Here's a very interesting post from Pearl of Great Price Blog which resonates with FrDn Steve Hayes' post "Liturgy, worship and digital doodads":

"Follow along" - How projector screens and liturgical texts may actually be more a hindrance than a help in the liturgy - (Fr. Aidan Kavanagh)
http://pearlofgp.blogspot.com/2013/03/follow-along-how-projector-screens-and.html

Ask Samuel L. Jackson, the only thing scarier than 'snakes on a plane,' are projector screens in an Orthodox church! When you think of projector screens being hung above (or even in front of) an iconostasis projecting the liturgical text, your first inclination might be to assume that such use of modernity must obviously be a good thing. Rationally, it would only make sense that this technology would help parishioners "follow along" during a divine liturgy, allowing everyone to be fully engaged in the worship. Makes sense, right? Well, not quite. This well intended addition which has crept into our liturgical worship over the past few years may actually be more a hindrance than a help.

As we all should know, participation in the divine liturgy involves every person in a parish, not just the priest, deacon, and choir - it is to be participated in corporately. Our goal in liturgy isn't to mindlessly recite or listen to someone else recite prayers, but rather, it is to experience communion with God and with the body of Christ, that being the Church. The words being prayed should become our words expressing the prayers of our heart. The liturgical text should not be viewed as some magical incantation someone wrote centuries ago that requires a congregation to patiently and mindlessly allow for the prayers to have their affect on the gifts present on the altar. It is also less important to be caught up trying to 'follow along' and more important to truly be present in that corporate liturgical dance.

Some might be thinking here, "What about visitors and catechumens?" – Great question! Of course all churches should make sure they have books available for new comers. However, making these texts available should be for the express purpose to encourage these individuals to also to participate in the liturgy, the books should never be allowed to be used as a type of distraction from what is happening around them. Imagine for a moment while you are watching a film someone hands you the script to the movie so you can 'follow along' - would it be safe to assume that most people wouldn't enjoy doing that? Imagine what you'd miss! Would you or anyone you know be just as involved in the plot of the film if they were simply reading, neither really watching and/or listening? This is one of the many reasons why musical and theater performances do not hand their patrons the text being used. A person is meant to live the experience, not to 'follow along.'

Typography, by its nature, separates and compartmentalizes information, making it impossible for a complete and rich experience. Applying this observation to reading off a screen while participating in liturgical worship, it comes as no surprise why many complain that liturgical prayers often lack a 'prayerful feel.' And how could such liturgies be prayerful when they are reduced to a 'read-along'?  

Delving into this dilemma further, it may be worthwhile examining just how text and typography actually influences our cognition and what affects it may have on our engagement with the world. Canadian communications theorist and philosopher Marshall McLuhan, wrote extensively on the effects of typography and text on individuals and society. According to McLuhan, unlike in times past or in cultures where typography is not considered the primary mode of communication, we in our modern Western culture have significantly lowered our ability to synthesize the world around us. It may be worth mentioning that McLuhan also believed that the invention of print technology and its ontologically disjunctive nature contributed to the rise of individualism, capitalism, and nationalism - all of which could be argued are anti-liturgical ideologies.

 

Below is an excerpt from Fr. Aidan Kavanagh (a liturgical theologian) on the affects of text on the liturgy and our liturgical participation. Enjoy! 
 

Fr. Aidan Kavanagh

The affects of text on the liturgy and our liturgical participation

 

Fr. Aidan Kavanagh (1933-2011)
Catholic priest and Yale professor

"But an even more important development than liturgical hypertrophy was 's unavoidable slide into textual absorption, something stimulated by the invention of printing. Northern Europeans became literary humanists rather as southern Europeans had become aesthetic humanists, and proponents of the Reformation were largely men of the north who fell as easily into textual obsession with the Bible as they did into mistrust of urbane aesthetes from south of the Alps. The technology of printing helped to blow apart a moribund medieval world, unleashing forces which the modem world copes with uneasily still. And while it would be too much to say that printing reduced God's Word into words, since writing itself was responsible for that, it would be true to say that printing turned God's Words into a text which all people, literate or not, could now see as lines of type marching across a page. God's Word could now for the first time be visualized by all, not in the multivalency of a "presence" in corporate act or icon but linearly in horizontal lines which could be edited, reset, revised, fragmented, and studied by all—something which few could have done before. A Presence which had formerly been experienced by most as a kind of enfolding embrace had now modulated into an abecedarian printout to which only the skill of literacy could give complete access. God could now be approached not only through burning bushes, sacralized spaces, and holy symbols and events, but through texts so cheaply reproduced as to be available to all. Rite and its symbols could be displaced or got round altogether, and so could the whole of the living tradition which provided the gravitational field holding them together in an intelligible union. Rite became less a means than an obstacle for the new textual piety. And once rite receded, so did the need for that kind of assembly whose common burden was the enactment of rite rather than attendance upon didactic exposition of set texts. The truth lies now exclusively in the text; no longer on the walls, or in the windows, or in the liturgical activity of those who occupy the churches. Protestant iconoclasm was thus not, nor could it have been, selective or corrective. It was programmatic and across the board. It did not modify an old equation but wrote a new one.
 
The liturgy was thus constricted to a set of texts which could not only be put cheaply into the hands of each member of the assembly, but which could be altered quickly and controlled effectively even down to the details of layout and typography by groups of experts whose competencies were often tangential to the rite itself. Under such conditions, the liturgical action tended to shrink from being a complex diversity of intermeshing ministries and roles working together toward common ritual and symbolic purpose, to concern itself more with the individual reaction of the worshipper to a text held in the hand and followed with the eye. Sermons, exhortations, and biblical readings could be followed with the eye as they were being read aloud by the minister. The liturgy began to shift from rite as an enacted style of common life carried on in rich symbolic ambiguity to the simultaneous reading and recitation of printed texts which were increasingly didactic in nature.

It is not easy for us who live on this side of the invention of printing to sense how very novel this sort of liturgy was to one who had never seen liturgical texts during worship but had only heard them, to one who therefore never felt compelled to sit still in ranks of immovable pew resembling lines of type marching across a page and to follow what was said aloud by watching a text or reading a score."

(Just to be clear, liturgical books are not inherently evil, but our obsessive need to 'follow along' may be pulling us away from experiencing what is happening around us and with us in the liturgy. The pinnacle of corporate prayer is thus reduced to an individualistic pursuit. We should lay aside all distractions, even the personal pious ones. )
-----------------------------------------------------

Source:

+ Aidan Kavanagh, On Liturgical Theology, pp. 103 -106
+ Marshall McLuhan, Gutenberg Galaxy, pp. 124 –126

On the Problem of “Reverse Perspective”: Definitions East and West

On the Problem of “Reverse Perspective”: Definitions East and West
by Clemena Antonova (Published in Leonardo Journal, Vol. 43, No. 5, pp. 464–469, 2010)
Via http://www.scribd.com/doc/81823340/53071746-1

ABSTRACT
The author considers the history of the theory of “reverse perspective” in the 20th century. She identifies six distinct views on reverse perspective, some of which are mutually exclusive. The first four definitions have circulated in both Western and Russian scholarship, while two further views proposed by Russian authors are little known in the West. The most useful contribution of Russian theory to the subject is the suggestion of a pictorial space fundamentally different from the three-dimensional space frequently taken for granted by Western viewers.

Iconography and Pornography

Iconography and Pornography; Two Competing Worldviews
by Fr.Deacon Evan Freeman
http://ocawonder.com/2011/09/15/iconography-and-pornography-two-competing-worldviews/

 As Orthodox Christians we are surrounded by icons both at Church and at home, but we also encounter a myriad of other images in the world around us on TV, on our computers, on our phones, and elsewhere. Among these ubiquitous images is pornography, once relegated to dirty magazines, but now piped through the Internet for mass consumption. One might identify both Orthodox iconography and pornography as “icons” of two competing worldviews: on the one hand, icons present us with the revelation of Christ and the theology of the Church; on the other, pornography epitomizes the pursuit of pleasure as an end in itself, something commonly encountered in the world. Both kinds of “icons” take as their central subjects the human person, but Orthodox icons and pornography present two very different visions of the human person as image of God.

Fundamental to a Christian understanding of the human person is our creation as human beings in the image of God:

    …God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created  them; male and female he created them.[1]

Part of what “the image of God” means, and something that makes us different from plants and animals, is that we have freedom to make rational choices.[2]  And this is also something that icons and pornography share: a vision of the human being as a free being. But the two visions of freedom that icons and pornography present to us could hardly be more different.

In classical times and for most of Christian history, freedom was envisioned as the unhindered ability to realize one’s true nature as a being created by God. Only later, during the Enlightenment and in modern times, was freedom re-imagined as the individual’s right to choose anything, even in spite of one’s nature.[3]

Pornography is a vision of the human person’s unconstrained pursuit of his or her physical desires, something that the fathers view as a tragic misuse of natural impulses. St. Gregory of Nyssa says:

 For those qualities with which brute life was armed for self preservation, when transferred to human life, became passions…Thus our love of pleasure took its beginning from our being made like to the irrational creation, and was increased   by the transgressions of men, becoming the parent of so many varieties of sins arising from    pleasure as we cannot find among the irrational animals.[4]

The natural instincts common among humans and animals, and given to us by God, are good when guided by our rational choices in obedience to God. But when unguided desires rule supreme we become wilder than beasts. St. Gregory says: “If reason should let go of the reins and like some charioteer entangled in the chariot should be dragged behind it, wherever the irrational motion of the yoke-animals carries it, then the impulses are turned into passions.”[5]

Rather than freeing us, the passions enslave us. Our own human experience confirms this: compulsive overeating, drug addiction, alcoholism, and a growing epidemic of sex addiction are all examples of freedom lost to unchecked desire.[6] Recalling the words of Genesis, St. Basil challenges us:

 First the power to rule was conferred on you. O human, you are a ruling being. And why do you serve the passions as a slave? Why do you throw away your own dignity and become a slave of sin? For what reason do you make yourself a prisoner of the devil? You were appointed ruler of creation, and you have renounced the nobility of our own nature.[7]

Presenting the illusion of freedom, pornography is in fact an image of slavery. The person pursuing desire as an end in itself forfeits the ability to make rational choices, and follows the irrationality of impulses and urges. Sadly, pornography is an icon of the human person denying the image of God in which he or she was created.

Icons, on the other hand, reveal a vision of the human person as a free being created in the image of God that is quite different from pornography. Icons of the creation of Adam and Eve provide a deeper insight into what it means to be created in God’s image.

The Creation of Adam and Eve, late 20th c., Fresco, St. Paraskevi Greek Orthodox Shrine Church, Greenlawn, NY

God’s words in Genesis, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness,” take on new meaning when we see in icons of the creation that it is Christ who creates humankind. That we are created in God’s “image” becomes more concrete when we see this image as Christ.[8]

New Testament and the fathers alike confirm that Christ is the image of the Father par excellence. To look on Christ is to look on God.[9] But this is especially true when we see Christ as the crucified and risen one. It is ultimately in His obedience to the will of the Father in His voluntary sacrifice on the cross for the salvation of the world that Christ ultimately reveals the image of God to His creation.[10]

Crucifixion, 1209, fresco, Studenica Monastery, Serbia.

It is noteworthy that even in icons of the creation of Adam and Eve, Christ is already revealed as the crucified and risen one. If we look closely at His halo, we see within it the Cross.

And so, icons teach us that to be created in God’s image means more than an open-ended individual freedom. It means something very different from the freedom to pursue the passions as envisioned in pornography. Icons reveal true freedom as liberty from the passions that enslave and entangle us, in order that we can become like and draw close to our crucified and risen Lord.

Christ as the Ancient of Days, Gospel book, Byzantine, 1297, tempera on vellum, Cambridge University Library, Cambridge.

We see this in the 12th c. icon depicting St. John of the Ladder’s ascetical text, The Ladder of Divine Ascent.

The Ladder of Divine Ascent, late 12th c., tempera and gold on panel, Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai, Egypt.

In this icon we see monks striving to overcome the slavery of the passions that lead away from Christ. Through these ascetic efforts these monks draw close to Christ. It is this same ascetical struggle against the passions and toward God to which not only monks, but all Christians, and indeed all humans, are called.

St. Maria (Skobtsoba) of Ravensbruck, Janet Peters, 21st c.

Likewise, in this 21st c. icon of St. Maria (Skobtsoba), we see the image of a woman who has been transformed according to the image of Christ through her participation in Christ’s Passion. In her willingness to sacrifice her own life for the life of another in the Ravensbruck concentration camp in Germany on Holy Saturday in 1945, St. Maria allowed herself to be created in the image of the crucified Christ, entering into His death in the hope of His resurrection.

Icons remind us that our creation in the image of God is something that should be reflected in our lives and in our actions. Just as icons reveal spiritual truths to us through color, so God calls us to reveal Him to the world through our lives and even our deaths. St. Gregory of Nyssa tells us:

 Our Maker also, painting the portrait to resemble His own beauty, by the addition of virtues, as it were with colors, shows in us His own sovereignty: and manifold and varied are the tints, so to say, by which His true form is portrayed: not red, or white, or the blending of these, whatever it may be called, nor a touch of black that paints the eyebrow and the eye, and shades, by some combination, the depressions in the figure, and all such arts which the hands of painters contrive, but instead of these, purity, freedom from passion, blessedness, alienation from all evil, and all those attributes of the like kind which help to form in men the likeness of God: with such hues as these did the Maker of His own image mark our nature.[11]

As Orthodox Christians living in the 21st century, we are surrounded by images: both the holy icons of the Church, and the many images that we encounter in the world. Presenting an illusion of freedom, pornography is an icon of slavery to the passions. Yet Orthodox icons present a different vision of humanity to us: men and women truly free and truly created in the image of the crucified and risen Christ.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Genesis 1.26-27 (NRSV).

[2] Fr. Stanley Harakas states: “It is a unanimous patristic position that God’s Image in man of necessity includes freedom, or as the Fathers of the Church prefer to call it, ‘self-determination’ (autexousian).” Stanley Harakas, Toward Transfigured Life, (Light and Life Publishing Company, 1983), 101.

[3] David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies, (Yale University Press, 2009), 24-26, 224-226.

[4] Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man, 18.2,4 (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers).

[5] Gregory of Nyssa, “The Emotions,” On the Soul and the Resurrection, (St .Vladimir’s Seminary Press), 57; cf. Plato, Dialogue with Phaedrus.

[6] Sometimes also called “process or behavioral addiction” or “hyperactive sexual desire,” pornography-fueled sex addiction is a testimony of the power of images to transform the human person. Mark Griffiths, “Sex on the Internet: Observations and Implications for Internet Sex Addiction,” The Journal of Sex Research 38:4 (Nov. 2001): 333-342; George Morelli, “Sexual Addiction: An Orthodox and Scientific View,” Orthodoxy Today, (http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles6/MorelliHypersexuality.php). St. Vladimir’s Seminary recently held a workshop, led by Dr. Albert Rossi, to address the growing pastoral problem of pornography and sex addiction: http://www.svots.edu/headlines/workshop-addresses-solutions-internet-pornography-addiction. In addition to the sacrament of Confession, Dr. Rossi recommends Internet accountability program Covenant Eyes (http://www.covenanteyes.com/) and the twelve-step group Sexaholics Anonymous (http://www.sa.org/) as helpful resources in dealing with the pastoral problem of Internet pornography/sex addiction.

[7] Basil the Great, On the Human Condition, “On the Origin of Humanity, Discourse 1,” 8 (St Vladimir’s Seminary Press).

[8] “Jesus alone is the image of God, but man is ‘according to the image,’ that is, image of the image…” Marius Victorinus, “Against Arius I.20,” Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, 69, (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press), 117; cf. Clement of Alexandria, “Exhortation to the Greeks” 10.

[9] John 14.9-10; 2 Corinthians 4.4; Philippians 2.6; Colossians 1.15; Hebrews 1.3; cf. Marius Victorinus, Against Arius I.20; Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks 10.

[10] “We must dare say that the goodness of Christ appeared greater and more divine and truly in accordance with the image of the Father when ‘he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross,’ than if… he had not been willing to become a servant for the salvation of the world.” Origen, Commentary on John 1.231, as quoted in Behr’s The Mystery of Christ, 34-35.

[11] Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man, 5.1. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers.