Thought of The Abbey -and The Machine- yesterday when Lex Fridman concluded his new interview (https://youtu.be/jvqFAi7vkBc?feature=shared) with Sam Altman of OpenAI with a quote from Arthur C. Clarke:
“It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God--but to create him.”
Paul likes to quote Ray Kurzweil's quip about God not existing *yet*, but the above made me wonder if Kurzweil in effect stole it from Clarke.
It also occurred to me there is a more generous and less ominous way to look at some of those involved in the Silicon Valley project than they are all witting or unwitting Satanists: not all are trying to be God, Many are in effect trying to salvage/reassemble a God they can actually believe in and worship from the shattered wreckage left by Enlightenment thinking and what Carl Sagan called "the great demotions" (from our former certainty of humanity as cosmically central, beginning with having to let go of heliocentrism).
I know most won't be in any mood to forgive those enabling AI tech, these high priests of The Machine, but -asking as a non-Christian- would it not be the more charitable way of understanding these lost souls, that they are bereft, and have been spiritually degraded and reduced to hoping for Machine salvation?
Yes, some people lash out at any suggestion there may be literal hell to pay for chasing these power fantasies to their (overly) logical conclusions. Christians are seen as joy-killers when all technologists want is to supplant humanity with a glorious eternal machine order (or "successor species" as I sometimes hear it labeled).
I was, however, finding myself uncomfortable throwing everyone from Ray Kuzweil to teens who think AI is neat because it can do their homework into the same bucket. I'm in the tiny demographic of those who find AI and the questions around it endlessly intellectually fascinating, yet who are also convinced it is all a terrible spiritual dead end. Cognitive dissonance? Hypocrisy? Whatever arrows anyone wants to sling, go ahead, I'm being true to my own internal compass in holding such contradictions as I try to understand more and better.
Finally, there's a third aspect. Chris Hedges once said (speaking of what he typically would refer to as 'the ruling elites'), "I'm for anything that fucks 'em up." And that is very much part of how I see AI and the panic over it by the masters of the universe. Here at last is something powerful enough, a genuine black swan, to scuttle the deadly plans of these bastards before they foreclose completely on my children's future.
Could it backfire? Oh yes, it surely could, but there was no realistic prospect of anything arresting the awful trajectory before AI came along. At least now there may well be.
Thanks for this: interesting. Perhaps Kurzweil did steal that from Clarke. I appreciate your view of the Silicon Valley people. I don't see thema s Satanists (though who knows over there...?) Some are driven by radical hubris, but overall it does look like an attempt to build a religion in a spiritual void. Of course, it's a religion that they/we get to control. I do think, as I said in the vid, that into a spiritual void will rush monsters ... and new gods. Even if we have to make them.
I seem to remember way back when that in Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet", he talks about creating God this way...
On a rather heretical note, I put "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." above even the Resurrection itself for the earthquake that it produced in the Western world, and is still capable of producing, if we will let it. Jesus's refusal to surrender in his own way, and to allow himself to be humiliated and degraded by his torturers, and the alternative he found to brute force to show that he was above being humiliated. Ecce homo, as the saying goes. Behold... the man. Yes.
Wondering about the percentage chance Ray Kurweil ever read any Rilke and concluded it would take too long to write out the string of zeroes involved in any likely percentage.
Yeah, well, one of my tactics for reinforcing my humility consists of reminding myself constantly just exactly what the chances are that I could really come up with an original idea at this.. LATE STAGE OF THE GAME. When I am feeling less humble, I think that others could/should be asking themselves this question too (and I'm not talking about you here, either).
Paul, I recommend good old fashioned soup beans! A staple food of the American South! All you need is a pound of dried pinto beans. Soak them overnight, then cook them on "high" in a slow cooker in 3 cups of water for 6 - 7 hours. I use a little vegetable stock as well for flavor. After cooking, season as you like it. It'll last several days! Good strength to you during the Fast!
Is that an icon of Elder St. Joseph the Hesychast on the wall behind you? What a great addition his story would make to your Lives of the Wild Saints series. Especially given his proximity to our times.
My church is compiling a Lenten cookbook and I've grown quite used to the Orthodox fasting diet (my husband and I recently became practising Orthodox Christians, and my father-in-law is on a vegan diet with no oils for his heart condition - so basically the same!)
I'm happy to share some of my tried and tested recipes with you if you'd like. My fave are:
- Eggplant & peanut butter stew (a big hit with everyone we've tried it on so far!)
- Green curry noodles with vegetables (warning: green curry paste does contain a small amount of palm oil usually)
I hear your lament, Paul. This past week left me like one of those stone Moirs or whatever those large heads on Easter Island are called (an appropriate name for that island, considering the season). Staring out to sea, awaiting God knows what coming from beyond the horizon. Maybe more like Arnold walking the strand in Dover and hearing distant guns. Sadly, those sounds are more than poetic images for too many now. But, unlike those stone heads, and I think Arnold, we do have that resurrection to buoy us.
The mind starts bothering us at Lent, and the run up to it. The only things we can do as Christians is be that light to a darkening world. If you ever read Fr Schmemann’s “For the Life of the World” there are two interesting examples: his account of a poor, aging couple on a Paris park bench, ready for eternity, and an image of flickering sunlight on a gloomy factory wall-Christ is even there. My heart is often like that factory wall, but I so want to be like those old Parisians. Working on that. Blessed Lent and Pascha to you and your kindred after the flesh and your friends. ☦️
Thank you for this Lenten message, Paul it's given this non- (but not anti-) Christian some good things to consider. To be honest, when I see the severe icons on your wall and read about you turning "from the woods to the church" my first impulse is to turn away. What happened to my old friend Paul, whose "green" writings held such resonance for me? I can feel sad that it feels we have so little in common anymore. And yet!
The empty throne at the heart of the culture, yes. Christ's message is love and justice and mercy and kindness, and in my lifetime Western culture did strive toward those things, however imperfectly. Also in my lifetime I've watched those values erode - lately with increasing, astonishing velocity. Perhaps I did the opposite from you: I turned
from a belief in a better human future ("progress") *toward* the woods. In the face of man's inhumanity to man, I've rather given up on humans and directed my sympathy and efforts toward the other beings - God's other children, if you will - who suffer, truly voiceless and largely unnoticed, under the human boot.
Your message here reminds me that the Christ tradition still points a way for humans - at least as regards how to be for and with each other. This is one of those truths underneath it all. The other truth I look for, at root, is how humanity is meant to live in relationship with the living earth. Christ didn't offer much guidance in that department (at least not in the bits of his teachings that became the canon), except maybe for poverty, which might more palatably be thought of in our time as simplicity.
'Leaving the woods for the church' is probably the wrong way to put it. I certainly still spend as much time in the woods as I can - as did many of those saints on my wall, come to that. What I found was that the church is helping me to understand the woods. Perhaps we have crossed on our journeys. I spent many years seeking in the woods as a deep ecologist. Christ pulled me out. I know this sounds strange, but what appears to be happening now is some kind of recovery from the potentially anti-human trajectory I was on. It is easy to despair at humanity, but somehow we have to live with each other. We can't give up. Or rather, we can, but it may curdle us, and is unlikely to save the woods either. We have to live with the woods and the people. I don't know where this path goes, but I have to follow it.
What if we need to see the woods as Person? Maximus describes the Cosmos as Incarnation. Of course, this theme runs thick and deep throughout mythology and resurfaces beautifully in the Romantics. The Image of God is everywhere, his fingerprints, and I believe in order to see him in people (especially the ones with we which we so vehemently disagree) we have to somehow reorient our attention in that we see Him everywhere Present, filling ALL things.
“ It is possible to think of stories without context, but with association, like dreams; poems that are merely melodious and full of beautiful words, but also without any meaning or context, at most individual stanzas understandable, like fragments of the most diverse things. This true poetry can at most have an allegorical meaning on a large scale, and an indirect effect, like music. That is why nature is as purely poetical as the chamber of a magician, a physicist's study, a nursery, a storeroom. A fairy tale is like an image from a dream without context. An ensemble of wonderful things and occurrences, e.g. a musical fantasy, the harmonic effects of an aeolian harp, nature itself... In a real fairy tale, everything must be wonderful, mysterious and coherent; everything must be animated, each thing in a different way. The whole of nature must be whimsically mixed with the whole world of spirits; here enters the time of anarchy, lawlessness, freedom, the natural state of nature, the time of the world . . . The world of the fairy tale is quite the opposite of the world of truth, and for that very reason is as similar to it as chaos is to the perfect creation.” - NOVALIS
Paul, I'm very curious to hear about how "the church is helping [you] to understand the woods." Could you say more about that in a future post?
My first thought was, a shame that Christ "pulled you out" of the woods instead of going in there with you! (Said with a smile.)
Despite how it sounds, I'm not entirely anti-human. But gosh, on the whole we are a hot mess, and continue to reference only ourselves in relation to the world.
I think I met Christ in the woods a long time back! I just didn't recognise him.
I will write more about this. As Shari says above, the Orthodox perspective is that the energy of the creator runs through all creation. I certainly feel that.
Yes, we are a hot mess! This path is probably the only thing that has stopped me from being entirely misanthropic ;-)
Just a quick response. One of the most deep and balanced priests I know taught on forgiveness this last Forgiveness Sunday. And one thing he said is that we are able to repent before every single person in church (individually and face to face, as we do), even strangers — and even creation Herself — because we have not yet become the divine-human beings God created us to be. Perhaps above all, Lent is a call for us to turn again and again and again in passionate love to God and to pursue with all our hearts that calling to union without confusion with Him.
On the idea that something is happening, or is about to and there being a sense of it but it not being visible yet, I have an anology. If I'm looking at the night sky and there is something faintly visible, like a satellite, I've enoticed that if I look directly at it I can't see it, I can't make it out. But, if I look away just slightly so it's in the periphery of my vision, I can see it clearly, slowly moving through space along a clear path. I see it clearly as long as I don't look directly at it. That's how this time feels to me. I see bits and pieces of The Machine everywhere and I have for some time now, quite a few years. It's there and I can see it (feel it) but it's not clearly visible as to where it's going. And when I try to look directly at it, I can't see it. I dunno. Clearly, I'm not the only one and Paul's writings have been the best description of "it".
To me, you are talking about a great truth, there, and one that we have known for a long time now. Apprehending the world directly with the goal of "understanding" what we see right in front of our eyes produces a certain form of reality, and a certain way of understanding it, but not everything that is there. There is more to the world, and to us, than what we can see directly because we want to see.
Well here in the Southeast US the big thing isnt Lent its the Easter bunny. Leave it to Americans to cheapen and monetize everything sacred. Anyway the kids will run around looking for Easter eggs and getting lots of candy at all the Church's, I guess in an attempt to lure their parents to Church. I did attend one Church that had a reenactment of the crucifixion, that was actually pretty moving, the participants did a good job. Those of us in the Machines warm belly need to see the carnage of sin. The wages of sin is death and its payday.
I appreciate the fact that your videos are short, Paul, because I will allow myself to listen to them.
Since the Covid episode, I have been very leery of all the videos that started arriving massively over Internet, with all the people telling me that they had the truth on their side. It has seriously turned me off the videos, and I may not be alone.
You made several observations in the video that speak to me, about not planning, for example.
It reminded me of a commonplace, non-transcendent incident that happened to our family several years ago : our car broke down in a neighboring European country where we didn't speak the language, and we had to do something about it, in the suburbs of a big city. After driving around (the car was still drivable, but not for long), we spotted a nondescript garage, and I said, "it's that one", and we stopped, and after I talked with my hands (always elected to talk with my hands in my family, the others are too chicken), we sat on a nearby sidewalk watching the owner of the garage go all over the city on his little Vespa until he found the right part. By the end of the day, he had found it, and our car was repaired, and we celebrated by drinking Fanta in plastic goblets with all the personnel, and... laughing and talking with our hands (me, at least). It remains a priceless memory for me.
Several years later, when the Machine was gaining strength, we had a similar breakdown in our own country this time, but the insurance edifice took care of everything for us. No pain, no worry, but no priceless memories either. It was almost as though nothing of consequence had happened to us.
Now I think about the stiff price we are paying for all the insurance, and reassurance that we have to have all the time to prevent us from getting anxious when something unexpected happens...
I think that all this insurance and reassurance actually makes us feel more and more helpless about the idea that we might actually be able to imagine what to do IF ANYTHING HAPPENED.
I am expressing the concerns of people who live in, and with, a great amount of physical comfort, and who may not know just how much their physical, material comfort is bought at the price of great mental and spiritual.. discomfort ?
Which makes me look at the word "comfort" closely. We use it to talk about niceties, often, but the word means more than that, at least on a spiritual level.
Paul, you mentioned that currently we are in a situation that is NOT a problem to be solved…perhaps it is a Journey to be Traveling, as a pilgrim. Perhaps Lent is a microcosm of of the path down in to the empty spiritual cave that we descend into hoping to come out transformed, as the Catastrophe of the Crucified is transformed into the Triumph of the Cross…perhaps the unraveling of our Sacred Tapestry, the collapse of the West might in the end transform us all, after we loose everything and sink into hell , there will be no place else to go except to climb back up the Seven Story Mountain , collectively towards God. Godspeed to us all this Lent.
When a faerie casts a spell causing a person to become lost, the remedy is for the enchanted person to take off an item of clothing, a jacket or something, turn it inside out, and put it back on. This confuses the fairie and breaks the spell. For modern people, it is the world that enchants us, causing us to engage in worthless, if not actually harmful activities, and making us lose our way. After many years of Lenten practices, it occurred to me that its chief benefit stems from the mere fact that we are changing our patterns; we eat differently, pray differently, and engage in giving alms in a more mindful and deliberate manner. For 40 days, we turn our jackets inside out, and put them back on, in hopes of creating a new person who will be able, perhaps, to better resist the temptations that the world provides in profusion. For me, the world we live in has always looked a little lopsided, and during Lent that perception becomes even clearer. I have no idea if anything I do will help change the current culture, which I agree is poisonous, but that is not my concern. My only real concern is coping with a world that has gone mad and trying to remain centered on Christ, who came to save us from it. And some days, that is tougher than it sounds.
Paul, I subscribed to The Abbey to help distract me from the soul sucking loop of social media, and you have not disappointed me, love your content, and all the comments. Have a blessed Easter.
By removing old traditions, destabilizing the institutional church with innovations which have hindered the gospel. Putting equality and politics on the throne instead of Christ.
I agree with that. Though I'd say it's been going on for a thousand years. Williams to me is a genuinely interesting character though. More a poet than a priest at his best.
I don't mean any ill will towards him. Its just that leaders like him got carried along in the stream and here we are. Anglicanism could have been a lot more lot Orthodoxy and much stronger than it is now.
Very true. And on current trends there will be no Anglican church in a few decades, at least in England, because of its surrender to post-60s orthodoxy (as opposed to Orthodoxy.) Interestingly, Williams wrote a book about how the west should look to Orthodoxy for guidance. It wasn't very readable but I think he can see the writing on the wall, even though he wrote some of it ...
It's all a bit sad. Your blog is a bit personal for me as my family is from where you live but the cottage is only a ruin. My grandfather brought back a few stones from his visit. That's all that is left. Let's hope the rebuilding can begin.
Thank you for this video Paul - I started exploring Orthodoxy last year (around the same time that I came across yourself) and this will be my first attempt at fasting for Great Lent. Your thoughts as someone who is still relatively new but further along on this journey are much appreciated, and very helpful.
I know writing will always be your preferred medium, but consider this a vote for video too, as and when the mood takes you. Somehow I connect better to what you’re saying in this format.
Thought of The Abbey -and The Machine- yesterday when Lex Fridman concluded his new interview (https://youtu.be/jvqFAi7vkBc?feature=shared) with Sam Altman of OpenAI with a quote from Arthur C. Clarke:
“It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God--but to create him.”
Paul likes to quote Ray Kurzweil's quip about God not existing *yet*, but the above made me wonder if Kurzweil in effect stole it from Clarke.
It also occurred to me there is a more generous and less ominous way to look at some of those involved in the Silicon Valley project than they are all witting or unwitting Satanists: not all are trying to be God, Many are in effect trying to salvage/reassemble a God they can actually believe in and worship from the shattered wreckage left by Enlightenment thinking and what Carl Sagan called "the great demotions" (from our former certainty of humanity as cosmically central, beginning with having to let go of heliocentrism).
I know most won't be in any mood to forgive those enabling AI tech, these high priests of The Machine, but -asking as a non-Christian- would it not be the more charitable way of understanding these lost souls, that they are bereft, and have been spiritually degraded and reduced to hoping for Machine salvation?
Yes, some people lash out at any suggestion there may be literal hell to pay for chasing these power fantasies to their (overly) logical conclusions. Christians are seen as joy-killers when all technologists want is to supplant humanity with a glorious eternal machine order (or "successor species" as I sometimes hear it labeled).
I was, however, finding myself uncomfortable throwing everyone from Ray Kuzweil to teens who think AI is neat because it can do their homework into the same bucket. I'm in the tiny demographic of those who find AI and the questions around it endlessly intellectually fascinating, yet who are also convinced it is all a terrible spiritual dead end. Cognitive dissonance? Hypocrisy? Whatever arrows anyone wants to sling, go ahead, I'm being true to my own internal compass in holding such contradictions as I try to understand more and better.
Finally, there's a third aspect. Chris Hedges once said (speaking of what he typically would refer to as 'the ruling elites'), "I'm for anything that fucks 'em up." And that is very much part of how I see AI and the panic over it by the masters of the universe. Here at last is something powerful enough, a genuine black swan, to scuttle the deadly plans of these bastards before they foreclose completely on my children's future.
Could it backfire? Oh yes, it surely could, but there was no realistic prospect of anything arresting the awful trajectory before AI came along. At least now there may well be.
Thanks for this: interesting. Perhaps Kurzweil did steal that from Clarke. I appreciate your view of the Silicon Valley people. I don't see thema s Satanists (though who knows over there...?) Some are driven by radical hubris, but overall it does look like an attempt to build a religion in a spiritual void. Of course, it's a religion that they/we get to control. I do think, as I said in the vid, that into a spiritual void will rush monsters ... and new gods. Even if we have to make them.
I seem to remember way back when that in Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet", he talks about creating God this way...
On a rather heretical note, I put "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." above even the Resurrection itself for the earthquake that it produced in the Western world, and is still capable of producing, if we will let it. Jesus's refusal to surrender in his own way, and to allow himself to be humiliated and degraded by his torturers, and the alternative he found to brute force to show that he was above being humiliated. Ecce homo, as the saying goes. Behold... the man. Yes.
Wondering about the percentage chance Ray Kurweil ever read any Rilke and concluded it would take too long to write out the string of zeroes involved in any likely percentage.
Yeah, well, one of my tactics for reinforcing my humility consists of reminding myself constantly just exactly what the chances are that I could really come up with an original idea at this.. LATE STAGE OF THE GAME. When I am feeling less humble, I think that others could/should be asking themselves this question too (and I'm not talking about you here, either).
Our flesh may be torn, our minds mangled, but our faith in Christ the saviour keeps our heart and soul indestructible.
Your courage to speak openly is greatly admired Paul.
Thankyou.
Paul, I recommend good old fashioned soup beans! A staple food of the American South! All you need is a pound of dried pinto beans. Soak them overnight, then cook them on "high" in a slow cooker in 3 cups of water for 6 - 7 hours. I use a little vegetable stock as well for flavor. After cooking, season as you like it. It'll last several days! Good strength to you during the Fast!
Thanks for the tip!
Of course! Any time!
Potatoes fill you up 😀 yummy roasted veg, minestrone soup, mushrooms on toast, the list could go on...
Potatoes are very good for the Fast! And, making vegan mashed potatoes (w/out vegan milk, either) is actually really easy!
Is that an icon of Elder St. Joseph the Hesychast on the wall behind you? What a great addition his story would make to your Lives of the Wild Saints series. Especially given his proximity to our times.
My church is compiling a Lenten cookbook and I've grown quite used to the Orthodox fasting diet (my husband and I recently became practising Orthodox Christians, and my father-in-law is on a vegan diet with no oils for his heart condition - so basically the same!)
I'm happy to share some of my tried and tested recipes with you if you'd like. My fave are:
- Eggplant & peanut butter stew (a big hit with everyone we've tried it on so far!)
- Green curry noodles with vegetables (warning: green curry paste does contain a small amount of palm oil usually)
- Mixed bean nachos
- Cauliflower and potato dry curry
- Chinese hot & sour soup with tofu
- Eggplant & lentil curry
I hear your lament, Paul. This past week left me like one of those stone Moirs or whatever those large heads on Easter Island are called (an appropriate name for that island, considering the season). Staring out to sea, awaiting God knows what coming from beyond the horizon. Maybe more like Arnold walking the strand in Dover and hearing distant guns. Sadly, those sounds are more than poetic images for too many now. But, unlike those stone heads, and I think Arnold, we do have that resurrection to buoy us.
The mind starts bothering us at Lent, and the run up to it. The only things we can do as Christians is be that light to a darkening world. If you ever read Fr Schmemann’s “For the Life of the World” there are two interesting examples: his account of a poor, aging couple on a Paris park bench, ready for eternity, and an image of flickering sunlight on a gloomy factory wall-Christ is even there. My heart is often like that factory wall, but I so want to be like those old Parisians. Working on that. Blessed Lent and Pascha to you and your kindred after the flesh and your friends. ☦️
Thank you for this Lenten message, Paul it's given this non- (but not anti-) Christian some good things to consider. To be honest, when I see the severe icons on your wall and read about you turning "from the woods to the church" my first impulse is to turn away. What happened to my old friend Paul, whose "green" writings held such resonance for me? I can feel sad that it feels we have so little in common anymore. And yet!
The empty throne at the heart of the culture, yes. Christ's message is love and justice and mercy and kindness, and in my lifetime Western culture did strive toward those things, however imperfectly. Also in my lifetime I've watched those values erode - lately with increasing, astonishing velocity. Perhaps I did the opposite from you: I turned
from a belief in a better human future ("progress") *toward* the woods. In the face of man's inhumanity to man, I've rather given up on humans and directed my sympathy and efforts toward the other beings - God's other children, if you will - who suffer, truly voiceless and largely unnoticed, under the human boot.
Your message here reminds me that the Christ tradition still points a way for humans - at least as regards how to be for and with each other. This is one of those truths underneath it all. The other truth I look for, at root, is how humanity is meant to live in relationship with the living earth. Christ didn't offer much guidance in that department (at least not in the bits of his teachings that became the canon), except maybe for poverty, which might more palatably be thought of in our time as simplicity.
Much to ponder. Thanks Paul. Be well.
'Leaving the woods for the church' is probably the wrong way to put it. I certainly still spend as much time in the woods as I can - as did many of those saints on my wall, come to that. What I found was that the church is helping me to understand the woods. Perhaps we have crossed on our journeys. I spent many years seeking in the woods as a deep ecologist. Christ pulled me out. I know this sounds strange, but what appears to be happening now is some kind of recovery from the potentially anti-human trajectory I was on. It is easy to despair at humanity, but somehow we have to live with each other. We can't give up. Or rather, we can, but it may curdle us, and is unlikely to save the woods either. We have to live with the woods and the people. I don't know where this path goes, but I have to follow it.
What if we need to see the woods as Person? Maximus describes the Cosmos as Incarnation. Of course, this theme runs thick and deep throughout mythology and resurfaces beautifully in the Romantics. The Image of God is everywhere, his fingerprints, and I believe in order to see him in people (especially the ones with we which we so vehemently disagree) we have to somehow reorient our attention in that we see Him everywhere Present, filling ALL things.
“ It is possible to think of stories without context, but with association, like dreams; poems that are merely melodious and full of beautiful words, but also without any meaning or context, at most individual stanzas understandable, like fragments of the most diverse things. This true poetry can at most have an allegorical meaning on a large scale, and an indirect effect, like music. That is why nature is as purely poetical as the chamber of a magician, a physicist's study, a nursery, a storeroom. A fairy tale is like an image from a dream without context. An ensemble of wonderful things and occurrences, e.g. a musical fantasy, the harmonic effects of an aeolian harp, nature itself... In a real fairy tale, everything must be wonderful, mysterious and coherent; everything must be animated, each thing in a different way. The whole of nature must be whimsically mixed with the whole world of spirits; here enters the time of anarchy, lawlessness, freedom, the natural state of nature, the time of the world . . . The world of the fairy tale is quite the opposite of the world of truth, and for that very reason is as similar to it as chaos is to the perfect creation.” - NOVALIS
Paul, I'm very curious to hear about how "the church is helping [you] to understand the woods." Could you say more about that in a future post?
My first thought was, a shame that Christ "pulled you out" of the woods instead of going in there with you! (Said with a smile.)
Despite how it sounds, I'm not entirely anti-human. But gosh, on the whole we are a hot mess, and continue to reference only ourselves in relation to the world.
I think I met Christ in the woods a long time back! I just didn't recognise him.
I will write more about this. As Shari says above, the Orthodox perspective is that the energy of the creator runs through all creation. I certainly feel that.
Yes, we are a hot mess! This path is probably the only thing that has stopped me from being entirely misanthropic ;-)
Just a quick response. One of the most deep and balanced priests I know taught on forgiveness this last Forgiveness Sunday. And one thing he said is that we are able to repent before every single person in church (individually and face to face, as we do), even strangers — and even creation Herself — because we have not yet become the divine-human beings God created us to be. Perhaps above all, Lent is a call for us to turn again and again and again in passionate love to God and to pursue with all our hearts that calling to union without confusion with Him.
On the idea that something is happening, or is about to and there being a sense of it but it not being visible yet, I have an anology. If I'm looking at the night sky and there is something faintly visible, like a satellite, I've enoticed that if I look directly at it I can't see it, I can't make it out. But, if I look away just slightly so it's in the periphery of my vision, I can see it clearly, slowly moving through space along a clear path. I see it clearly as long as I don't look directly at it. That's how this time feels to me. I see bits and pieces of The Machine everywhere and I have for some time now, quite a few years. It's there and I can see it (feel it) but it's not clearly visible as to where it's going. And when I try to look directly at it, I can't see it. I dunno. Clearly, I'm not the only one and Paul's writings have been the best description of "it".
To me, you are talking about a great truth, there, and one that we have known for a long time now. Apprehending the world directly with the goal of "understanding" what we see right in front of our eyes produces a certain form of reality, and a certain way of understanding it, but not everything that is there. There is more to the world, and to us, than what we can see directly because we want to see.
Well here in the Southeast US the big thing isnt Lent its the Easter bunny. Leave it to Americans to cheapen and monetize everything sacred. Anyway the kids will run around looking for Easter eggs and getting lots of candy at all the Church's, I guess in an attempt to lure their parents to Church. I did attend one Church that had a reenactment of the crucifixion, that was actually pretty moving, the participants did a good job. Those of us in the Machines warm belly need to see the carnage of sin. The wages of sin is death and its payday.
I appreciate the fact that your videos are short, Paul, because I will allow myself to listen to them.
Since the Covid episode, I have been very leery of all the videos that started arriving massively over Internet, with all the people telling me that they had the truth on their side. It has seriously turned me off the videos, and I may not be alone.
You made several observations in the video that speak to me, about not planning, for example.
It reminded me of a commonplace, non-transcendent incident that happened to our family several years ago : our car broke down in a neighboring European country where we didn't speak the language, and we had to do something about it, in the suburbs of a big city. After driving around (the car was still drivable, but not for long), we spotted a nondescript garage, and I said, "it's that one", and we stopped, and after I talked with my hands (always elected to talk with my hands in my family, the others are too chicken), we sat on a nearby sidewalk watching the owner of the garage go all over the city on his little Vespa until he found the right part. By the end of the day, he had found it, and our car was repaired, and we celebrated by drinking Fanta in plastic goblets with all the personnel, and... laughing and talking with our hands (me, at least). It remains a priceless memory for me.
Several years later, when the Machine was gaining strength, we had a similar breakdown in our own country this time, but the insurance edifice took care of everything for us. No pain, no worry, but no priceless memories either. It was almost as though nothing of consequence had happened to us.
Now I think about the stiff price we are paying for all the insurance, and reassurance that we have to have all the time to prevent us from getting anxious when something unexpected happens...
I think that all this insurance and reassurance actually makes us feel more and more helpless about the idea that we might actually be able to imagine what to do IF ANYTHING HAPPENED.
I am expressing the concerns of people who live in, and with, a great amount of physical comfort, and who may not know just how much their physical, material comfort is bought at the price of great mental and spiritual.. discomfort ?
Which makes me look at the word "comfort" closely. We use it to talk about niceties, often, but the word means more than that, at least on a spiritual level.
I wish you well on your Lenten journey.
Paul, you mentioned that currently we are in a situation that is NOT a problem to be solved…perhaps it is a Journey to be Traveling, as a pilgrim. Perhaps Lent is a microcosm of of the path down in to the empty spiritual cave that we descend into hoping to come out transformed, as the Catastrophe of the Crucified is transformed into the Triumph of the Cross…perhaps the unraveling of our Sacred Tapestry, the collapse of the West might in the end transform us all, after we loose everything and sink into hell , there will be no place else to go except to climb back up the Seven Story Mountain , collectively towards God. Godspeed to us all this Lent.
When a faerie casts a spell causing a person to become lost, the remedy is for the enchanted person to take off an item of clothing, a jacket or something, turn it inside out, and put it back on. This confuses the fairie and breaks the spell. For modern people, it is the world that enchants us, causing us to engage in worthless, if not actually harmful activities, and making us lose our way. After many years of Lenten practices, it occurred to me that its chief benefit stems from the mere fact that we are changing our patterns; we eat differently, pray differently, and engage in giving alms in a more mindful and deliberate manner. For 40 days, we turn our jackets inside out, and put them back on, in hopes of creating a new person who will be able, perhaps, to better resist the temptations that the world provides in profusion. For me, the world we live in has always looked a little lopsided, and during Lent that perception becomes even clearer. I have no idea if anything I do will help change the current culture, which I agree is poisonous, but that is not my concern. My only real concern is coping with a world that has gone mad and trying to remain centered on Christ, who came to save us from it. And some days, that is tougher than it sounds.
I think you might enjoy this read. http://www.george-macdonald.com/essays_sermons/faith_proof_unseen.html
Paul, I subscribed to The Abbey to help distract me from the soul sucking loop of social media, and you have not disappointed me, love your content, and all the comments. Have a blessed Easter.
I always thought it was people like Rowan Williams who set the dynamite at the heart of our civilisation. Maybe, I am wrong.
How so?
By removing old traditions, destabilizing the institutional church with innovations which have hindered the gospel. Putting equality and politics on the throne instead of Christ.
I agree with that. Though I'd say it's been going on for a thousand years. Williams to me is a genuinely interesting character though. More a poet than a priest at his best.
I don't mean any ill will towards him. Its just that leaders like him got carried along in the stream and here we are. Anglicanism could have been a lot more lot Orthodoxy and much stronger than it is now.
Very true. And on current trends there will be no Anglican church in a few decades, at least in England, because of its surrender to post-60s orthodoxy (as opposed to Orthodoxy.) Interestingly, Williams wrote a book about how the west should look to Orthodoxy for guidance. It wasn't very readable but I think he can see the writing on the wall, even though he wrote some of it ...
It's all a bit sad. Your blog is a bit personal for me as my family is from where you live but the cottage is only a ruin. My grandfather brought back a few stones from his visit. That's all that is left. Let's hope the rebuilding can begin.
Thank you for this video Paul - I started exploring Orthodoxy last year (around the same time that I came across yourself) and this will be my first attempt at fasting for Great Lent. Your thoughts as someone who is still relatively new but further along on this journey are much appreciated, and very helpful.
I know writing will always be your preferred medium, but consider this a vote for video too, as and when the mood takes you. Somehow I connect better to what you’re saying in this format.