As someone who wishes you well, Paul, I sincerely hope that if you need an operation and the Father John in your life forbids it, you will still take the operation.
I'm very glad you found "Everyday Saints" as powerful as I did Paul. Whoever recommended it to you as my cockney neighbour in Hornchurch used to say "certainly knew his onions" 😉
No, we both have God to thank for this wonderful providence, wrought from the experience of our Russian brothers and sisters in Christ, through their suffering, and enormous fortitude.
I read it after a casual recommendation from a Russian I met in the Monastery in Essex, a number of years ago, reading your powerful review, reminded me of it knocking me for six, it was a big click on my ratchet for sure. 🙏😎♥️
Amazingly you begin your text with exactly the passage that I have copied and reread and shown to others as most impressive to me. When I looked inside I saw: I have nothing of this in me, only a deep longing for it. On the surface I still desire worldly wealth and glory, but the deeper pull is exactly this. I want to thank you enormously for choosing this book for I loved it to pieces. Enjoyed every story. Was sorry when I finished it. Will probably reread it. But for now I'll quickly order the Chesterton book. What a great book club this is!
You’re going to really enjoy Chesterton. No one writes quite like he does and his insight into the flaws of Darwinism are particularly amusing. CS Lewis considered him one of the sanest men he’d ever known.
I am half way through this book. Some of it is radiant with passages I want to pin on my wall and characters and situations that fly into your soul. It is grounded, real, and often very funny. It has a mirror quality to it, in which a strange rag-bag of darkness and light is opened up for the reader leading to the reflection, yes, like you and me, and our lives. There is an ugly authoritarianism, cruelty, stupidity, foolishness, horror also on display amongst even the most elevated of these monastics and in their common life. After some passages I found myself with some compassion for the revolutionary aim in trying to clean up the whole damn societal mess, religion and all. And yet to me there is the Light that peeks through in the events, the characters (who you feel in some uncanny way that you have actually met) in the importance of having some structured common life in which the Light might be enabled to shine. We hold these treasures in earthen vessels.
Wonderful post. Glad to see G K Chesterton in the mix. I read The Everlasting Man years ago. I am paraphrasing poorly here, but his description of a great paradox of our faith is profound and beautiful. It is described in the nativity where the infant Christ is in his subterranean cave-like birthplace, the Lord of the universe yet unable to reach the heads of the animals looking in on the manger, animals that He himself created. A worthy read!
One hears a lot about “re-enchantment,” Christian and otherwise, these days—is this what a Christian version would look like? Holy men dispensing unerring medical advice gained through second sight. Demonic poodles. Catacombs where the air remains forever sweet. I’m picking out some sensational bits here, though what struck me most was how thoroughly immersed the monks were in the spiritual realm. This book may offer the fullest picture I’ve seen of what it looks like to participate in a spiritual reality above others (is that what acquiring the phronema means?), with the great joys and great trials that brings, as they navigate the mundane world we all do. It’s an unsettling picture.
I was also left agreeing strongly with the argument that churches have lost something vital by jettisoning the monastic tradition. Without a core of people wholly dedicated to prayer and praise, I think we lose an ongoing wild immediacy with the sacred. The idea that we can serve God in our everyday vocations, which the Protestant took and ran with, is beautiful and true, though the result of its overemphasis has been not a sacralizing of everyday life but a domestication of the sacred. There’s an Anglican Benedictine community near me where I’ve made a few retreats, and I think I’m overdue for a return.
God created us to work. Six days, and a seventh to rest; with an occasional trip to the desert. We waste our Sabbaths and avoid our deserts, to our loss. The monestary may have its place in the Christian life but it is as easy to wall God out as to wall Him in. The enemy is within, and cannot be escaped.
'God created us to work'? Says who? I have rarely heard such a protestant sentence! ;-)
As for 'the monastery may have its place within the Christian life' - well, yes, and the place is pretty central. Christ told us all to hate the world and to die to it. How many of us are taking that seriously? These men do.
The NT is devoid of encouragement to monasticism but full of direction on being salt and light in the world around you. We are to be going and to take the Gospel with us. That example was set first by Jesus and then by many of the Apostles.
I don't see hatred of the world and being deeply engaged with if for the Gospel as being contradictory. I also am not opposed to the idea of extended retreats for the purpose of study and prayer; desert times. I have concerns about monasticism but these men do not work for me and I wish them deep spiritual blessings. God is more than able to redirect their hearts and feet should He choose to.
Well, that seems like another example of why just reading the NT as a kind of drivers' manual is not enough. Being an Orthodox Christian I follow the Church's tradition, in which monasticism has been a key aspect from the very early centuries. I have come to the conclusion that Christianity without monastics deteriorates very fast into literalism, individualism and factionalism. The deep prayer, radical renunciation and love for the world practiced by monastics is vital to all of us trying to be Christian out in the world.
Incidentally, on the working thing - monastics work a lot harder than the rest of us, in my experience! They never stop. It's either labour or prayer, or both at once.
Paul, I've been trying for a few years on acquiring the Orthodox mind, by going to services and fasting at a low level. I don't know what else I could do to acquire the phronema.
Some respects being a monastic is much easier than a man of the world. A monastic doesn't have to determine what they are going to do with their time. It's easy to follow an abbot. The reason for being a Protestant is the freedom and fear of a individual,literal and factional relationship with people and the HS, less clericalism and pharisee ism.
In the Benedictine tradition, chanting the daily offices is known as "The Work of God."
Been reading "The Art of Being a Creature," which Paul K. recommended here recently, and it has quite a bit to say about work. The author quotes Pascal's observation that aside from our instinct toward busyness, which the world rewards so well, people have another impulse, "left over from the greatness of our original nature, telling them that the only true happiness lies in rest and not in excitement." Accordingly, writes the author, we are challenged "to not deceive ourselves about this rest, to recognize that it is available now, even in our work, not after some impossible finish. This work, to be restful, must learn to live and labor in the rhythms that are the peace of the world." Certainly some of our active occupations rightly pursued could approach this kind of work, but worship and prayer seem fundmentally like attempts to enter into these rhythmns.
The rest that Jesus offers is from the works of the law for righteousness. We were called to work at Creation, not at the Fall. The Fall condemned physical work to failure and vanity and by destroying the relationship with God consigned us to the fruitless attempt to garner merit through good deeds. There is no merit in prayer, meditation or study, though there be much benefit in obedience to His commands and service impelled by love of Him. Yes, that must be read with care.
There are many who believe that work was instituted as punishment after the Fall. This is not what scripture teaches. Work, tending the garden, was instituted before the Fall, even as God worked in the act of creation. If we don't get that right, we are apt to go through life with a view of life and work quite out of sync with God's design for us. That is my only point. I don't know Orthodox teaching well enough to know what they teach on the matter.
As someone who has had a few experiences like the ones in this book, when I entered the Orthodox Church and found that for others this was normal, I knew I was home. Most of my life I had been told these experiences were imaginary, or unimportant - hearing "no, this is how reality works and you've been seeing it correctly" was vital.
Thank you so much for these book recommendations and this inspiring review. I'm reading it slowly now. I love the passage you quote in the beginning . Such a reverse of what we are taught in the West.
As a teen my mother was always recommending I read GK Chesterton-she had a library full of his works instead of what I was interested in i.e A. Huxley and Bertrand Russell...rebelliousness of youth? Or the powerful influences of the culture of the 60's and what it wrought.
I recall reading about a brilliant young women who attended MIT(60's) and found she could not exist in this world..she left to become a solitary in Appalachia ...this was so appealing to me ..she was offered the best the West had to offer, status, money, elite education and she left it all.
The recently retired Adyashanti aka Stephen Gray is a former spiritual teacher from the San Francisco Bay Area. He began his spiritual explorations by studying the Christian mystics and has/had an unparalleled cross-fluency in Christian mysticism and Zen Buddhism. A sample of one of his satsangs where he talks at one point about some of Christ's more difficult teachings is here:
Dare I point out that Jesus was not a revolutionary? His teaching went against the grain of the accretions of the Jewish faith, but He did not rebel against either the Jewish or the Roman authority. I think we are to suffer the world but not rebel against.
I wonder if that occurred to Adyashanti, or if he just carelessly used the word? Actually, I don't wonder that, as anyone who knows anything about him knows he would never be so careless. Also, that word "revolutionary" is so broad it could easily be applied to so many things, including the life and teachings of Jesus in their mystic aspects. The real question is, "revolutionary in what sense?"
Honestly, I don't seriously expect this book to become an object of study around these parts. It's more a recommendation for whatever small, neglected—though not formally banned—contingent may still be lurking around here who wouldn't consider it some form of scandal/heresy/blasphemy to explore parallels/commonalities between Buddhist thought and Jesus as mystic.
The white-hot rage Paul reserves for someone like Alan Watts tells me he's not a person open to indulging much like this, though Adyanshanti isn't Alan Watts. For my part, and like Adya, I'm interested in truth, not belief. Belief can go to blazes.
I don’t know Paul, but to describe him as having “white-hot rage” seems quite inconsistent with my image of him. No-one who is spiritually-minded should succumb to white-hot rage, unless you were a bit tongue-in-cheek. Having said that, I gather Paul has had his dabbles in Zen as well as other disciplines like occultism and found them lacking, turning finally to Orthodoxy, so yes, he might not find it beneficial or necessary at this stage in his life to look at parallels between different spiritual disciplines. If one follows one’s path sincerely and deeply, that’s all that can be asked of a person. There’s a time for everything. I, on the other hand, am interested in looking at parallels - it is that time in my life for me - so, thanks for the recommendation.
Heh, you should hear him stick a boot in on poor old John Lennon. I'm not claiming to know Paul but having read his stuff at the Abbey and elsewhere for years I've noted he has a kind of third rail when it comes to cultural figures. These are typically figures on the left, particularly those with some connection to sixties counterculture, hippie culture, New Age culture, which is the primary reason he'd flee from Adyshanti as a suspiciously pachouli-scented, Cupertino-born, Bay Area guru. This even though Adya, like peak Alan Watts, has forgotten more about religion and spirituality than Paul has ever known.
Paul will smirk derisively at the Ray Kurzweils of the world but he's practically a buzz-cut 1960s CIA agent when it comes to his enthusiasm for punching hippies. The most sneering derision I've ever heard from him was targeted at lefty utopians like John Lennon, Watts, George Monbiot, George Galloway. He is doggedly, fiercely anti-utopian (except for the utopia he believes in as an orthodox Christian, that one is okay).
My best guess is Paul is allergic to what he considers woolly thinkers/woolly thinking. Maybe someone called him a hippie once and Paul, in a rage, glanced down at the copy of The Lord of the Rings he was holding and became terrified he might in fact become something quite like that if he were not very careful.
"Here great and just souls truly judged themselves to be lesser and worse than any other man. "
This is, perhaps, the cancer that eats the life of every religion. As long as we can point to someone who is worse than me, we can pretend that we aspire to attain a better me, on the way to a perfect me. We never accept the truth that all of our righteousness is as menstrual rags; that the very best of us is still a sinner in the eyes of God. Jesus, himself, exclaimed, "“Why do you call Me good?” Jesus replied. “No one is good except God alone." Mark 10:18.
What was Jesus thinking when he answered the rich young ruler? Perhaps that if that man knew whom he addressed, he would have been declaring that Jesus was God. That would make more theological sense than that he was not good. But, in the context of this article, and my contention, why would we call any man good? And why would we think anyone less evil than ourselves?
Is not the Christian truth that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God?" Paul said later in Romans, "I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not." Not "I was" that way, but "I am" that way. Followers of Christ are no more good than non-Christians. Very few Christians realize that. Our only hope is the righteousness of Christ.
Reminds me of the old Jewish joke I heard about a group of Jews in a synagogue publicly admitting their nullity in the eyes of God. First, a rabbi stands up and says: “O God, I know I am worthless. I am nothing!” After he has finished, a rich businessman stands up and says, beating himself on the chest: “O God, I am also worthless, obsessed with material wealth. I am nothing!” After this spectacle, a poor ordinary Jew also stands up and also proclaims: “O God, I am nothing.” The rich businessman kicks the rabbi and whispers in his ear with scorn: “What insolence! Who is that guy who dares to claim that he is nothing too!”
Sorry Jessie if it was a bit of a back hand, I have just always found the joke funny and I think one of its meanings is that true humility is quite a rare disposition.
It's a complex situation, and I am not a member of the Russian church, so am no expert. It is true that its hierarchy are in some cases entwined with the Russian government. On the other hand, the hierarchy of the ecumenical patriarch in Constantinople is entwined with the US government. They helped create a split in the Ukrainian Orthodox church in order to further antagonise Russia. Power politics on all sides is trying to use the Church. The US media is of course an arm of the US state. This is why I want to concentrate on the phronema.
Such a wonderful book. It is perhaps a story of "grene men," as in The Wake, but grene men with very different methods and objectives. The grene men of Orthodoxy are also more successful than Buccmaster -- they survived the fall of Byzantium, Soviet Russia, and they may survive whatever is next for the West.
Fascinating fact: after the Norman Conquest, a lot of disposessed Anglo-Saxon warriors left the country. Some became mercenaries. A good number of them were employed in the imperial court at Byzantium, as personal guards of the Orthodox emperor, due to their renowned fighting skills. They were known as the Varangian Guard - their nickname was 'the English guard.' I have always wondered if this is where Buccmaster ended up ...
Everyday Saints is a real page turner, and unlike any other book in the last 50 years or so, I actually have read it twice now, and look forward to a third read. One of the most touching stories is of Archimandrite/Bishop Gabriel, apparently a tough and irascible man, and time of his removal from the altar, which he told Tikhon and others at a dinner after his return to the altar, was the time he felt closest to Christ. “ He fell silent again and then added: “My brothers, have no fear of the punishments of the Lord! For He does not punish us as criminals, but as His own children!””
"It was only when they began blaspheming Christ and His Mother, though, that Father Alexander, a black belt in karate, threw off his robe like some Orthodox Gandalf and administered them a beating they would never forget. This is not, of course, very Christian behaviour."
I humbly disagree. If the beating was administered without anger and with self control, it may have been an exemplary Christian behaviour.
A book describing a Chinese Christian leader to consider, has a blend of suffering, struggles, blessings miracles. The Heavenly Man, by Brother Yun, from the 80’s and 90’s
Same blend of suffering, struggles, blessings miracles in the China of the 30,s and 40’s Gladys Aylward, The Little Woman
“The Heavenly Man” is quite a book. One bit that stuck with me: in Chinese seminaries, students were taught how to escape from handcuffs and jump from second stories with as little injury as possible. Really puts things in perspective.
As someone who wishes you well, Paul, I sincerely hope that if you need an operation and the Father John in your life forbids it, you will still take the operation.
Not in a million years. I read the book ...
I'm very glad you found "Everyday Saints" as powerful as I did Paul. Whoever recommended it to you as my cockney neighbour in Hornchurch used to say "certainly knew his onions" 😉
It was you, John! I have you to thank for this one.
No, we both have God to thank for this wonderful providence, wrought from the experience of our Russian brothers and sisters in Christ, through their suffering, and enormous fortitude.
I read it after a casual recommendation from a Russian I met in the Monastery in Essex, a number of years ago, reading your powerful review, reminded me of it knocking me for six, it was a big click on my ratchet for sure. 🙏😎♥️
Amazingly you begin your text with exactly the passage that I have copied and reread and shown to others as most impressive to me. When I looked inside I saw: I have nothing of this in me, only a deep longing for it. On the surface I still desire worldly wealth and glory, but the deeper pull is exactly this. I want to thank you enormously for choosing this book for I loved it to pieces. Enjoyed every story. Was sorry when I finished it. Will probably reread it. But for now I'll quickly order the Chesterton book. What a great book club this is!
You’re going to really enjoy Chesterton. No one writes quite like he does and his insight into the flaws of Darwinism are particularly amusing. CS Lewis considered him one of the sanest men he’d ever known.
I have not read Chesterton in a long time. It will very interesting to see how he reads the second time round.
I am half way through this book. Some of it is radiant with passages I want to pin on my wall and characters and situations that fly into your soul. It is grounded, real, and often very funny. It has a mirror quality to it, in which a strange rag-bag of darkness and light is opened up for the reader leading to the reflection, yes, like you and me, and our lives. There is an ugly authoritarianism, cruelty, stupidity, foolishness, horror also on display amongst even the most elevated of these monastics and in their common life. After some passages I found myself with some compassion for the revolutionary aim in trying to clean up the whole damn societal mess, religion and all. And yet to me there is the Light that peeks through in the events, the characters (who you feel in some uncanny way that you have actually met) in the importance of having some structured common life in which the Light might be enabled to shine. We hold these treasures in earthen vessels.
‘Life without God had become meaningless"
Sadly, as in Soviet Russia, most people in the West still fail to see this our age. How to change this, that is the question.
Pray, and let your life be an example.
Wonderful post. Glad to see G K Chesterton in the mix. I read The Everlasting Man years ago. I am paraphrasing poorly here, but his description of a great paradox of our faith is profound and beautiful. It is described in the nativity where the infant Christ is in his subterranean cave-like birthplace, the Lord of the universe yet unable to reach the heads of the animals looking in on the manger, animals that He himself created. A worthy read!
One hears a lot about “re-enchantment,” Christian and otherwise, these days—is this what a Christian version would look like? Holy men dispensing unerring medical advice gained through second sight. Demonic poodles. Catacombs where the air remains forever sweet. I’m picking out some sensational bits here, though what struck me most was how thoroughly immersed the monks were in the spiritual realm. This book may offer the fullest picture I’ve seen of what it looks like to participate in a spiritual reality above others (is that what acquiring the phronema means?), with the great joys and great trials that brings, as they navigate the mundane world we all do. It’s an unsettling picture.
I was also left agreeing strongly with the argument that churches have lost something vital by jettisoning the monastic tradition. Without a core of people wholly dedicated to prayer and praise, I think we lose an ongoing wild immediacy with the sacred. The idea that we can serve God in our everyday vocations, which the Protestant took and ran with, is beautiful and true, though the result of its overemphasis has been not a sacralizing of everyday life but a domestication of the sacred. There’s an Anglican Benedictine community near me where I’ve made a few retreats, and I think I’m overdue for a return.
God created us to work. Six days, and a seventh to rest; with an occasional trip to the desert. We waste our Sabbaths and avoid our deserts, to our loss. The monestary may have its place in the Christian life but it is as easy to wall God out as to wall Him in. The enemy is within, and cannot be escaped.
'God created us to work'? Says who? I have rarely heard such a protestant sentence! ;-)
As for 'the monastery may have its place within the Christian life' - well, yes, and the place is pretty central. Christ told us all to hate the world and to die to it. How many of us are taking that seriously? These men do.
“I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.”― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country
Yeah, well besides the Creation Mandate....
The NT is devoid of encouragement to monasticism but full of direction on being salt and light in the world around you. We are to be going and to take the Gospel with us. That example was set first by Jesus and then by many of the Apostles.
I don't see hatred of the world and being deeply engaged with if for the Gospel as being contradictory. I also am not opposed to the idea of extended retreats for the purpose of study and prayer; desert times. I have concerns about monasticism but these men do not work for me and I wish them deep spiritual blessings. God is more than able to redirect their hearts and feet should He choose to.
Well, that seems like another example of why just reading the NT as a kind of drivers' manual is not enough. Being an Orthodox Christian I follow the Church's tradition, in which monasticism has been a key aspect from the very early centuries. I have come to the conclusion that Christianity without monastics deteriorates very fast into literalism, individualism and factionalism. The deep prayer, radical renunciation and love for the world practiced by monastics is vital to all of us trying to be Christian out in the world.
Incidentally, on the working thing - monastics work a lot harder than the rest of us, in my experience! They never stop. It's either labour or prayer, or both at once.
Monastics do work for you ...
Thanks for your response. I do not condemn another man for doing what he believes he is called to do. I do have concerns.
I do very much enjoy your writing. It always broadens my world.
Paul, I've been trying for a few years on acquiring the Orthodox mind, by going to services and fasting at a low level. I don't know what else I could do to acquire the phronema.
Some respects being a monastic is much easier than a man of the world. A monastic doesn't have to determine what they are going to do with their time. It's easy to follow an abbot. The reason for being a Protestant is the freedom and fear of a individual,literal and factional relationship with people and the HS, less clericalism and pharisee ism.
Yes, in a sense the monastics have the pressure taken off, in that way at least. Being a Christian in the world is hard work.
I have just visited St Peter's in Rome, so I do empathise with at least some of the protestant worldview ...
I used to believe this. It's a good belief!
Couldn't have gotten to where I am today- in a much worse condition, and now Orthodox- if I hadn't started with this belief you articulate here.
I think you will find that monks know this very well!
I think you are right, Martin Luther noted that in his day.
In the Benedictine tradition, chanting the daily offices is known as "The Work of God."
Been reading "The Art of Being a Creature," which Paul K. recommended here recently, and it has quite a bit to say about work. The author quotes Pascal's observation that aside from our instinct toward busyness, which the world rewards so well, people have another impulse, "left over from the greatness of our original nature, telling them that the only true happiness lies in rest and not in excitement." Accordingly, writes the author, we are challenged "to not deceive ourselves about this rest, to recognize that it is available now, even in our work, not after some impossible finish. This work, to be restful, must learn to live and labor in the rhythms that are the peace of the world." Certainly some of our active occupations rightly pursued could approach this kind of work, but worship and prayer seem fundmentally like attempts to enter into these rhythmns.
The rest that Jesus offers is from the works of the law for righteousness. We were called to work at Creation, not at the Fall. The Fall condemned physical work to failure and vanity and by destroying the relationship with God consigned us to the fruitless attempt to garner merit through good deeds. There is no merit in prayer, meditation or study, though there be much benefit in obedience to His commands and service impelled by love of Him. Yes, that must be read with care.
Sort of.
we'll talk past each other without some clarification:
Orthodox know:
we weren't perfect before the fist apostacy, only innocent.
all punishments are only to heal and to teach; including the punishment of hard labour for our nourishment, among thistles and with sweat.
prayer and meditation are work. to do them is to know this.
But you may be right.
this is just what we Orthodox know.
There are many who believe that work was instituted as punishment after the Fall. This is not what scripture teaches. Work, tending the garden, was instituted before the Fall, even as God worked in the act of creation. If we don't get that right, we are apt to go through life with a view of life and work quite out of sync with God's design for us. That is my only point. I don't know Orthodox teaching well enough to know what they teach on the matter.
God bless you.
As someone who has had a few experiences like the ones in this book, when I entered the Orthodox Church and found that for others this was normal, I knew I was home. Most of my life I had been told these experiences were imaginary, or unimportant - hearing "no, this is how reality works and you've been seeing it correctly" was vital.
Thank you so much for these book recommendations and this inspiring review. I'm reading it slowly now. I love the passage you quote in the beginning . Such a reverse of what we are taught in the West.
As a teen my mother was always recommending I read GK Chesterton-she had a library full of his works instead of what I was interested in i.e A. Huxley and Bertrand Russell...rebelliousness of youth? Or the powerful influences of the culture of the 60's and what it wrought.
I recall reading about a brilliant young women who attended MIT(60's) and found she could not exist in this world..she left to become a solitary in Appalachia ...this was so appealing to me ..she was offered the best the West had to offer, status, money, elite education and she left it all.
Again so appreciative of your writings.
Would like to add the below as a candidate for future review by the Scriptorium:
'Resurrecting Jesus: Embodying the Spirit of a Revolutionary Mystic':
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Resurrecting-Jesus-Embodying-Spirit-Revolutionary/dp/B00JFAF1VY/ref=sr_1_1
The recently retired Adyashanti aka Stephen Gray is a former spiritual teacher from the San Francisco Bay Area. He began his spiritual explorations by studying the Christian mystics and has/had an unparalleled cross-fluency in Christian mysticism and Zen Buddhism. A sample of one of his satsangs where he talks at one point about some of Christ's more difficult teachings is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-4bXHXZlVs
Dare I point out that Jesus was not a revolutionary? His teaching went against the grain of the accretions of the Jewish faith, but He did not rebel against either the Jewish or the Roman authority. I think we are to suffer the world but not rebel against.
I wonder if that occurred to Adyashanti, or if he just carelessly used the word? Actually, I don't wonder that, as anyone who knows anything about him knows he would never be so careless. Also, that word "revolutionary" is so broad it could easily be applied to so many things, including the life and teachings of Jesus in their mystic aspects. The real question is, "revolutionary in what sense?"
Honestly, I don't seriously expect this book to become an object of study around these parts. It's more a recommendation for whatever small, neglected—though not formally banned—contingent may still be lurking around here who wouldn't consider it some form of scandal/heresy/blasphemy to explore parallels/commonalities between Buddhist thought and Jesus as mystic.
The white-hot rage Paul reserves for someone like Alan Watts tells me he's not a person open to indulging much like this, though Adyanshanti isn't Alan Watts. For my part, and like Adya, I'm interested in truth, not belief. Belief can go to blazes.
I don’t know Paul, but to describe him as having “white-hot rage” seems quite inconsistent with my image of him. No-one who is spiritually-minded should succumb to white-hot rage, unless you were a bit tongue-in-cheek. Having said that, I gather Paul has had his dabbles in Zen as well as other disciplines like occultism and found them lacking, turning finally to Orthodoxy, so yes, he might not find it beneficial or necessary at this stage in his life to look at parallels between different spiritual disciplines. If one follows one’s path sincerely and deeply, that’s all that can be asked of a person. There’s a time for everything. I, on the other hand, am interested in looking at parallels - it is that time in my life for me - so, thanks for the recommendation.
Heh, you should hear him stick a boot in on poor old John Lennon. I'm not claiming to know Paul but having read his stuff at the Abbey and elsewhere for years I've noted he has a kind of third rail when it comes to cultural figures. These are typically figures on the left, particularly those with some connection to sixties counterculture, hippie culture, New Age culture, which is the primary reason he'd flee from Adyshanti as a suspiciously pachouli-scented, Cupertino-born, Bay Area guru. This even though Adya, like peak Alan Watts, has forgotten more about religion and spirituality than Paul has ever known.
Paul will smirk derisively at the Ray Kurzweils of the world but he's practically a buzz-cut 1960s CIA agent when it comes to his enthusiasm for punching hippies. The most sneering derision I've ever heard from him was targeted at lefty utopians like John Lennon, Watts, George Monbiot, George Galloway. He is doggedly, fiercely anti-utopian (except for the utopia he believes in as an orthodox Christian, that one is okay).
My best guess is Paul is allergic to what he considers woolly thinkers/woolly thinking. Maybe someone called him a hippie once and Paul, in a rage, glanced down at the copy of The Lord of the Rings he was holding and became terrified he might in fact become something quite like that if he were not very careful.
"Here great and just souls truly judged themselves to be lesser and worse than any other man. "
This is, perhaps, the cancer that eats the life of every religion. As long as we can point to someone who is worse than me, we can pretend that we aspire to attain a better me, on the way to a perfect me. We never accept the truth that all of our righteousness is as menstrual rags; that the very best of us is still a sinner in the eyes of God. Jesus, himself, exclaimed, "“Why do you call Me good?” Jesus replied. “No one is good except God alone." Mark 10:18.
What was Jesus thinking when he answered the rich young ruler? Perhaps that if that man knew whom he addressed, he would have been declaring that Jesus was God. That would make more theological sense than that he was not good. But, in the context of this article, and my contention, why would we call any man good? And why would we think anyone less evil than ourselves?
Is not the Christian truth that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God?" Paul said later in Romans, "I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not." Not "I was" that way, but "I am" that way. Followers of Christ are no more good than non-Christians. Very few Christians realize that. Our only hope is the righteousness of Christ.
Reminds me of the old Jewish joke I heard about a group of Jews in a synagogue publicly admitting their nullity in the eyes of God. First, a rabbi stands up and says: “O God, I know I am worthless. I am nothing!” After he has finished, a rich businessman stands up and says, beating himself on the chest: “O God, I am also worthless, obsessed with material wealth. I am nothing!” After this spectacle, a poor ordinary Jew also stands up and also proclaims: “O God, I am nothing.” The rich businessman kicks the rabbi and whispers in his ear with scorn: “What insolence! Who is that guy who dares to claim that he is nothing too!”
A bit of a backhand, but funny any way.
Sorry Jessie if it was a bit of a back hand, I have just always found the joke funny and I think one of its meanings is that true humility is quite a rare disposition.
Paul, how shall I think about Russian Orthodoxy and its position supporting the Government of Russia?
What do you think?
I have more experience in Russian and Ukraine than most, although I have not a drop of Slavic blood in me.
To summarize - don't believe everything you hear on the news. How many lies have we been told already, how many times will we fall for the lies?
I don't know either. The prevailing narrative in the US media is that the Russian Orthodox Church has been complicit in the invasion of Ukraine.
What exactly is that supposed to mean?
I guess my question is being answered with a question, so be it.
No, I honestly don't understand what being "complicit in the invasion of Ukraine" is supposed to mean.
It's a complex situation, and I am not a member of the Russian church, so am no expert. It is true that its hierarchy are in some cases entwined with the Russian government. On the other hand, the hierarchy of the ecumenical patriarch in Constantinople is entwined with the US government. They helped create a split in the Ukrainian Orthodox church in order to further antagonise Russia. Power politics on all sides is trying to use the Church. The US media is of course an arm of the US state. This is why I want to concentrate on the phronema.
Thanks Paul. These are divine institutions interfered with and often debased by all too human beings.
read jim forest.
https://incommunion.org/2022/01/27/the-remarkable-life-and-witness-of-jim-forest/
Such a wonderful book. It is perhaps a story of "grene men," as in The Wake, but grene men with very different methods and objectives. The grene men of Orthodoxy are also more successful than Buccmaster -- they survived the fall of Byzantium, Soviet Russia, and they may survive whatever is next for the West.
Fascinating fact: after the Norman Conquest, a lot of disposessed Anglo-Saxon warriors left the country. Some became mercenaries. A good number of them were employed in the imperial court at Byzantium, as personal guards of the Orthodox emperor, due to their renowned fighting skills. They were known as the Varangian Guard - their nickname was 'the English guard.' I have always wondered if this is where Buccmaster ended up ...
"Buccmaster in Byzantium" is a story I would enjoy reading!
Everyday Saints is a real page turner, and unlike any other book in the last 50 years or so, I actually have read it twice now, and look forward to a third read. One of the most touching stories is of Archimandrite/Bishop Gabriel, apparently a tough and irascible man, and time of his removal from the altar, which he told Tikhon and others at a dinner after his return to the altar, was the time he felt closest to Christ. “ He fell silent again and then added: “My brothers, have no fear of the punishments of the Lord! For He does not punish us as criminals, but as His own children!””
"It was only when they began blaspheming Christ and His Mother, though, that Father Alexander, a black belt in karate, threw off his robe like some Orthodox Gandalf and administered them a beating they would never forget. This is not, of course, very Christian behaviour."
I humbly disagree. If the beating was administered without anger and with self control, it may have been an exemplary Christian behaviour.
A book describing a Chinese Christian leader to consider, has a blend of suffering, struggles, blessings miracles. The Heavenly Man, by Brother Yun, from the 80’s and 90’s
Same blend of suffering, struggles, blessings miracles in the China of the 30,s and 40’s Gladys Aylward, The Little Woman
“The Heavenly Man” is quite a book. One bit that stuck with me: in Chinese seminaries, students were taught how to escape from handcuffs and jump from second stories with as little injury as possible. Really puts things in perspective.