The Mystery (of the Sacraments, the Eucharist in particular, and the Incarnation, as well as alot of other stuff)

This is a phenomenal quote, and is a partial insight into why I love Sacramental worship, and why I think it's one of the best things Christianity has to offer the typical young person of our time. It's why young hipster Seattle-ites crowd into St. Mark's Cathedral every Sunday night for Compline, though they hardly know what they're being exposed to, it's why witchcraft and New Age spirituality in various forms is exploding, and it's why Evangelical Christianity is fading into irrelevance and mere self-preservation, (well, there are other reasons for all those things as well, but this one plays no small part!) As we try to know everything exhaustively through our ever-increasing technological apparatus by way of 'the scientific method,' we eliminate mystery. Not because we've actually succeeded in 'debunking' anything, (the whole idea of dis-enchanting the world and being a habitual 'debunker' is a dubious pursuit to begin with I'd say...unless you like places like Auschwitz and the Gulag) but because our claims to know all (or that we will someday know everything, or just about everything) do not permit a notion of mystery. More importantly, our arrogance does not want to permit such a thing. Something incomprehensible would be an insult to our claim to the possibility of complete knowledge of everything, but more honestly, to our sense of power over all those things we might know. Should God Himself make a claim that is beyond our ability to contain rationally, we don't actually argue against it, or for it, or whatever, we simply eliminate it as a possible answer, thereby usually eliminating the question also. As you consider the notion of Sacrament (a material/physical way of giving and receiving divine grace), and why it so powerful, keep the quote below in mind. I believe that in receiving the Eucharist, I am not just memorializing the life, death, and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, I am actually encountering Him in the elements as well. In the final analysis friends, it may indeed be just bread and wine after all, but what a truly awful impoverishment...so let us keep the feast.

"Partly because the history of the intellect in the West has Christian roots, and partly because Christians wish to remain in dialogue with the secular mind, we in the West fail to satisfy the hunger of those who come and stare at the feast. Living among those utilitarian rationalists who control the world and with whom we seek to communicate, we Christians can forget the nature of Christian perception. We confess to doctrines profoundly mysterious by their nature- that a man should be God, that one God should be at the same time three persons, that we of corruptible flesh should also be temples of the living God. So we believe, but so we cannot comfortably think. For as 'thoughts,' these are in essence mystery. Mystery is what many contemporary minds are hungry for; it is what they seek for afield, in the non-Christian realms and such Eastern, Asiatic sources as the Bhagavad Gita and the Tibetan Book of the Dead. We Christians in the west have not shared what we possess. We have mystery in plenty, yet our own discourse averts it, avoids it as if in embarassment. For mystery is what we have been taught through our education to relentlessly extinguish...Our continual impulse is not to 'apprehend' mystery, but to render it extinct."
Anthony Ugolnik, The Illuminating Icon pgs. 93-94

From an old Professor of Mine circa Fall 2001

From my friend's colleague at the UN....



FYI


French Intellectuals to be deployed in Afghanistan To Convince Taliban of
Non-Existence of God
[Paris]

The ground war in Afghanistan heated up yesterday when the Allies revealed
plans to airdrop a platoon of crack French existentialist philosophers
into
the country to destroy the morale of Taliban zealots by proving the
non-existence of God. Elements from the feared Jean-Paul Sartre Brigade,
or
'Black Berets', will be parachuted into the combat zones to spread doubt,
despondency and existential anomie among the enemy.

Hardened by numerous intellectual battles fought during their long
occupation of Paris's Left Bank, their first action will be to establish a
number of pavement cafes at strategic points near the front lines.
There they will drink coffee and talk animatedly about the absurd nature
of
life and man's lonely isolation in the universe. They will be accompanied
by
a number of heartbreakingly beautiful girlfriends who will further spread
dismay by sticking their tongues in the philosophers' ears every five
minutes and looking remote and unattainable to everyone else.

Their leader, Colonel Marc-Ange Belmondo, spoke yesterday of his
confidence
in the success of their mission. Sorbonne graduate Belmondo, a very
intense
and unshaven young man in a black pullover, gesticulated wildly and said,
"The Taliban are caught in a logical fallacy of the most ridiculous. There
is no God and I can prove it. Take your tongue out of my ear, Juliet, I am
talking."

Marc-Ange plans to deliver an impassioned thesis on man's nauseating
freedom
of action with special reference to the work of Foucault and the films of
Alfred Hitchcock.

However, humanitarian agencies have been quick to condemn the operation as
inhumane, pointing out that the effects of passive smoking from the
Frenchmens' endless Gitanes could wreak a terrible toll on civilians in
the
area.

I Didn't Know Tech Support Dealt with Such Things...

Dear Tech Support:

I recently upgraded from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0 and found that the new program began unexpected child processing and also took up a lot of space and valuable resources. This wasn't mentioned in the product brochure. In addition Wife 1.0 installs itself into all other programs and launches during system initialization where it monitors all other system activity.

Applications such as Boys Night Out 2.5, and Golf 5.3 no longer run and crash the system whenever selected. Attempting to operate Saturday Rugby 6.3 always fails but Saturday Shopping 7.1 runs instead. I cannot seem to keep Wife 1.0 in the background whilst attempting to run any of my favourite applications. I am thinking about going back to Girlfriend 7.0 but uninstall doesn't work on this program.

Can you please help.

Phil



Dear Phil:

This is a very common problem resulting from a basic misunderstanding. Many men upgrade from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0 thinking that Wife 1.0 is merely a UTILITIES & ENTERTAINMENT program. Whereas Wife 1.0 is an OPERATING SYSTEM designed by its creator to run everything. You are unlikely to be able to purge Wife 1.0 and still convert back to Girlfriend 7.0 as Wife 1.0 is not designed to do this and it is impossible to uninstall, delete or purge the program files from the system once installed.

Some people have tried to install Girlfriend 8.0 or Wife 2.0 but have ended up with even more problems. (See in manual under Alimony/Child Support and Solicitors Fees). Having Wife 1.0 installed myself I recommend you keep it installed and deal with the difficulties as best you can. When any faults or problems occur, whatever you think has caused them, you must run the C:\ I Apologize program and avoid attempting to use the *Esc-key. It may be necessary to run C:\ I Apologize a number of times but hopefully eventually the operating system will return to normal. Wife 1.0 although a very high maintenance program can be very rewarding. To get the most out of it consider buying additional software such as Flowers 2.0 and Chocolates 5.0.

Do not under any circumstances install Secretary (Short Skirt version) as this is not a supported application for Wife 1.0 and the system will almost certainly crash. As well as any second operating system. To run Girlfriend 8.0 in the background will lead to total system failure in both operating systems.

Best of luck

Tech Support

Does it always smell like pee here?

Originally written some time in May of this year:

So, it's 2am, and I'm here at my new place of employment. To put it quite simply, 'here' is a home for abused and neglected children called "Health and Educational Services." It smells like pee here right now because the torrential rains that lashed New England last week flooded the bottom floor of the establishment, and they had to rip out the carpets to stave off mold. Unfortunately, whatever happened in the time between the coming of the Floodwaters-of-God's-Judgment Upon-the-Unrestrained-Evil-That-Is-Massachussets and the removal of the offending carpet left the place smelling rather like a truckstop mens room. The word on the street is that the new carpet will remedy all things. It's almost eschatological. The job I am 'training' for is basically an overnight watchman/janitor. I just learned the janitorial part...not exactly rocket science, and it only takes about 40 minutes. Other than that little flurry of activity, the other 90% of my job will be staying awake, and making sure the kids stay in their rooms, and tending to them if they have any legitimate needs. Apparently, these overnight shifts are pretty low intensity. That's putting it mildly. Other than the cleaning duties, I can read/study, surf the net, and basically screw off while getting compensated handsomely. It will pay more than Starbucks, give me more hours, give me plenty of time to study on the clock, benefits, two weeks of paid vacation per year guaranteed, and a load of paid official holidays. Now for the two downsides: First, as I already pointed out, it will be an overnight shift: from 11pm to 9am, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings. Of course, this means a significantly disrupted sleep schedule on these days, which I will hopefuly be able to more or less 'reset' on Sundays by staying up and going to bed at a regular hour on Sunday evening, rather than sleeping a portion of the daylights hours (as I will have to on Friday and Saturday). Now for other downside: The building we are located in is haunted by the apparition of a young child. Yup, thats right people, a good ole' fashioned New England we-burn-people-at-the-stake-and-other-crazy-shit haunting.

Great...

Apparently, whatever 'he' is, 'he' isn't particularly malicious, and 'he' doesn't appear to anyone directly, only out of the corner of ones eye, or by causing various sorts of mischief like slamming doors, unseasonal temperature variations from room to room upstairs, or by just giving you an incredible case of the willies as you traverse the stairs up to the kitchen and bathrooms. My 'office' is downstairs. My 40-minute per night cleaning duties are upstairs. "He" never appears downstairs, or to any of the children, (who are also securely downstairs at night). "He" only appears upstairs.

Great...

The guy that hooked me up with this opportunity is one of my current roomates, and a Christian. He told me he has only had one run-in with 'him', and that was the thrice-repeated mysterious door slamming. At that point, my roomate spoke out loud to the whatever 'it' was and rebuked in the name of Jesus Christ, told it to never appear or 'affect' him again unless it was ready to be cast out. He hasn't had much problem since, other than what can only be described as a few self-inflicted cases of 'the willies.' Tonight, in the midst of my 'training' I was left alone upstairs for several minutes. I wasn't feeling anything, no presence, no anything. Those of you that know me, know that even as a Charismatic Christian who believes in the immediacy of the spiritual world, know that I am still a bit of a skeptic. So, I hedged my bets...I stopped mopping for a minute, leaned against my mop handle, and spoke out loud (most likely to myself) and told whatever 'it' might be that I served the Living and Most High God, and that in the end, even though I wasn't that fearsome, Who I serve, was. I told it that it would be exorcised and sent packing without further ado if it tried anything with me. That being said, I went back to my mopping.

So...What do y'all think?

As orthodox Christians, we basically believe that whatever composes the spiritual/non-material aspect of a human being departs this existence upon physical death, or actually just ceases with biological death, awaiting resurrection at the end of history. This 'part' is most often referred to as the 'soul.' Moreover, we affirm the the physical body will be resurrected on the last day to biological life, and whatever the soul was doing/wherever it was, it will be reunited with the body at that point, if it was ever seperated to begin with. The Christian doctrine of the resurrection is not altogether that simple, nor would everyone agree with me on what goes on with the persons soul between death and resurrection, but thats kind of the basic nuts and bolts of a Christian notion of what happens to a person between now and the end of time, and the final resurrection of the dead. With that being said, I belive in demonic and angelic forces at work on our plane of existence. These are not dead people, they are righteous angels that enjoy fellowship with God, and fallen angels that rebelled against God at some point in the past.

But...

Apparently, this 'little guy' is not malicious, at least not in a specific sense.
'He' apparently limits 'himself' to poltergeist like things, basic silliness like the slamming of doors, or making things fall, or whatever. ('poltergeist' is actually German for 'mischievous spirit'). I think if there is indeed anything in this place, it's either demonic or merely pscyhological, not a 'ghost' as popularly conceived. By implication, if it is demonic, it means that regardless of its specific activiities here, it is evil by it allegiance with Satan against God.

Once again, what do all of you think?

Does your worldview even permit these things to be anything more than 'in my head'? Do you agree with my basic notions of what happens to humans after death? Do you agree with my ideas about non-human spiritual beings? If you disagree, does the historic Christian faith permit the existence of ghosts proper? If so, what is to be our response to them?

Michigan, road trips, changes, changes, changes...

This past weekend I went to a wedding in Jackson, Michigan. My friends Ryan and Katey were tying the knot, so two friends (Mara a bridesmaid, and Ben, another pew-warmer like myself) and I drove out to participate. Ryan and Katey are part of a group of friends I took part in during my first and second years of Seminary, but who have now all decamped to various places around the country and world, save for the few of us who are still here in South Hamilton finishing school. It was very good to see everyone together again, but the normal wistful sentimentality that afflicts me at weddings was compounded by the presence of this group of friends, in toto, at this wedding. 3 seperate times in my adult life I have been forced to part fellowship with a group of close friends due to the end of a step of our respective educations, several people getting married at once, or the arising of some other opportunity far away (hence my leaving Seattle), or just plain growing in distance from one another due to laziness. I think I'm rather tired of it, and it's not over yet. I will avoid ranting (too much) about the evils of a hyper-mobile, hyper-consumptive culture and context that makes such hyper-mobility, and such self-seeking individualism (and concommitant loneliness) intelligible or even practical. I will also only mention in passing my complicit participation in this state of affairs. Don't get me wrong, I am the Quisling in this discussion, friends, not the self-righteous looney in the pulpit. In truth, I am more like the Jacob Marley of this tale. I will only say this, are we happy like this? Am I? No...I'm rather happy with my education, with the adventures involved with going to new places, but I must say I am made distinctly miserable by the consistent building up and then severing of relationships that this sort of life entails (and not just this lifestyle, but the general acceptance of hyper-mobility, career-chasing, emphasis upon the individual, or, by way of concession, upon the nuclear family torn from the life of the extended family, neighborhood, and community) and that a permanent and non-optional (i.e. non-consumable and non-disposable) sense of 'home' 'community-with-rightful-claims-upon-me' and 'place' while postiviely medieval, is challenging my other much vaunted and more 'socially acceptable' goals (PhD, professional success, etc.) for supremacy right now. I suppose this is all slightly pathological for me, rather than philosophical. I don't have much of a sense of family, and so go to great lengths to create proxies everywhere I go. Is this the Church to me? Is that what Church is supposed to be? Is it my group of friends? Is this what a group of friends is supposed to be? Should I get married to attenuate some of this? Am I expecting too much from people around me? I'm inclined to think I am. I find myself torn between these things.
Loyalty to a group of friends, to a region, to a set of ideals, to a community, to anything permanent and of 'commanding presence' as Albert Borgmann would put it...the time and place we find ourselves in as a culture are quite corrosive to these things. Nonetheless, they are the thing that give our lives the substance and substrate of meaning that make them live-able, even joyous. All the same, in pursuit of the education I feel that I need to articulate and protect these unseen ecologies and webs of life that hold our realities together, I participate not in them but in their destruction precisely by my departure to the other side of the continent to pursue schooling to point them out and protect them. Who knows if I will ever be able to resurrect those friendships that were left behind? I hope so, but who knows? We'd like to think that all the things we pursue or happen to us are largely for the better. I'd like to think becoming an Anglican is all for the best, not just for me, but for those I love. Is it? While no one from my old church has stayed in touch with me much, the few people I still really care about there are sure to be slightly taken aback by my decision to jump off the Assemblies of God/Foursquare boat and swim for the shore of Anglicanism. Certainly, the dream of planting a church with a particular one of those people that we harbored once or twice in our hearts is dashed. What if my coming to Gordon-Conwell, and coming over to Anglicanism amongst other things are just an outplay of my rootlessness? Not a display of liberty and responsibility, but of disorienting and nauseating freedom. Not a ship free from the constraints of port and under sail, but torn from it's moorings and drifting in a strong wind towards a lee shore? Don't get me wrong on this point, ships are meant to sail, so are we meant for a certain degree of educational, psychological, financial, and geographical mobility...but I am speaking of hyper-mobility here. That prefix assumes a continuum upon which can be found deficiency, normalcy, and excess. I find us as a culture in the excess of this activity/trait at this point in time, and use the term hyper to denote this state of affairs. Anyway...maybe I should just stop whining. Things are going to be ok. Heaven isn't so far away, and there we hope to to find a fellowship forever unbroken with all things. The Road may go Ever On, but luckily it is the odd spots that are lonely, and not the character of this path as such that makes it so, and so we have hope both for Heaven and for Earth.