Hi everyone! Sorry if this question has been asked and/or discussed to death -- I go through long offline periods so I miss things -- but how do y'all likeminded people find people in real life who share your interests and viewpoints? I want to live in the real world and not through a screen and my family and I have made great strides in this; however, no one we know in our busy daily life thinks about or wants to talk about many of the things that my husband and I are intensely interested in (generally all under the umbrella of unmachining) so we feel a bit forced back online for resources and community. Thoughts, suggestions, clever quips?
I'm tempted to be like that guy in Fight Club and start hanging in self help groups to meet people. "Hi Im James and I am an addict, alcoholic, and have mad cow disease ". Should be SOMEONE who wants to be my friend right? Seriously my wife is the only person I talk to about anything meaningful, which is great BUT we all need friends. Jesus had a whole posse hanging with Him.
You can start talking to people on the street, or in public transport. I have found that there are many people out there who are dying for meaningful contact, or conversation. And when you start saying things that are somewhat controversial... PRIVATELY, they loosen up and say how confused THEY are, too about the propaganda that is spewed in the public space constantly.
I always plug Estuary. It's a format for people to get together and have meaningful conversations. It's not about unmachining per se but you tend to find like-minded people there. It isn't everywhere, but there's resources to help people start new groups. I'm starting a local one with a new friend soon! https://www.estuaryhub.com/
turn yourself into a vapid idiot. be politically active in your community. attend church regularly. take up drinking to excess. deal drugs. in no time at all "friends" are sure to abound.
Obviously, we'll never find anyone that completely agrees with us on everything, nor would I want that; it's how I reevaluate my own views at times. But that said, do you attend a local church? It's a place where I've developed some valuable friendships over time, friendships that agree on certain core foundational beliefs. Creating opportunities to develop those relationships on a regular basis via meeting for coffee, dinner, starting a book discussion group, etc. Even at work, finding a couple like-minded people to meet over lunch, with a "no work talk" rule has been helpful in getting to know others better...
Get an allotment (if you are in Britain); join a community garden project; conservation volunteer or campaign group; natural history group that goes out for days on wildlife surveys (lots of geeks that spend hours in nature and no everything about a specific group of animal or plant); find a church without screens. Join a band. Join a nature drawing workshop or learn some craft; woodcraft or pottery etc. You won't necessarily agree on everything but you'll find people that are still to some extend anchored in the real world. You may "click" with a few individuals and start having soming real conversations.
By now many of you have seen or at least heard of the disastrous (and since pulled) iPad commercial "Crush," in which a roomful of instruments, paints, a bust and other artifacts of creation are destroyed under a mechanical press, a process which ends with the eyes popping out of a three-dimensional emoji figure. The press then lifts to reveal the new product. (How it can sculpt a bust is beyond me.) As some of the younger people put it, Apple was saying the quiet part out loud, and they were called on it. Big Machine energy there.
I wanted someone to do a remake, in which the mechanical press was crushing Chinese factory workers, cobalt miners in the DRC, and everyone else in Apple’s supply chain.
Yeah, that was a wild decision. Aside from the creepiness of the message and the fact that the ad was unsettling to watch, the whole argument it was making seemed about 15 years late. We know about tablets, we know about content creation apps, yes, remarkable, wow. Meanwhile, pretty much everyone is trying to spend less time in front of a screen, plenty of people LIKE vinyl records and nice musical instruments, and there’s a lot of discussion about waste reduction, so I don’t understand the thinking behind destroying a lot of objects that people like and value and filming the result. How was this supposed to make me feel more positively about their product?
Hi all, a question for my Orthodox friends: I've been exploring Orthodoxy for the past year or so (attending liturgy on Sundays, mostly), and I recently bought copies of Kallistos Ware's books The Orthodox Church and The Orthodox Way.
Are there any other recommendations for continuing to learn? Books, podcasts, etc.?
This is a good question, and I'm planning to write something soon about my journey to Orthodoxy, as well as some recommendations for reading and the like.
Jared, God bless you on your spiritual journey. For books, I would highly recommend Olivier Clement's "Roots of Christian Mysticism" and Philip Sherrard's "Christianity: Lineaments of a Sacred Tradition." Clement's is a very gentle, but comprehensive, voice who takes the modern world seriously and doesn't pretend it's still the sixth century. Sherrard also does not do any pretending, and he goes deep in this book into both the beauties and the blindspots of Orthodoxy. Both are very ecumenical and charitable, but not ecumenist. A Catholic or Protestant could read both and get a lot out of both, with or without converting.
It's beautifully written and he also has a podcast by the same title. His book "Every Where Present" is a masterpiece and very approachable. I find many Orthodox books heavy going and I hope it doesn't discourage people looking into the faith. We cradle Orthodox are blessed by being born into this but I have found it is always the converts who can tell you about church history and why we "do" what we do.
A big YES to Freeman's blog from me. When I get filled with despair by my continual doom-scrolling, I turn to GGAT for temperance and Orthodox sobriety.
It's been an interesting journey so far. I grew up going to church, but still feel like I have such a rudimentary understanding of the why behind a lot of Christian practices. It's part of what drew me to Orthodoxy in the first place, a desire to seek out a place with a deep sense of tradition.
Besides Ware's books, which were crucial, I offer an odd selection which may or may not speak to you. It set me absolutely on fire. "Fr. Seraphim Rose - His Life and Works." It's huge but gave me an example of a modern 20th century man from California who discovered and lived the "pearl of great price". Re-reading it now 15 years later and I still find it so inspiring.
Hi Jared, I’m new in this community and enjoying it thoroughly, and thought I’d offer some advice. I am currently a cathecumen, and would suggest that you immerse yourself in the liturgy, rather than reading excessively - thats at least the advice my priest gave me since I tend to be very cerebral about things. That taught me some humilty - maybe we don’t primarily approach God through attaining “propositional knowledge” but rather through intuitive immersion in the life of the church. Not saying you shouldn’t read! Just thought that a counter weight to all the good book reccomendations might be warranted. Also, “Thinking orthodox” by Constantinou is good - see I can’t even follow my own advice. Cheers from Denmark!
Ha! I love this advice! The first few times I went to liturgy on Sunday I felt an equal sense of uncertainty, awe, and worship. I didn't understand a lot of what we were doing (hence the uncertainty), but I've always had a profound sense of worship in it, even if the little details don't make sense to me yet. I'm enjoying experiencing a sense of wonder when I go.
Honestly, man, this is very very good advice. Just go to liturgy and absorb it all. More or less don't read stuff. You don't actually have to read or think about anything. Don't try to figure anything out, just figure out how to stand there and sing. I have problems with sensory overload, mixed with reading too many books and being unable to stop trying to piece it all together, and it was hard for me to really just sink in and engage.
I'm glad my advice "fell in good soil" as we would say in Denmark. Yeah, I know - the liturgy is a wild thing to participate in - wild in every sense. Both in terms of the sensory impressions of the icons, the incense and the standing for hours - but especially wild in the sense that what is happening there cannot grasped or controlled by our rational minds no matter how hard we try - at least I cannot - something that we migth not be so accustomed to . And I think that that is a clue to not even try to grasp it that way!
I’d add reading the Lives of the Saints for a lived theology. The OCA website has a daily compilation. Also the Ohrid Prologue site has been invaluable. https://www.rocor.org.au/?page_id=925
If at all possible, attend weekday services: vigil, vespers, matins if offered. These services are full of the teaching of the Church. The beauty of the Psalms, the connections across the scriptures before and after Christ.
And, round about 20 years ago when my attention was arrested by Orthodoxy, I stumbled upon Frederica Matthewes-Green's Facing East. It lives warmly in my memory as my first exposure to a convert's way and local parish life.
Nothing can substitute going to liturgy on a regular basis. Vespers is a special part of my week every time I make it. Blessings on your journey -JW
Wounded by Love is wonderful. Also, 'The Mountain of Silence' by Kyriakos Markides. The first book I ever read on what Orthodoxy really means. Really readable and also profound. Those two books alone might even be enough.
Thank you! I started reading Ware's first book this morning, but I'm adding this to my list. I'm going to take it slow -- my tendency is to try and understand all the parts of something first, but with this I can tell that just going to liturgy and vespers and taking it in is just as valuable. I really appreciate all the helpful suggestions I've gotten here.
One book I found immensely helpful is "Hymn of Entry" by Archimandrite Vasileios. It's a small but deep book which ties together liturgy, theology and life. I had already been Orthodox six or seven years when I read it, but it's one of those that I wished I had come across earlier.
I'm not so familiar with Orthodox writings and other media, with this very substack being perhaps preeminent among them in my experience. But I do like Philip Sherrard's Christianity: Lineaments of a Sacred Tradition.
I have, on the other hand, been connected with a community called St. Mary of Egypt Refuge, which is ecumenical with a strong Orthodox element (most of the liturgies are Orthodox) but also a Catholic presence. It's in a woodsy part of Ontario. The chapel is Byzantine: made of natural wood and phenomenally beautiful: it is connatural with the landscape. If you're in the lower Great Lakes region, you may want to investigate.
From an ecumenical perspective, I recommend books by David Ehrenfeld, a Jewish ecologist (The Arrogance of Humanism, On Being Good Ancestors), Ratzinger's Spirit of the Liturgy, and pretty much anything by Stratford Caldecott.
Jared, I would second all the book recommendations so far, except I would say to leave Seraphim Rose for later; he has some good insights but can be a little too dogmatic for a beginner (imnsho). Do read Fr Stephen Freeman's blog; check in daily for Fr Stephen's answers to questions asked - sometimes these are as valuable as the original posts. Read anything in the archives there - a real treasure trove.
If you want a sort of summary statement of the core of Orthodoxy, I think the best is the Anaphora of St Basil's liturgy - you can find it on line. Print it out (or buy a little liturgy book with the 3 Divine Liturgies, St John Ch., St Basil and the Lenten Presanctified by St Gregory - a great compact prayerful study - St Tikhon's has a nice little volume, "Service Book for the Faithful"). If anything you read doesn't seem to concur with St Basil, discuss it with your priest. I think the books mentioned are enough to keep you for a while. At some point St Athanasius' "On the Incarnation" could be added - just remember that in Orthodoxy, theological terms (like "grace" for example) usually have a slightly different, usually broader and deeper definition than elsewhere in Christianity, so factor that in as you go.
The most important thing is to pray in the Orthodox manner - several good prayer books are available; simply choose a basic one you will use every day. The hymns in the Liturgy and prayer services contain all the doctrine/interpretation of Scripture. Not that you can't read anything else, but prayer and being at as many services as you're able to is most important.
I second the caution about Fr Seraphim Rose. I lovingly call his Life and Works "the Phonebook," because it's that size, and have read it three times, but it is the fountain of what would later become the OrthoBro phenomenon (though much more mature, and much more profound than anything you'll find in that online world today). He can be very ideological, very severe. Definitely in the "The Fathers say X" camp, analogous to "The Bible says X" in fundamentalist Protestantism.
Interesting take. You've been through it more than I have so you have probably gleaned more than me. It makes me sad to hear that the Orthobros might be taking much from Rose. I find him entirely anti-dogmatic and trying to live Orthodoxy from the heart. He was adamantly opposed to "super-correctness" and a proponent of the Royal Path. I like that he seems to be a link to the past and an Orthodoxy that might have disappeared from the world, except perhaps in monasteries. I also can't think of another biography that speaks to me in the 21st century with our 21st century (mis)thinking. I think I read it first at about 6 months after chrismation. I say, dive into the deep end with Rose!
Substack is very weirdly preventing me from 'liking' your comment, Will -- but I do. What you say is fair enough. As with a lot of things, it probably largely depends on the energy and mindset you bring to the book. Also, Father Seraphim himself matured a lot, from his 20s to his 40s, as some of us do, or at least try to...it depends on which parts of the book you focus on. I will say, though, that his overall mentality was very much "There are only a few real Christians left, and 'it's later than you think'" ... this is probably the OrthoBro anxiety, in a nutshell.
Does anyone have an opinion about the 1973 film "The Wicker Man?" It has some truly creepy scenes and Christopher Lee's performance is manically strong. I wondered if this blog's name came from the film or was it from the Lord of Misrule who used to run Christmas festivities in England?
I love it!! I once bought a tweed jacket to make me look like Lord Summerisle (but never a yellow polo-neck). I also like the fact that filming was severely jeopardised by Rod Stewart furiously withdrawing his consent for his girlfriend Britt Ekland to flash her arse. She had to get a stunt double.
I love that film. I recently watched it again and found it even better. What I also thought this time, with my all-new sensibility, was how Christian it is. It could be a propaganda film made by the Church. It's not a Christian film, and it's director is not Christian, but accidentally or otherwise it had that affect. It's a film about martyrdom. It's at the pinnacle of weird British horror.
Did you ever feel like the policeman after you became a Christian? Another pinnacle of weird British horror is "The Devil Rides Out." What do you think of that one?
Apparently, it was one of Christopher Lee's favourites because this time he plays the hero. Hammer Horror films directed by Terrence Fisher; they are not perfect but the atmosphere is always good. "Dracula , Prince of Darkness" has a vampire hunting monk character that I really like. That is another directed by Terrence Fisher. Christopher Lee, refused to say any of his lines in this one, so he is silent throughout the film. I'm reaching here but from a certain angle these films could be seen to be as prophetic. Western Civilisation, being menaced in the 50s/60s by the machine and the Devil, with Dracula as the stand in for supernatural evil.
what a baffling thing to say, Paul. do you mean martyr like "Jesus (or, insert your favorite historic martyr here) as Policeman"? here you are casting a typical local deadly representative of The Machine in a holy-type role.
seems to me the islanders tried to help him see the fun in life and abandon his mission. when he didn't do that he became a threat to the continued existence of their cult/anachronistic self-contained community. the investigator then served as fitting sacrificial ritual offering allowing them to accomplish 2 necessary tasks with one horrifying act.
This is why The Wicker Man is such a great film, and we're talking about it fifty years later. Where is the Machine to be located here? It could be in the policeman, true. On the other hand, he could be the liberator, coming in from outside to challenge the absolute power of the man who owns the entire island, and sacrifices humans to keep that power mythos alive.
It's not baffling to call the policeman a martyr at all. In fact, in the closing scene that's exactly what Lord Summerisle calls him. He tells him that, being a Christian, he will now receive his martrydom at the hands of the pagans, while the pagan islanders will receive their sacrifice. Everybody wins ...
agreed, it is a powerful film that stands the test of time. but yikes. my bafflement deepens with everything else you say-- you ask "where is the machine"? come on, Paul, you're a sharp guy, it's right there in your face-- in all our faces, every day of our lives. you don't see that the machine gets its' power over people from that little hand-held machine designed to kill people at close quarters with a finger squeeze? you don't see that this is the ultimate source of the machine's "power"? wtf? you don't see that the machine cannot operate and do its' dirty work without lots and lots of people attending to it, many of whom call themselves "Christian" and agree that deadly force is godly? you are certainly one of these, saying these things. clearly, with these words you are telling me and everyone here that you don't see that the act of pointing guns at people to make them obey laws is at odds with the spirit of Christ.
Lord Summerisle very correctly calls him a "Christian martyr" because organized religion and the machine walk together hand in hand. religion gets us to buy into the authority concept but leaves the dirty gun-work to their nastier little soldier buddy. by this charade we are deceived. open your eyes, Paul. you don't see the historical truth that priests with swords murdered everyone who stood their ground against them and kept at it until they conquered the whole world? that the modern "crowning glory" of all that is the machine you claim to abhor? unbelievable.
don't get me wrong, i'm not saying here that the islander cult takes the moral high ground in the movie, but as portrayed, they aren't the ones invading other islands and imposing rule by deadly force of weaponry as obviously the investigating agent is there to do. as portrayed in the movie the islanders are just living by their own values/rules. which among them on the island do you see as needing "liberation" from the "power" of Lord Summerisle? are any of them trapped and miserable? he indeed may have all of them brainwashed, as appears to be your view, or it may be that any one of them could be quite capable of taking his place as they all seem to breezily operate autonomously without having to refer to centralized power through a law enforcement system of their own. their "cult" or whatever it is, does not appear to revolve around fear of dictates imposed by a single "master". rather, they appear to function/act/operate from tradition, perhaps ancient, known and revered by all.
Ha, fascinating. I see a completely different picture.
Summerisle has power over you too, it seems! What's so interesting about the film is that Summerisle acknowledges to Woodward's character that his 'pagan' cult is a new invention. It's not a 'revered ancient tradition' but a religious myth invented by a powerful man to retain control of his land and people. Rather like the church, in your view. But because it is 'pagan' (although invented, like much paganism is) it gets a free pass. That's one of the many layers that makes the film so interesting.
(I'm not sure how much you know about land ownership in Scotland, by the way, but it's very much not 'autonomous' and lacking in 'centralised power'! The fact that Summerisle is English and lives in a castle is not an accident.)
Nobody has any guns in The Wicker Man, by the way. It's seventies Britain.
clever, Paul. "when cornered by undeniable truth, abandon the point made & divert the discussion elsewhere. when all else fails, resort to ad hominen attack". in this case the ad hominem attack takes the form of me under the sway of Lord Summerisle, defending him, agreeing with him, which i'm not doing, and then nit-picking irrelevant movie details to divert attention from the deeper matter that got you cornered. well...you cornered yourself really, as you always do, but i acknowledge your expertise at slithering sideways employing the god-given talent all snakes have.
the islander cult mythos is a "new invention"? okay Lord Summerisle, whatever, if you say so. sure looks like an old one to me. very old. cults are cults dude. they are all about power, pagan or otherwise. old/new, tomayto/tomahto. your confrontation with Woodward is nothing but a crime gang turf battle, which makes you no better than the guy you are torching. but at least your cult appears to be enjoying a fun communal vibe. at least your cult isn't trying to dominate the whole world. the cult Woodward comes from is a sad, miserable lot in comparison.
got it Paul? you're pretty thick, man. this is the thing with power-minded people (that means you)-- it is impossible for them to see anyone else's words in terms outside of an authority-based power/control agenda. you are utterly unable to see my words as anything but an attempt to knock you down or sway you to my view. all i'm doing is showing you your own illusions, your own belief system, something you've compiled on your own by choice for whatever reasons as so many of us do. all damaged (nearly all of us) people do it. i did it. took a long time for me to become aware of it but after a while i just got sick of myself and did something about it.
all i'm doing here is shining a light. i may be a dick about it sometimes, but so what? boo hoo. sorry, i'm not Jesus gently cooing into your ear while washing your feet. sure, we'd all like to be held and cuddled out of our miserable condition of being poisoned by sweet seductive lies and compelled by ingenious clever-craft manipulations, but the reality is that all we got is each other. Jesus ain't around. you want to move out of power-minded b.s. without having to listen to me? starting living by love of truth & abandon love of power, love of validation/social approval, however painful and ego-crushing that may be.
to the degree that ones' identity is caught up in their personal worldview/belief system stuff, truthful things arrive in their mind (as they must, reality doesn't kowtow to anyone) and are felt as an invading deadly attack. and to the human identity, truth IS deadly. it must be fought off at any cost. identity is who we think we are, not who we actually are, which means it is our mental creation, imaginary, our own thoughts, beliefs we are emotionally invested in because without them we don't feel good about ourselves. our identity becomes all we have and so we can't help but become insulted, offended, defensive, evasive, self-deceiving, rationalizing, etc. etc., whenever we collide with what is real inside. we do whatever is necessary, whichever particular form of mental trickery we've found suits our particular temperament and leaves us feeling that we actually are the kind of person we think we are or desire to be. under identity we live like fugitives inside our own skin
isn't that the saddest thing you ever heard? take that imposter, put it inside a wicker statue and set it on fire.
The unease and vague sense of menace through the first part of the film, especially, are wonderfully creepy! I enjoyed this documentary about folk horror - lots of other film suggestions in it: https://woodlandsdarkanddaysbewitched.com/
I would love to see a re-make of this film in which a modern neo-pagan stumbles into a Christian community isolated from modernity and therefore still practicing what's called 'folk Christianity'. The Christian folk religion would be way more 'pagan' (i.e. in communion with the earth) than the neo-pagan.
I've been wondering if, as people are navigating reenchantment and the rewilding of Christianity, etc, if you know of people involved in the more ancient, sacramental, catholic forms of Christianity, who are advocating for, experimenting with, etc, returning to the Eucharist as a full meal, rather than a symbolic one? Protestants have been at this in various quarters from a "return to the sources" point of view (the NT describes the Eucharist as happening in the context of a meal), but now in this "back to the Earth, back to the body" energy happening in conjunction with a kind of return to Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, etc, is "back to the agape feast" a thing anywhere, that anybody knows of? I'm trying to write about it, but feeling extra alone and alien about it, even more than usual...
Ah, yes -- the seder meal is kind of a thing in the Catholic circles I used to be connected with via school, too. My in-laws, who are pastors, just had a Messianic Rabbi do one at their Lutheran church, too.
I recall when I was at school in the 70s being a member of an organisation called Young Christian Students, which was a sort of Catholic social justice warrior movement, and on one occasion we celebrated an agape feast. Sticks in my mind because it was the first time I had come across the word. So it was being done back then in the adventurous trendy spirit of those times. Never heard of it since but I think it's worth reviving, as an occasional thing at least though not as a replacement or substitute for the regular liturgy.
Is there any reason why the liturgy could not be re-integrated with the agape? (Of course, there is the one great reason which dominates all things: inertia -- but I'm talking about theological reasons -- are there reasons, real reasons, theological reasons, not to do that reintegration? My understanding is that they were first split from one another for purely practical, not theological reasons -- basically, recent ex-pagans getting drunk, not understanding what a civilized sacred jewish meal looks like)
Another reason the separation of the Eucharist from a full meal was the need to have larger groups of people receive communion at the same service.. It would be quite a feat to set up a full blown meal for hundreds of people every Sunday with participation in communion as part of the meal, a consequence of the expansion of numbers of Christians I guess along with the loss of the free expression of varied gifts of the Spirit in a group setting.
Yes, very true. A lot depends on whether you think 1000 people should all meet together in the same basilica, or 1000 people should meet in 50 different homes. if you're going basilica, you're going to make the meal symbolic as fast as you can.
(and similarly, to pick up on another thing you said, 1000 in one basilica is also going to mean the free expression of charismatic gifts will need to develop into something more orderly and doable and realistic, and less like the kingdom of God -- all the charismatic gifts symbolized by deacons, priests, and bishops 'having' the gifts on 'behalf' of the people, etc -- something like that)
Yes, more orderly, doable, but less real! The Spirit’s presence more hidden and represented by symbol and ritual, generalized and not as concrete and actual in overt here and now action.
Yes, I think it would be better if the church met all spread out in smaller divisions with periodic larger gatherings for special celebrations with art, beauty, music, ceremonies
So I am wondering how 1 Corinthians 11: 17-34 would work in relation to what you are asking...are you thinking of an agape feast that becomes the Eucharist meal within the Liturgy?
Our Texas church lays out a spread after nearly all Sunday Liturgies, and of course at Pascha. The whole bunch of us will bring potluck offerings (and then we share in clean-up by teams). Some folks who are kind of on a circuit of the area churches for donations will drop in and share the meal. Our church is not the only one either. We do like to share our lives and prayers and raise some glasses together each week.
Right, exactly. As with other sacred Jewish meals at home involving bread and wine -- the weekly Sabbath meal on Friday evening, Passover, etc -- the bread and wine of the Eucharist would have been eaten and drunk as a part of a full meal. The contemporary American Orthodox practice of a potluck or coffee hour or whatever after the liturgy is really nice, or can be, but that is a casual meal which takes place after, and separately from, the sacred but symbolic meal which is ritually blessed as the mystical body and blood of Christ.
Also: "We do like to share our lives and prayers and raise some glasses together each week" -- wonderful! Can you say more? Is this like a structured thing where everyone in the parish would have somewhere to go during the week, to pray in small groups, share fellowship, etc?
Please see my reply (wherever it is?) We do spend lots of time together all week. It is a mark of our parish and others that have been influenced by the Archbishop Dmitri of Dallas and the South. Of course it is kind of southern!
I don't know if this counts, Graham, but in my parish we have a full-on meal after the Sunday Liturgy, with very few exceptions - sometimes potluck, but mostly a small group prepares it Sunday a.m. or sometimes Saturday. There's a small charge, but it's not for the lunch itself, which is free for all - the money goes to pay the cleaning crew that comes in on Monday. Anyone can eat. I don't know how different that would be than the meal in the NT, except that our meal is open. Otherwise, it would seem to fulfill the same purpose.
Hi Dana -- that's wonderful that you have a meal that's at least in conjunction with the liturgy. The difference between that and the NT, as I see it, is that, like any Jewish sacred meal, the blessing of the bread and wine of the Eucharist would take place in the context of a full meal -- *so that* the meal itself, and the table fellowship face to face that the meal involved, would be *the way in which* the followers of Messiah would themselves becomes his body. It might not sound like there's a big difference between a ritual followed by a meal, and a meal that is itself the ritual, but I think that difference is what Sherrard is talking about when he says, "The Church and the Eucharist have lost their meaning as an integrating and creative focus of communal life. From being a 'common cause' they have become a means of individual salvation. The Christian’s own religiousness has become his chief preoccupation. And in this context the concept of the Christian’s responsibility for the fate of the world has inescapably lost all meaning." Also, on a more practical note, in the parish where I was going for 13 years, since the meal after the liturgy was not, in fact the ritual, and not the way in which we came together to become the body, it was treated casually -- people had their phones out, etc, and talked about whatever. I found it hard to relate. One more thing -- is your cleaning crew people in your parish? Because if you're having a meal together, then hiring people to clean up, who make their living from cleaning, but who aren't connected to the church body as brothers and sisters, that would probably be another easily overlooked, but possibly important difference.
Yes, I get what you're saying. Sherrard is always on point, I have found.
I'm not sure if there's a way to combine the two logistically. Certainly there could be a prayerful ritual and/or a more serious way to approach the full meal. It would take some study into why they got separated, what exactly the Jewish practice was in Jesus' day, and how the Liturgy developed. Just because there doesn't seem to be a "need" for it doesn't mean something serious and connected couldn't happen within the structure of the Liturgy as it is now. At the same time, we have to be careful that we don't get the idea that we have to become "first century Jewish Christians" - the sentiment is laudable and understandable, but we aren't in the first century anymore (and even Jewish scholars are clear that the Jews asked the Christians to leave, not vice-versa). Just seeking wisdom.
The Monday cleaning crew are not connected to the parish; we see it as an opportunity to give someone some honest work and pay them well for their few hours. Every other time food gets made, though, all the parishioners present are responsible for the clean-up.
Dana
p.s. I hear the longing in your heart, Graham. May Christ fill it overflowing. He is risen!
Thanks for this, Dana. I think my main motivation for asking the question -- one that I've had for years -- is not to try to reconstruct or retrieve the first century, but rather because, more than ever before, we deeply need communion *with one another* face to face -- which was the entire point of the Lord's Supper, as construed by the NT.
I can also hear the longing in your heart Graham as you reach for something you are envisioning. I’m not an Orthodox Christian or a church-goer, I can’t remember the last time I received the Eucharist and I am more hermit than community person. But I can relate to longing for an experience of the mysterious collective result of our individual transformative encounters with the divine, to gain a vision of us moving together as we become the rebuilding of the Kingdom by the Master. Not sure if I’m in left field here but this is what your writing triggered in me.
Beautiful, Mary. "Longing for an experience of the mysterious collective result of our individual transformative encounters with the divine, to gain a vision of us moving together as we become the rebuilding of the Kingdom by the Master..." So very much my heart exactly! I would love to have you along on my journey, my dreaming -- I'd love to gift you a full subscription to my substack, if you can bear more reading (or listening -- I read everything aloud now, too). If that's of interest, you can message me and say so, or just sign up as a free sub and I'll change you to paid.
What's the drive to do this? At my church, as is traditional, there is food after the liturgy. The congregation makes food and brings it along. At the monastery here there is always an agape meal. Perhaps this is eastern European culture at work. Perhaps your experience is more American, and therefore individualist?
But the liturgy itself, building as it does towards the (real) magic of communion, is such a powerful thing. Unique. And Christ is there. What's the incentive for change here? And didn't the protestants try all this 500 years ago?!
I have fond memories of sharing just such a post-liturgical meal with you in Madison, Paul! And I believe I said something earnestly hyperbolic (as usual) to the effect that "This is the most beautiful Orthodox place in America" -- and it was, and is. And is not very much like what my normal experience has been. Yes, I think there is a cultural wound around table fellowship that is particularly acute in America. We hardly know what it is to share meals with other people. Making eye contact and sharing our lives is almost unthinkable. In my church, many people show up for Eucharist, then leave. Of those who stay, many have their phones out and are showing each other things on their phones, and I don't know how to engage with that. I often spent a lot of time at "coffee hour" sitting and not talking with anyone. Certainly, there was no sense that when we are sitting down and eating together, this is the time when we are most fully "the church" - - the gathering -- now gathering together to use our spiritual gifts to minister to one another face to face. As for the agape meal at the monastery -- are you allowed to talk during the meal? When I've been to monasteries, there is not table fellowship in that sense. You quickly fuel up, while silently listening to one of the brothers or sisters read from Macarius the Great or something. You asked about "incentive for change" and the protestants. I think you might be imagining something different from what I'm imagining, which is re-integrating the liturgical prayers and chants and hymns, and the blessing of the bread and wine, with the rest of the meal, instead of separating them, as has become normal, but is not original. I question the incentive for making that separation, which seems to have set us on the long road toward what Sherrard and Schmemann are talking about: The eucharist as individually consumable magic, separable from the church as a gathering embodying the arrival of God's kingdom through face to face table fellowship. And no, I don't think the protestants ever tried that -- they kept the wafer and the sip as a given, and changed the interpretation of what's happening, or not happening, with them. There are maybe some Mennonite groups or Christian Brethren or something -- some groups in the Radical Reformation stream, anyway -- which I think did the Lord's Supper as a supper? I'm hazy on most of that history. But anyway, my main incentive for resisting the tokenization of the Lord's Supper is actually seeing what happened in 2020. If we had had a healthy culture of table fellowship in small groups, we could have been thriving, instead of just barely hanging on, watching other people do religion over the live stream.
I would like to find a church like this. Talking to a Muslim coworker about her happy communal meals during Ramadan made me sad that my experience of religion growing up was sitting in a Catholic church where no one really interacted for an hour and then leaving. Doughnuts in the lobby doesn't really cut it. Does anyone have any suggestions for where to look? Do all Orthodox churches tend to be more community-oriented, or does it just depend?
Right on. If you're in the South, find a smallish Orthodox church where everybody sings real loud and they have a meal after liturgy, you'll be all set.
That was a great gathering. I remember it fondly, and was really impressed. It's the same kind of thing that happens in our monastery here, though here it's smaller (and more Romanian!)
Reading your comments, I get the feeling that this lack of fellowship is really what you're getting at. I don't think that's a eucharistic matter. I believe that Christ is in the bread and the wine. It's a solemn occasion, appropriate for ritual. But it can be what happens afterwards that determines whether a church is a brethren or, as you say, just some people who don't know each other turning up for communion (some at my church come just for that too.)
It seems to me this is a cultural issue. Yes, we don't know how to do fellowship any more. But it also strikes me that in these early Christian stories we're all talking about, the Christians are a small - and, crucially, persecuted - minority. And that was what drove the fellowship. Whereas today's comfortable 'cultural Christianity' does not.
Luckily, the culture is about to solve this problem for us, as it ramps up towards the persecution of Christians for their beliefs again. We may rediscover the necessity of fellowship at that point!
Yes, you're right, Paul -- the feeling of lack of fellowship is the heart of it. Though I don't understand how that can be anything other than a eucharistic matter!! How is it, exactly, that we've arrived at this "cultural issue" in which "we don't know how to do fellowship anymore" --in this time when fellowship is what all of most deeply need? It's no accident that this cultural problem is most pronounced in the post-Christian world of the West. I'll say what Sherrard said again, which touches on the heart of the problem: "The Church and the Eucharist have lost their meaning as an integrating and creative focus of communal life. From being a 'common cause' they have become a means of individual salvation. The Christian’s own religiousness has become his chief preoccupation. And in this context the concept of the Christian’s responsibility for the fate of the world has inescapably lost all meaning." McGilchrist talks about the Protestant revolution overseeing the transformation of sacred centers into centers of attention -- but I think the root of that transformation is in the far earlier one: A transformation of the Eucharist as fellowship with one another, to the locus of a magic which can be individually consumed. I think we both know that I see the world through kaleidoscopic bifocals as thick as Pink Floyd prisms, but I think that earlier transformation is what we're experiencing the painful fruit of now, in our various "cultural issues" where eating and drinking and relating to Earth and our bodies and one another face to face have been separated from sacred meaning, and thus desecrated, purely material, utilitarian. As for the early Christians, they were a small, persecuted minority -- yes. But that in itself was not the main factor of fellowship; table fellowship in which there was no longer "Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or free" was the main embodiment of Christian life well before any persecutions broke out. That fellowship in itself was the kingdom of God dawning on Earth. And also, persecution in and of itself doesn't necessarily drive us back into the fellowship which ought to be our bread and butter. The more I reflect on 2020, the more it bothers me that persecution had largely the opposite effect in highly sacramental churches -- instead of hiding out Soviet Era-style in small groups in our homes, rediscovering one another as the church, we were commanded to stay at home by ourselves and consume the religious spectacle of the eucharist over the live stream. If we think another round of persecution -- maybe like actual real persecution instead of just health bureaucrats intimidating the bishops into compliance -- is going to resolve our cultural issues with not knowing how to fellowship with one another next time, then I think that's some pretty fanciful wishful thinking (says the pot, calling the kettle black). I think we need to get really, really serious about relearning fellowship now.
I think you do point to a real lack in contemporary Christianity—the division between the "sacred stuff" we do like celebrate the Eucharist, and the "secular stuff" we do, like feed ourselves and others. This is implicit materialism, as perhaps you already realize. There is no "mere body," no "pure nature" in scholastic terms, that can be satisfied with "mere food."
Opposing "real" to "symbolic" seems to me to be a false division, however. The symbolic connects us to the really real, which is spiritual. Even a meal in which everyone eats to satisfy their hunger is symbolic in that sense.
Eating is a nodal point at which communion with others meets communion with the earth, and the Eucharist unveils this moment as inherently sacred. But how often do we let the light of the Eucharist shine on our other meals, and how often do we reduce each other, and the earth, to mere fuel for our own selfish existence?
As an Orthodox, I feel that I would lose something of inestimable worth by transforming the Eucharistic meal of bread and wine to a full meal. I need the ceremony and solemnity of the service to get myself into the proper frame of mind to accept it as something sacred. This is a form of weakness, but one probably not unique to myself, I'd wager.
Rather than tampering with the sacramental order of the Eucharist, I think we need to take that sense of sacrality of food out into the world with us. Other cultures have already been doing this with much greater seriousness than we often recognize. In one of Patrick Leigh Fermor's books about Greece, he recalls eating with a Cretan shepherd during the German occupation of the island. At the end of the meal, the shepherd, before putting away the remains of the bread in a box, kissed them with reverence. And my wife tells me that, among Italians, it is a custom to never eat a piece of bread without breaking it first (an act with obvious symbolic associations). American Christians, even some Orthodox, like to deride these little customs as "folk religion" or "cultural Christianity." But what is a Christianity that doesn't shine out of the altar into the world beyond it? In the accumulation of such meaningful habits, or their neglect, culture lives or dies.
This is awesome, John. One of the things that's been the most alienating to me is exactly this "implicit materialism," which in some ways reaches an ironic crescendo in the phenomenon of people celebrating the Divine Liturgy, then going downstairs to wolf down sloppy joes with plastic forks on paper plates, and drink from plastic cups, and generate all this trash, and just talk about whatever -- as if the Divine Liturgy has no relationship at all to what directly follows it. I have my own mental issues which make this kind of dissonance especially unbearable, and I realize -- but don't understand -- that for most normal people, this kind of almost chasmic disjunction of sacred and profane is no big deal. Obviously; that's why they live this way. But I would like to un-tamper with the sacramental order of the Eucharist -- reintegrate the ritual and the meal -- precisely because I see a need for us to see that the meal -- the normal meal, where we are feeding our bodies in the usual way -- is sacred. Being together is sacred. Conversation is sacred. For you, you need the meal to be tokenized and abstracted from the meal (I realize, yes, "symbolic" is not the right word) so that you can see it as sacred, and then let the sacredness flow from there to the rest of the normal world -- and that does make sense. That's a way to get to the vision of everything holy. Or, I hope it is, since there seems to be exactly zero interest in de-tokenized the eucharist. But, as for me, I question whether it's really working. It might be backfiring; it obviously is backfiring, when people think that, now that the Divine Liturgy is over, the sacred thing has been completed, and now I no longer need to act in a sacred manner.
I can sympathize very strongly with your sense of dissonance. I feel it myself, even though at my parish we generally eat better food than what you describe and people tend to engage in real conversation. Still, there's the trash, the plastic, the waste, and the indirect support of a soul-crushing form of animal abuse and land degeneration through purchasing and serving food from our industrial food system. It's disheartening to dwell on, and I comfort myself with the thought that most of this is done in ignorance. I could even do more myself, like bring my own plate to coffee hour to eat off, as some friends of mine do.
I don't believe that it's the ritualization of the Eucharist that's behind this unconscious materialism, however. This flippant attitude toward the sacred act of eating, and therefore to the earth herself, belongs to a world that has succumbed to a view of nature and humanity as what Heidegger called a "standing resource" rather than a theophanic reality. It takes extreme form in America, the land where implicit materialism reigns supreme. I don't believe that Greek or Serbian villagers still living a peasant life would ever have this attitude. I actually think that the problem is not due to ritualization, but to its loss. The protestant critique of ritual is that it's mindless or rote repetition. The counter-critique is that ritual calls us to attend to what we're doing and raise our mind to the level of our words.
I think that, 2,000 years after Christ walked the earth, we are only just starting to understand the implications of his life for ours. People like you and I and a lot of other people on this comment board realize that a recovery of the sacred is where we need to begin healing our broken culture. I strongly agree that crucial to this healing is breaking down the false boundary between what we do at 11 am and what we do at 12:30 pm on a Sunday. Former Orthodox and other Christians did not have to face this problem because they lived in a world that was already alive; for them, attendance at a liturgy was a focal point for that divine life in the world, yes, but not something cut off thereby from the rest of life. Even today, in rural Russia and other places not yet taken over by Americanization, the soil is seen as sacred.
More than insisting that other people do things differently, however, I think the most powerful thing we can do is provide counter-examples. For example, I'd love to see groups in every parish band together to actually grow the wheat that's used to bake the Eucharistic bread, and to make the wine themselves. On a grander scale, what about Christian agricultural cooperatives that support small farmers across the country to do this and more? What's lacking is imagination, not ability or even will. Encounter with the past, especially with the peasant consciousness, is crucial, I think; not in order to repeat it exactly, but in order to revive that sense of the material world as the manifestation of spiritual reality. The traces, the momuments of that past form of consciousness are all around us, we just have to give them life again. Just yesterday my kids taught me the name of a mushroom that grows in our area: "Dryad's Saddle." What? There are deep riches buried in those old folk names and customs that we dismiss with a wave of the hand as unscientific. Paul's series on holy wells, which I love, is a similar example.
Thanks for this, John. I love what you say here. "What's lacking is imagination, not ability or even will" -- YES. And banding together to actually grow the wheat for the Eucharist -- YES. YES, YES -- that would indeed be a powerful counter-ritual to the desecrating rituals of the Machine! And is the very idea I advocated for as well in my essay, "The Lily Archipelago" which you may get a kick out of: https://sabbathempire.substack.com/p/essay-6-the-lily-archipelago. A couple of clarifications: I'm not asking for a de-ritualization of the Eucharist, just its de-tokenization. It should be a full meal, which symbolizes the feast of the messianic age by being a feast, as was the original practice. As I said in a recent essay (https://sabbathempire.substack.com/p/remembering-the-forgotten-messianic) largely met by crickets, "Only a feast can symbolize a feast." I mean, imagine if practicing Jews, instead of having an actual, ritual Sabbath meal together at home on Friday, went somewhere else and had a piece of bread and a sip of wine representing the Sabbath meal, but not actually being it -- how long does Jewish identity last if that's how things go? There's a reason why they have been able to handle deportations, exiles, destructions of temples, etc etc. As for nature seen as a "standing resource" it's easy to blame America for that, but where does that desecrated vision of the world actually begin? It wasn't invented in America, just perfected. If you go back far enough, you'll see its origin in the catholic Christianity that is the heritage of East and West, argues Sherrard in Christianity: Lineaments of a Sacred Tradition. I know you mentioned rural Russia as being a place where the soil is still seen as sacred, and I wonder if one reason why you have to say "rural" is because that's where there are vestiges of paganism that haven't been totally erased. Urban Russia has been Orthodox for a thousand years. Russia today is what Orthodoxy looks like when you do it for a thousand years. If you do Orthodoxy for a thousand years, I don't think you necessarily see people loving nature more and more, treating nature more and more as sacred. Can you point to a place where a sense of nature as sacred has come from a longstanding commitment to Orthodoxy, and has allowed people to resist the encroachment of the Machine? (That's an actual question).
"Can you point to a place where a sense of nature as sacred has come from a longstanding commitment to Orthodoxy, and has allowed people to resist the encroachment of the Machine?"
Peasant Christians across the Orthodox world saw nature as sacred until they were taught otherwise by those supposedly wiser than they to see it as a standing reserve. In some places I don't doubt that there are probably still holdouts hanging on to an older worldview.
The machine is relatively new, and comes from the west. I am a strong believer in the adage that where the poison is, so is the antidote. It's up to us in the west to figure out how to draw on the wisdom of the past for the sake of an alternative future than the one envisioned by the machine.
Wandering the vast (pop/death) cultural circus I noticed a few interesting things this week. First, OpenAI's introduction of GPT-4o has got everyone gleefully claiming the company have realized the technology from director Spike Jonze's 2013 film 'Her'. And I'd say they really are about 40 percent of the way there. What no one seems to have noticed, however, is that 'Her' was actually quite a dark and cutting critique of technology and the way it tends to first mediate and finally supplant real human connection, and what that ultimately costs us. More about the technology is here:
Some astute observers have noted how South Korea has in recent years seized the pop-cultural zeitgeist from Hollywood and now makes by far the best movies and popular music. And it really can't be denied, as a film like 'Parasite' from filmmaker Bong Joon-Ho is so much better than anything Hollywood has made in decades it's shocking. Similarly, South Korea creates at industrial scale the most immaculately produced and (generally) wholesome-seeming pop brainworms, music that has thrilled audiences across the globe, such as the following:
However, where the bright, shiny lights of fame fall off in Seoul, there's a real darkness circling. Anyone who has actually been to Hollywood and has any sensitivity can feel the visceral waves of (no other word for it) evil that pervade the place. In South Korea, this takes the form of deeply shady exclusive nightclubs (https://youtu.be/kFLuckWYBWg) and cults (https://youtu.be/mQXCnFnCJQ8). Cults are apparently a big thing in South Korea, and at least one group- the tellingly named Le Sserafim- is pitching the same sort of mansonic/Satanic symbolism as you'll find all over Hollywood:
In any case, all of it, from AI to K-pop, is terribly shiny and superficially irresistible. As Paul has noted, however, the suspicion there is a grinning face at the bottom awaiting the unwary is difficult to avoid. Once again, the bluesman's lament: why does the devil get all the good music (and movies)?
I'm afraid I don't really think that K-pop is innocent. There is what I can't help calling a "jailbait" undercurrent to a lot of the vids that feature girl groups, while the boy bands often flaunt a certain amount of androgyny. I do find some of the music enjoyable despite its "music by corporate committee" feel, but the videos kind of creep me out -- they have a patina of innocence but there seems to be something going on under the surface that's not quite kosher. As you say, a grinning face....
Sure, the entirety of popular culture is youth-obsessed and nothing is seen as worse than being old. Youthful actors and pop stars "shift product". Most people of a certain age won't admit that markers of youth remain attractive to them no matter their own age, but it's basic biology. Clear skin, a full head of hair, a symmetrical face, nice teeth, a youthful and fit body are nearly universally appealing as they signal health and people generally only want to mate with the healthy. As far as Humbert Humbert-style pedophiles, most of these women are in their late teens through mid-twenties, and are not kids.
When I try to really home in on what the problem is, I think it's this: chasing dopamine highs through things like music and art and film (really, anything that might give you a rush such as Likes on a Substack comment) is the fact that over time you need harder hits and novel slugs to get the same rush, or even to just feel okay. It's essentially no different than a heroin habit. This is where the road begins snaking towards extremes like snuff films, gory horror movies, and South Korean GHB rape clubs.
I mean, the only way out of this trap is moderation (or total abstinence/asceticism). One thing being an adult should teach a person is they can't eat 12 pints of ice cream in a sitting, even though they have the money to do so.
Agreed. I do think the "Lolita" thing is valid in that these women might be late teens/early 20's in real life, but it's a tween/high-school vibe that's being portrayed a lot of the time -- not exactly pedo, but not really "adult" either.
By the way, the first K-pop vid I ever saw was also by Twice -- "Knock Knock." Insanely catchy song, but I found the video subtly troubling.
Well, like American boy bands in their mid-twenties trying to look like high schoolers, a lot of this is pandering to the bulk of their audience who come out to their concerts and buy their merchandise, and that's a lot of high schoolers. God knows that's the age I spend the most money on music.
Most of these girl groups also have enormous female fanbases. I dunno, like I said, I don't blame people for finding attractive people attractive, whereas lots of people have what William Burroughs called "the policeman inside" that makes them avert their eyes rather than ogle a hot 24 year old woman. That really doesn't impress me at all. I have a deep aversion to liars, and that includes people who lie to themselves.
I dunno -- ogling an attractive 24 year old seems different to me than ogling an attractive 22 year old trying to look and act fifteen. Sometimes the policeman inside is right.
Did you notice there were actual pop songs happening, or were you just trying to suppress a boner? As both a former music producer and a filmmaker it's primarily the unrivaled production of these South Korean pop cultural artifacts that sets them apart from American pop equivalents who pander in exactly the same way to the same demographic that pays the bills. I don't pay attention to it, however, because it's mediocre, do you understand?
I'm just wrapping up a book I picked up on a whim, "The Authentic Reactionary, selected scholia of Nicolas Gomez Davila". Each aphorism has a commentary by Ramon Elani. I was not familiar with either Davila or Elani. But for some reason, like a kid in freshman English, I now find that I have underlined pretty much the whole damned book (I seldom underline anything). I wish there was more by both men out there in English. Has anyone else picked this book up? "The carelessness with which contemporary humanity is squandering its goods suggests that it does not expect to have any descendants."
While a lot of people take this to be an indication of egoism, maybe it is primarily the result of not having the spiritual or intellectual means of imagining a/the future ?
Davila's name comes up occasionally in both paleoconservative and traditionalist Catholic circles. I'm more familiar with the former, but there is some overlap among them. He's one of these guys whose name I've had on my list for years but whom I've never read.
I would not call it structured, but our community encourages lots of time spent together. For instance, the other day after Bright Thursday Liturgy, about 8 of us went to eat together. It is common for some of the folks to go camping or visit monasteries or hang out together at each others' homes. It is also common for the several groups and individuals to ask for prayers, for rides to the doctor or the store or to church, and plenty of people respond. (Some of our parishioners need quite a bit of assistance, young and old.) Also, we have families that travel together to retreats. We host weddings and receptions that include all of us bringing potluck and putting together flowers from everyone's yards. We sew for one another and bring meals when people are new parents and when sick or taking care of a loved one. We have Myrrhbearers who prepare the body for a parishioner who has died, and parishioners offer at least a mercy meal.
It has organically grown with the growth of our parish.
I am also wondering though about what you see as the implications of the apostle Paul's admonitions about eating the meal referenced in that scripture without regard to some of the other people. It seems that led to the practice of keeping the Eucharistic celebration to the bread and wine, but maybe I am misunderstanding.
And yes, if people bring wine or special libations, we share that too.
Ah, so beautiful -- that is lovely. I long for that.
Re: 1 Corinthians, I think Paul is talking about social divisions continuing to exist at the Lord's Supper -- specifically, the well-off believers eating their own food at home, without sharing food with the poor believers, who show up hungry and are ashamed. "When you meet together in the same place, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper— for each one takes his own supper beforehand, and one goes hungry while another gets drunk...Do you despise God’s community and try to humiliate those who have nothing?" He's saying it is not, in fact, the Lord's Supper when how it works is some people eat at home, then show up and get wasted on the ritual wine, while others show up hungry and leave hungry again, feeling humiliated. In pagan ritual banquets, it would be normal for people of the same social class only to sit with one another, but the Lord's Supper was supposed to break down divisions, and it is not in fact the Lord's Supper if it doesn't.
I'm not making any kinds of blanket claims about the psychology of rich or poor people. I'm just talking about what Paul said to the Corinthians. Since he said "Do you despise God’s community and try to humiliate those who have nothing?" it seems like he is addressing himself to the rich, and they have been the problem, not the poor.
I particularly enjoy inviting people into my home for meals, because I have noticed that eating together binds people together, and that there is maybe room to share words along with the food. One of the warning bells that went off in my head about American culture was the relative demise of meals around a table, with the whole family gathered to eat together. The advent of a snacking culture. But it is not necessarily easy to get people to sit down and eat together around a table. Social mixity is not easy to bring about, I think, because people tend to exclude themselves from certain contexts out of feelings of social ? caste ? loyalty. If I say this, it is because I have personally seen this going on, and I myself tend to exclude myself socially from certain contexts.
Maybe... this is sin ? It could be, but I do it anyway, because I feel uncomfortable in certain settings. Because I do it, I can imagine other people doing it too.
And beyond this, there is a big problem, the one of charity, which is anathema to many people who feel humiliated by it, sometimes with... no cause, because of their own.. pride ?
As for the ritual, maybe it is a problem of navigating between Scylla and Charybis ? Many people, like me, like to have something to set ritual apart, to make it stand out, and seem beautiful, while others want it to be... familiar, and melt into a more common, homey experience ?
As for the rich and the poor, I was not accusing you. But we live in a world where it is far easier to see the abuses and sins of the rich than the sins of the poor. (When the U.S. was still prosperous there was a MIDDLE class, and middle ground.) But we are all sinners...
This is wonderful, Debra. Thanks for following up -- and I see what you mean now. What you've noticed -- "Eating together binds people together, and that there is maybe room to share words along with the food" -- not only noticed, but enacted -- is I think exactly why table fellowship was the heart of early Christianity, and is exactly what's lost when you have a spiritual culture -- as in America -- where it's OK to show up, partake of Communion, then go home and have your "real" life -- meals, etc -- without having seen that opening your heart to others in conversation, listening to others in conversation, while building body together over a meal, is what builds the social body of the church. And yes, you're exactly right -- self-exclusion from table fellowship is a sin that can go in any direction, and can come out of a lot of motivations. As for Scylla and Charybis...I'm not at all imagining taking a more or less "casual" meal and simply calling it the Eucharist, as is sometimes done in Protestant quarters. The Last Supper was in fact an actual supper for eating food to solve the problem of hunger, and involved some pretty intense heart to heart conversation, I'm sure -- but Yeshua ritually blessed the bread and passed it, ritually blessed the wine and passed it, and hymns were sung -- it was a meal, but a Jewish sacred meal. Navigation between Scylla and Charybis had already been long since figured out, as sacred meals in the home were the center of Jewish life since at least Babylon.
You know, Graham, I got to thinking about this cliquishness...
It seems to me that much of the heritage of the Christian faith has led to people having stars in their eyes about poor people, and not understanding that everybody, everybody, has their "têtes de turc". In French, a "tête de turc" used to be an expression used to talk about a "scapegoat". Literally it means "head of a Turc". I say "used to be" because using it now could possibly get you landed in prison with a sentence for a hate crime. In France, you USED TO BE able to tell jokes about how many Belgian people it took to screw a lightbulb in, but these days... I wonder.
When you think about it, hasn't this tendency become.... silly, even ?...Just how far are we going to push this until you have to.. collapse in laughter ?
We are battered to have the right opinion on things we have no real understanding of...ancient conflicts, covid vaccines, the constant nudging to be on the correct side of history and do it fast!. And then we discover that what we felt so self righteously convicted about turns out to the opposite. Having a slow, quiet, private life (the way most of us lived for millenia seems to be an indulgence.
Jared, God bless you on your journey to Orthodoxy. I am in my 4 th year and have come to learn that, as has been said previously, nothing can compare to immersing oneself in Holy Liturgy. There are soooooo many books but one can get too bogged down in the education of Orthodoxy and possibly miss the simple beauty of it. In any case, we all need some education in the history of the faith and learning about all the holy traditions. I agree that Thinking Orthodoxy by Dr. Constantinou is a good one. I found Know the Faith by Michael Shanbour quite helpful. Also, anything by Fr. Thomas Hopko is wonderful.
Hi Im new here and just now working through The Machine reading. Has anyone read Vaclav Smils How the Works Really Works? Not exactly a page turner, but very much into the nuts and bolts of how the Machine actually functions. For instance, did you know each supermarket tomato you consume requires 6 tablespoons of diesel to get to your mouth.
I think his main goal as an engineer and writer is simply to help the average reader understand the enormity and complexity of the global economy. Most average individuals have no conception of where or how 99% of the things they use daily come from. So mostly, like a naturalist cataloguing nature to help others understand it, he’s cataloguing the Machine.
I could also recommend the Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy by Henry Farrell, fascinating read on how the US has a strangehold on global finance and the internet.
Trivial question incoming . . . . . . . . Have you ever considered changing your publishing font to one easier to read?
For me, fonts like Times New Roman and similar are easier to read than your current font. I wonder if others feel the same way? Maybe many do; maybe none do. NOT a deal breaker by any means, just thought I would throw this out there! Thoughts?
You mean the main text font, that I'm writing in now?
On Substack there are only two or three fonts available, I think. I find this one quite clear, but I suppose we all have our preferences. I'm always open to fiddling around.
Yes the main text font. I didn’t realize your options were that limited! And you’re correct the one you’re using is clear — I’m probably too picky when it comes to fonts anyway. I’ve just found the Times New Roman-style fonts easier to read when reading longer essays/books.
But frankly, upon further thought, it probably wouldn’t be worth fiddling with as likely half your audience would like the new and half would prefer the old thus it would be a wash. Perhaps this is one of those “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” situations.
I love your writing, though, man! Keep it coming!!
What I’ve been after, lately, is to find that dialogue between the Orthodox Phronema and what Tolkien's pointing at by the term “Mythopoeia”. I have an intimation that that with which I’m after has to do with this “Age of Amnesia” and that stories, legends, myths, etc… are meant to remind us of an authenticity that lies dormant in many of us and needs to be remembered and lived out.
Not a mere acquisition of knowledge or entertainment but a cenotaph as a doorway to that original path from which one has strayed so long ago.
The system is broken and as a physician in California, I feel it would not be healthy for any one of you if I told you how corroded the “disease maintenance” system is, which I deem a better name for “health care”.
There is a distinct lack of God in even the Catholic hospital system (INO) I work for.
I am in the process of breaking free from that bloody machine through Integrative Medicine and a practice idea I have that is centered around God again, where it started and where it belongs.
Check out the Institute for Functional Medicine. Not God centered necessarily but at least treats the patient as whole and not a collection of sub-specialties that each need a drug. I recall a lecture that viewed the placebo effect as a healing reflex that can be fostered by a human connection, not just an inexplicable anomaly.
I see what is practiced in the western medical industry as “Medicine”, starting with a singular focus on the teaching in Med. School of what drugs correspond to what symptoms/conditions.
What is needed is “Healthcare”; how to maintain/recover a person’s health.
I agree..mostly funded by Pharma and a way to push and collect data on your prescription use. Totally captured and corrupt IMHO. Avoid if possible.
I see someone with integrity who retired from the system but sees some patients . I pay her cash and she spends close to an hr with me...She is a trained Dr( Osteopath) and does Cranial body work too...I have heard there are younger doc's who are braking away from this system too, and finding ways to practice with real care. Good luck!
broken only from the perspective that doctors used to be free to practice as they please-- which would be debatable in my view as med schools have always churned out doctors who obey and practice according to establishment "medical science". that's what the whole licensing thing is all about. you play by their rules or you're a "quack" without a license. not that there aren't things in their rulebook that help and have helped many, many people, just that critical thinkers and innovators who stray from the rulebook and think for themselves tend to run into license problems.
"the system" is actually being refined and upgraded to streamline function that serves commercial/power interests-- interests that are not motivated/served by keeping people happy and healthy.
good for you, walking away from all that. may you find a way to earn a living doing good, honest doctoring, GK.
Eagerly awaiting the full scope of your Machine writings 🙏…as once again I sent your prophetic “Rage Against the Machine” essay to a friend today after a deep spiritual conversation…who was so moved after reading she sent it onto others…
Hi everyone! Sorry if this question has been asked and/or discussed to death -- I go through long offline periods so I miss things -- but how do y'all likeminded people find people in real life who share your interests and viewpoints? I want to live in the real world and not through a screen and my family and I have made great strides in this; however, no one we know in our busy daily life thinks about or wants to talk about many of the things that my husband and I are intensely interested in (generally all under the umbrella of unmachining) so we feel a bit forced back online for resources and community. Thoughts, suggestions, clever quips?
I'm tempted to be like that guy in Fight Club and start hanging in self help groups to meet people. "Hi Im James and I am an addict, alcoholic, and have mad cow disease ". Should be SOMEONE who wants to be my friend right? Seriously my wife is the only person I talk to about anything meaningful, which is great BUT we all need friends. Jesus had a whole posse hanging with Him.
You can start talking to people on the street, or in public transport. I have found that there are many people out there who are dying for meaningful contact, or conversation. And when you start saying things that are somewhat controversial... PRIVATELY, they loosen up and say how confused THEY are, too about the propaganda that is spewed in the public space constantly.
I always plug Estuary. It's a format for people to get together and have meaningful conversations. It's not about unmachining per se but you tend to find like-minded people there. It isn't everywhere, but there's resources to help people start new groups. I'm starting a local one with a new friend soon! https://www.estuaryhub.com/
turn yourself into a vapid idiot. be politically active in your community. attend church regularly. take up drinking to excess. deal drugs. in no time at all "friends" are sure to abound.
Is this advice being offered from personal experience?
absolutely yes!
Obviously, we'll never find anyone that completely agrees with us on everything, nor would I want that; it's how I reevaluate my own views at times. But that said, do you attend a local church? It's a place where I've developed some valuable friendships over time, friendships that agree on certain core foundational beliefs. Creating opportunities to develop those relationships on a regular basis via meeting for coffee, dinner, starting a book discussion group, etc. Even at work, finding a couple like-minded people to meet over lunch, with a "no work talk" rule has been helpful in getting to know others better...
Get an allotment (if you are in Britain); join a community garden project; conservation volunteer or campaign group; natural history group that goes out for days on wildlife surveys (lots of geeks that spend hours in nature and no everything about a specific group of animal or plant); find a church without screens. Join a band. Join a nature drawing workshop or learn some craft; woodcraft or pottery etc. You won't necessarily agree on everything but you'll find people that are still to some extend anchored in the real world. You may "click" with a few individuals and start having soming real conversations.
By now many of you have seen or at least heard of the disastrous (and since pulled) iPad commercial "Crush," in which a roomful of instruments, paints, a bust and other artifacts of creation are destroyed under a mechanical press, a process which ends with the eyes popping out of a three-dimensional emoji figure. The press then lifts to reveal the new product. (How it can sculpt a bust is beyond me.) As some of the younger people put it, Apple was saying the quiet part out loud, and they were called on it. Big Machine energy there.
I saw that video today, and I had the same thought. Apple isn't even trying to hide it anymore.
I wanted someone to do a remake, in which the mechanical press was crushing Chinese factory workers, cobalt miners in the DRC, and everyone else in Apple’s supply chain.
Yeah, that was a wild decision. Aside from the creepiness of the message and the fact that the ad was unsettling to watch, the whole argument it was making seemed about 15 years late. We know about tablets, we know about content creation apps, yes, remarkable, wow. Meanwhile, pretty much everyone is trying to spend less time in front of a screen, plenty of people LIKE vinyl records and nice musical instruments, and there’s a lot of discussion about waste reduction, so I don’t understand the thinking behind destroying a lot of objects that people like and value and filming the result. How was this supposed to make me feel more positively about their product?
There is a good post on the video. https://substack.com/inbox/post/144533516
Hi all, a question for my Orthodox friends: I've been exploring Orthodoxy for the past year or so (attending liturgy on Sundays, mostly), and I recently bought copies of Kallistos Ware's books The Orthodox Church and The Orthodox Way.
Are there any other recommendations for continuing to learn? Books, podcasts, etc.?
This is a good question, and I'm planning to write something soon about my journey to Orthodoxy, as well as some recommendations for reading and the like.
Thank you, Paul! I look forward to that.
Jared, God bless you on your spiritual journey. For books, I would highly recommend Olivier Clement's "Roots of Christian Mysticism" and Philip Sherrard's "Christianity: Lineaments of a Sacred Tradition." Clement's is a very gentle, but comprehensive, voice who takes the modern world seriously and doesn't pretend it's still the sixth century. Sherrard also does not do any pretending, and he goes deep in this book into both the beauties and the blindspots of Orthodoxy. Both are very ecumenical and charitable, but not ecumenist. A Catholic or Protestant could read both and get a lot out of both, with or without converting.
Thank you, Graham! This is really helpful.
Thanks, Graham. Onto my list.
I would highly recommend Father Stephen Freeman's blog "Glory to God For All Things". https://glory2godforallthings.com/
It's beautifully written and he also has a podcast by the same title. His book "Every Where Present" is a masterpiece and very approachable. I find many Orthodox books heavy going and I hope it doesn't discourage people looking into the faith. We cradle Orthodox are blessed by being born into this but I have found it is always the converts who can tell you about church history and why we "do" what we do.
A big YES to Freeman's blog from me. When I get filled with despair by my continual doom-scrolling, I turn to GGAT for temperance and Orthodox sobriety.
Thank you, Amy! I just bookmarked his blog.
It's been an interesting journey so far. I grew up going to church, but still feel like I have such a rudimentary understanding of the why behind a lot of Christian practices. It's part of what drew me to Orthodoxy in the first place, a desire to seek out a place with a deep sense of tradition.
Besides Ware's books, which were crucial, I offer an odd selection which may or may not speak to you. It set me absolutely on fire. "Fr. Seraphim Rose - His Life and Works." It's huge but gave me an example of a modern 20th century man from California who discovered and lived the "pearl of great price". Re-reading it now 15 years later and I still find it so inspiring.
Agree -- that's a great book.
Thank you, Will! I love this recommendation.
Hi Jared, I’m new in this community and enjoying it thoroughly, and thought I’d offer some advice. I am currently a cathecumen, and would suggest that you immerse yourself in the liturgy, rather than reading excessively - thats at least the advice my priest gave me since I tend to be very cerebral about things. That taught me some humilty - maybe we don’t primarily approach God through attaining “propositional knowledge” but rather through intuitive immersion in the life of the church. Not saying you shouldn’t read! Just thought that a counter weight to all the good book reccomendations might be warranted. Also, “Thinking orthodox” by Constantinou is good - see I can’t even follow my own advice. Cheers from Denmark!
Ha! I love this advice! The first few times I went to liturgy on Sunday I felt an equal sense of uncertainty, awe, and worship. I didn't understand a lot of what we were doing (hence the uncertainty), but I've always had a profound sense of worship in it, even if the little details don't make sense to me yet. I'm enjoying experiencing a sense of wonder when I go.
Honestly, man, this is very very good advice. Just go to liturgy and absorb it all. More or less don't read stuff. You don't actually have to read or think about anything. Don't try to figure anything out, just figure out how to stand there and sing. I have problems with sensory overload, mixed with reading too many books and being unable to stop trying to piece it all together, and it was hard for me to really just sink in and engage.
I'm glad my advice "fell in good soil" as we would say in Denmark. Yeah, I know - the liturgy is a wild thing to participate in - wild in every sense. Both in terms of the sensory impressions of the icons, the incense and the standing for hours - but especially wild in the sense that what is happening there cannot grasped or controlled by our rational minds no matter how hard we try - at least I cannot - something that we migth not be so accustomed to . And I think that that is a clue to not even try to grasp it that way!
I’d add reading the Lives of the Saints for a lived theology. The OCA website has a daily compilation. Also the Ohrid Prologue site has been invaluable. https://www.rocor.org.au/?page_id=925
If at all possible, attend weekday services: vigil, vespers, matins if offered. These services are full of the teaching of the Church. The beauty of the Psalms, the connections across the scriptures before and after Christ.
Thank you!
St. Porphyrios, Wounded by Love
And, round about 20 years ago when my attention was arrested by Orthodoxy, I stumbled upon Frederica Matthewes-Green's Facing East. It lives warmly in my memory as my first exposure to a convert's way and local parish life.
Nothing can substitute going to liturgy on a regular basis. Vespers is a special part of my week every time I make it. Blessings on your journey -JW
Thank you, Jay!
Wounded by Love is wonderful. Also, 'The Mountain of Silence' by Kyriakos Markides. The first book I ever read on what Orthodoxy really means. Really readable and also profound. Those two books alone might even be enough.
Thank you! I started reading Ware's first book this morning, but I'm adding this to my list. I'm going to take it slow -- my tendency is to try and understand all the parts of something first, but with this I can tell that just going to liturgy and vespers and taking it in is just as valuable. I really appreciate all the helpful suggestions I've gotten here.
I third Wounded by Love and second The Mountain of Silence.
Neither of those books will keep you stuck in your head. Your heart will be engaged also.
I fourth and third them.
One book I found immensely helpful is "Hymn of Entry" by Archimandrite Vasileios. It's a small but deep book which ties together liturgy, theology and life. I had already been Orthodox six or seven years when I read it, but it's one of those that I wished I had come across earlier.
I'm not so familiar with Orthodox writings and other media, with this very substack being perhaps preeminent among them in my experience. But I do like Philip Sherrard's Christianity: Lineaments of a Sacred Tradition.
I have, on the other hand, been connected with a community called St. Mary of Egypt Refuge, which is ecumenical with a strong Orthodox element (most of the liturgies are Orthodox) but also a Catholic presence. It's in a woodsy part of Ontario. The chapel is Byzantine: made of natural wood and phenomenally beautiful: it is connatural with the landscape. If you're in the lower Great Lakes region, you may want to investigate.
From an ecumenical perspective, I recommend books by David Ehrenfeld, a Jewish ecologist (The Arrogance of Humanism, On Being Good Ancestors), Ratzinger's Spirit of the Liturgy, and pretty much anything by Stratford Caldecott.
The Lord of Spirits podcast is very good (Fathers Stephen De Young and Stephen Damick)
I've listened to a few episodes! I really enjoy their approach.
Jared, I would second all the book recommendations so far, except I would say to leave Seraphim Rose for later; he has some good insights but can be a little too dogmatic for a beginner (imnsho). Do read Fr Stephen Freeman's blog; check in daily for Fr Stephen's answers to questions asked - sometimes these are as valuable as the original posts. Read anything in the archives there - a real treasure trove.
If you want a sort of summary statement of the core of Orthodoxy, I think the best is the Anaphora of St Basil's liturgy - you can find it on line. Print it out (or buy a little liturgy book with the 3 Divine Liturgies, St John Ch., St Basil and the Lenten Presanctified by St Gregory - a great compact prayerful study - St Tikhon's has a nice little volume, "Service Book for the Faithful"). If anything you read doesn't seem to concur with St Basil, discuss it with your priest. I think the books mentioned are enough to keep you for a while. At some point St Athanasius' "On the Incarnation" could be added - just remember that in Orthodoxy, theological terms (like "grace" for example) usually have a slightly different, usually broader and deeper definition than elsewhere in Christianity, so factor that in as you go.
The most important thing is to pray in the Orthodox manner - several good prayer books are available; simply choose a basic one you will use every day. The hymns in the Liturgy and prayer services contain all the doctrine/interpretation of Scripture. Not that you can't read anything else, but prayer and being at as many services as you're able to is most important.
God grant you grace-
Dana
Christ is risen!
I second the Anaphora of St. Basil's liturgy. It contains the whole history of salvation.
I second the caution about Fr Seraphim Rose. I lovingly call his Life and Works "the Phonebook," because it's that size, and have read it three times, but it is the fountain of what would later become the OrthoBro phenomenon (though much more mature, and much more profound than anything you'll find in that online world today). He can be very ideological, very severe. Definitely in the "The Fathers say X" camp, analogous to "The Bible says X" in fundamentalist Protestantism.
Interesting take. You've been through it more than I have so you have probably gleaned more than me. It makes me sad to hear that the Orthobros might be taking much from Rose. I find him entirely anti-dogmatic and trying to live Orthodoxy from the heart. He was adamantly opposed to "super-correctness" and a proponent of the Royal Path. I like that he seems to be a link to the past and an Orthodoxy that might have disappeared from the world, except perhaps in monasteries. I also can't think of another biography that speaks to me in the 21st century with our 21st century (mis)thinking. I think I read it first at about 6 months after chrismation. I say, dive into the deep end with Rose!
Substack is very weirdly preventing me from 'liking' your comment, Will -- but I do. What you say is fair enough. As with a lot of things, it probably largely depends on the energy and mindset you bring to the book. Also, Father Seraphim himself matured a lot, from his 20s to his 40s, as some of us do, or at least try to...it depends on which parts of the book you focus on. I will say, though, that his overall mentality was very much "There are only a few real Christians left, and 'it's later than you think'" ... this is probably the OrthoBro anxiety, in a nutshell.
Fr. Seraphim Rose, has a lot of interesting books.
Does anyone have an opinion about the 1973 film "The Wicker Man?" It has some truly creepy scenes and Christopher Lee's performance is manically strong. I wondered if this blog's name came from the film or was it from the Lord of Misrule who used to run Christmas festivities in England?
I love it!! I once bought a tweed jacket to make me look like Lord Summerisle (but never a yellow polo-neck). I also like the fact that filming was severely jeopardised by Rod Stewart furiously withdrawing his consent for his girlfriend Britt Ekland to flash her arse. She had to get a stunt double.
For the avoidance of doubt, I don’t look like Lord Summerisle.
Funny. I withdrew my consent to buy any more of Rod's albums after "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy".
I love that film. I recently watched it again and found it even better. What I also thought this time, with my all-new sensibility, was how Christian it is. It could be a propaganda film made by the Church. It's not a Christian film, and it's director is not Christian, but accidentally or otherwise it had that affect. It's a film about martyrdom. It's at the pinnacle of weird British horror.
Did you ever feel like the policeman after you became a Christian? Another pinnacle of weird British horror is "The Devil Rides Out." What do you think of that one?
I have a terrible feeling that I am morphing into Edward Woodward, when I really always wanted to be Christopher Lee.
I've never seen The Devil Rides Out actually. It's on the list now!
Apparently, it was one of Christopher Lee's favourites because this time he plays the hero. Hammer Horror films directed by Terrence Fisher; they are not perfect but the atmosphere is always good. "Dracula , Prince of Darkness" has a vampire hunting monk character that I really like. That is another directed by Terrence Fisher. Christopher Lee, refused to say any of his lines in this one, so he is silent throughout the film. I'm reaching here but from a certain angle these films could be seen to be as prophetic. Western Civilisation, being menaced in the 50s/60s by the machine and the Devil, with Dracula as the stand in for supernatural evil.
"it's a film about martyrdom."
what a baffling thing to say, Paul. do you mean martyr like "Jesus (or, insert your favorite historic martyr here) as Policeman"? here you are casting a typical local deadly representative of The Machine in a holy-type role.
seems to me the islanders tried to help him see the fun in life and abandon his mission. when he didn't do that he became a threat to the continued existence of their cult/anachronistic self-contained community. the investigator then served as fitting sacrificial ritual offering allowing them to accomplish 2 necessary tasks with one horrifying act.
This is why The Wicker Man is such a great film, and we're talking about it fifty years later. Where is the Machine to be located here? It could be in the policeman, true. On the other hand, he could be the liberator, coming in from outside to challenge the absolute power of the man who owns the entire island, and sacrifices humans to keep that power mythos alive.
It's not baffling to call the policeman a martyr at all. In fact, in the closing scene that's exactly what Lord Summerisle calls him. He tells him that, being a Christian, he will now receive his martrydom at the hands of the pagans, while the pagan islanders will receive their sacrifice. Everybody wins ...
agreed, it is a powerful film that stands the test of time. but yikes. my bafflement deepens with everything else you say-- you ask "where is the machine"? come on, Paul, you're a sharp guy, it's right there in your face-- in all our faces, every day of our lives. you don't see that the machine gets its' power over people from that little hand-held machine designed to kill people at close quarters with a finger squeeze? you don't see that this is the ultimate source of the machine's "power"? wtf? you don't see that the machine cannot operate and do its' dirty work without lots and lots of people attending to it, many of whom call themselves "Christian" and agree that deadly force is godly? you are certainly one of these, saying these things. clearly, with these words you are telling me and everyone here that you don't see that the act of pointing guns at people to make them obey laws is at odds with the spirit of Christ.
Lord Summerisle very correctly calls him a "Christian martyr" because organized religion and the machine walk together hand in hand. religion gets us to buy into the authority concept but leaves the dirty gun-work to their nastier little soldier buddy. by this charade we are deceived. open your eyes, Paul. you don't see the historical truth that priests with swords murdered everyone who stood their ground against them and kept at it until they conquered the whole world? that the modern "crowning glory" of all that is the machine you claim to abhor? unbelievable.
don't get me wrong, i'm not saying here that the islander cult takes the moral high ground in the movie, but as portrayed, they aren't the ones invading other islands and imposing rule by deadly force of weaponry as obviously the investigating agent is there to do. as portrayed in the movie the islanders are just living by their own values/rules. which among them on the island do you see as needing "liberation" from the "power" of Lord Summerisle? are any of them trapped and miserable? he indeed may have all of them brainwashed, as appears to be your view, or it may be that any one of them could be quite capable of taking his place as they all seem to breezily operate autonomously without having to refer to centralized power through a law enforcement system of their own. their "cult" or whatever it is, does not appear to revolve around fear of dictates imposed by a single "master". rather, they appear to function/act/operate from tradition, perhaps ancient, known and revered by all.
Ha, fascinating. I see a completely different picture.
Summerisle has power over you too, it seems! What's so interesting about the film is that Summerisle acknowledges to Woodward's character that his 'pagan' cult is a new invention. It's not a 'revered ancient tradition' but a religious myth invented by a powerful man to retain control of his land and people. Rather like the church, in your view. But because it is 'pagan' (although invented, like much paganism is) it gets a free pass. That's one of the many layers that makes the film so interesting.
(I'm not sure how much you know about land ownership in Scotland, by the way, but it's very much not 'autonomous' and lacking in 'centralised power'! The fact that Summerisle is English and lives in a castle is not an accident.)
Nobody has any guns in The Wicker Man, by the way. It's seventies Britain.
clever, Paul. "when cornered by undeniable truth, abandon the point made & divert the discussion elsewhere. when all else fails, resort to ad hominen attack". in this case the ad hominem attack takes the form of me under the sway of Lord Summerisle, defending him, agreeing with him, which i'm not doing, and then nit-picking irrelevant movie details to divert attention from the deeper matter that got you cornered. well...you cornered yourself really, as you always do, but i acknowledge your expertise at slithering sideways employing the god-given talent all snakes have.
the islander cult mythos is a "new invention"? okay Lord Summerisle, whatever, if you say so. sure looks like an old one to me. very old. cults are cults dude. they are all about power, pagan or otherwise. old/new, tomayto/tomahto. your confrontation with Woodward is nothing but a crime gang turf battle, which makes you no better than the guy you are torching. but at least your cult appears to be enjoying a fun communal vibe. at least your cult isn't trying to dominate the whole world. the cult Woodward comes from is a sad, miserable lot in comparison.
got it Paul? you're pretty thick, man. this is the thing with power-minded people (that means you)-- it is impossible for them to see anyone else's words in terms outside of an authority-based power/control agenda. you are utterly unable to see my words as anything but an attempt to knock you down or sway you to my view. all i'm doing is showing you your own illusions, your own belief system, something you've compiled on your own by choice for whatever reasons as so many of us do. all damaged (nearly all of us) people do it. i did it. took a long time for me to become aware of it but after a while i just got sick of myself and did something about it.
all i'm doing here is shining a light. i may be a dick about it sometimes, but so what? boo hoo. sorry, i'm not Jesus gently cooing into your ear while washing your feet. sure, we'd all like to be held and cuddled out of our miserable condition of being poisoned by sweet seductive lies and compelled by ingenious clever-craft manipulations, but the reality is that all we got is each other. Jesus ain't around. you want to move out of power-minded b.s. without having to listen to me? starting living by love of truth & abandon love of power, love of validation/social approval, however painful and ego-crushing that may be.
to the degree that ones' identity is caught up in their personal worldview/belief system stuff, truthful things arrive in their mind (as they must, reality doesn't kowtow to anyone) and are felt as an invading deadly attack. and to the human identity, truth IS deadly. it must be fought off at any cost. identity is who we think we are, not who we actually are, which means it is our mental creation, imaginary, our own thoughts, beliefs we are emotionally invested in because without them we don't feel good about ourselves. our identity becomes all we have and so we can't help but become insulted, offended, defensive, evasive, self-deceiving, rationalizing, etc. etc., whenever we collide with what is real inside. we do whatever is necessary, whichever particular form of mental trickery we've found suits our particular temperament and leaves us feeling that we actually are the kind of person we think we are or desire to be. under identity we live like fugitives inside our own skin
isn't that the saddest thing you ever heard? take that imposter, put it inside a wicker statue and set it on fire.
The unease and vague sense of menace through the first part of the film, especially, are wonderfully creepy! I enjoyed this documentary about folk horror - lots of other film suggestions in it: https://woodlandsdarkanddaysbewitched.com/
I would love to see a re-make of this film in which a modern neo-pagan stumbles into a Christian community isolated from modernity and therefore still practicing what's called 'folk Christianity'. The Christian folk religion would be way more 'pagan' (i.e. in communion with the earth) than the neo-pagan.
I've been wondering if, as people are navigating reenchantment and the rewilding of Christianity, etc, if you know of people involved in the more ancient, sacramental, catholic forms of Christianity, who are advocating for, experimenting with, etc, returning to the Eucharist as a full meal, rather than a symbolic one? Protestants have been at this in various quarters from a "return to the sources" point of view (the NT describes the Eucharist as happening in the context of a meal), but now in this "back to the Earth, back to the body" energy happening in conjunction with a kind of return to Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, etc, is "back to the agape feast" a thing anywhere, that anybody knows of? I'm trying to write about it, but feeling extra alone and alien about it, even more than usual...
I’m only aware of it on special occasions such as the Holy Week seder at the local Episcopal church.
Ah, yes -- the seder meal is kind of a thing in the Catholic circles I used to be connected with via school, too. My in-laws, who are pastors, just had a Messianic Rabbi do one at their Lutheran church, too.
I recall when I was at school in the 70s being a member of an organisation called Young Christian Students, which was a sort of Catholic social justice warrior movement, and on one occasion we celebrated an agape feast. Sticks in my mind because it was the first time I had come across the word. So it was being done back then in the adventurous trendy spirit of those times. Never heard of it since but I think it's worth reviving, as an occasional thing at least though not as a replacement or substitute for the regular liturgy.
Is there any reason why the liturgy could not be re-integrated with the agape? (Of course, there is the one great reason which dominates all things: inertia -- but I'm talking about theological reasons -- are there reasons, real reasons, theological reasons, not to do that reintegration? My understanding is that they were first split from one another for purely practical, not theological reasons -- basically, recent ex-pagans getting drunk, not understanding what a civilized sacred jewish meal looks like)
Another reason the separation of the Eucharist from a full meal was the need to have larger groups of people receive communion at the same service.. It would be quite a feat to set up a full blown meal for hundreds of people every Sunday with participation in communion as part of the meal, a consequence of the expansion of numbers of Christians I guess along with the loss of the free expression of varied gifts of the Spirit in a group setting.
Yes, very true. A lot depends on whether you think 1000 people should all meet together in the same basilica, or 1000 people should meet in 50 different homes. if you're going basilica, you're going to make the meal symbolic as fast as you can.
(and similarly, to pick up on another thing you said, 1000 in one basilica is also going to mean the free expression of charismatic gifts will need to develop into something more orderly and doable and realistic, and less like the kingdom of God -- all the charismatic gifts symbolized by deacons, priests, and bishops 'having' the gifts on 'behalf' of the people, etc -- something like that)
Yes, more orderly, doable, but less real! The Spirit’s presence more hidden and represented by symbol and ritual, generalized and not as concrete and actual in overt here and now action.
Yes, I think it would be better if the church met all spread out in smaller divisions with periodic larger gatherings for special celebrations with art, beauty, music, ceremonies
So I am wondering how 1 Corinthians 11: 17-34 would work in relation to what you are asking...are you thinking of an agape feast that becomes the Eucharist meal within the Liturgy?
Our Texas church lays out a spread after nearly all Sunday Liturgies, and of course at Pascha. The whole bunch of us will bring potluck offerings (and then we share in clean-up by teams). Some folks who are kind of on a circuit of the area churches for donations will drop in and share the meal. Our church is not the only one either. We do like to share our lives and prayers and raise some glasses together each week.
Right, exactly. As with other sacred Jewish meals at home involving bread and wine -- the weekly Sabbath meal on Friday evening, Passover, etc -- the bread and wine of the Eucharist would have been eaten and drunk as a part of a full meal. The contemporary American Orthodox practice of a potluck or coffee hour or whatever after the liturgy is really nice, or can be, but that is a casual meal which takes place after, and separately from, the sacred but symbolic meal which is ritually blessed as the mystical body and blood of Christ.
Also: "We do like to share our lives and prayers and raise some glasses together each week" -- wonderful! Can you say more? Is this like a structured thing where everyone in the parish would have somewhere to go during the week, to pray in small groups, share fellowship, etc?
Or, wait -- were you still talking about Sunday? Is there wine as part of the potluck?
Yes on Sundays and other days too. The folks who can attend weekday Liturgies also share meals at church.
Yes to the wine at any time if available, and if appropriate for the fasting calendar and for the event.
Oh, ok -- right. I thought you were talking about home fellowships between liturgies, maybe. I am a dreamer!
Please see my reply (wherever it is?) We do spend lots of time together all week. It is a mark of our parish and others that have been influenced by the Archbishop Dmitri of Dallas and the South. Of course it is kind of southern!
I don't know if this counts, Graham, but in my parish we have a full-on meal after the Sunday Liturgy, with very few exceptions - sometimes potluck, but mostly a small group prepares it Sunday a.m. or sometimes Saturday. There's a small charge, but it's not for the lunch itself, which is free for all - the money goes to pay the cleaning crew that comes in on Monday. Anyone can eat. I don't know how different that would be than the meal in the NT, except that our meal is open. Otherwise, it would seem to fulfill the same purpose.
Dana
Hi Dana -- that's wonderful that you have a meal that's at least in conjunction with the liturgy. The difference between that and the NT, as I see it, is that, like any Jewish sacred meal, the blessing of the bread and wine of the Eucharist would take place in the context of a full meal -- *so that* the meal itself, and the table fellowship face to face that the meal involved, would be *the way in which* the followers of Messiah would themselves becomes his body. It might not sound like there's a big difference between a ritual followed by a meal, and a meal that is itself the ritual, but I think that difference is what Sherrard is talking about when he says, "The Church and the Eucharist have lost their meaning as an integrating and creative focus of communal life. From being a 'common cause' they have become a means of individual salvation. The Christian’s own religiousness has become his chief preoccupation. And in this context the concept of the Christian’s responsibility for the fate of the world has inescapably lost all meaning." Also, on a more practical note, in the parish where I was going for 13 years, since the meal after the liturgy was not, in fact the ritual, and not the way in which we came together to become the body, it was treated casually -- people had their phones out, etc, and talked about whatever. I found it hard to relate. One more thing -- is your cleaning crew people in your parish? Because if you're having a meal together, then hiring people to clean up, who make their living from cleaning, but who aren't connected to the church body as brothers and sisters, that would probably be another easily overlooked, but possibly important difference.
Yes, I get what you're saying. Sherrard is always on point, I have found.
I'm not sure if there's a way to combine the two logistically. Certainly there could be a prayerful ritual and/or a more serious way to approach the full meal. It would take some study into why they got separated, what exactly the Jewish practice was in Jesus' day, and how the Liturgy developed. Just because there doesn't seem to be a "need" for it doesn't mean something serious and connected couldn't happen within the structure of the Liturgy as it is now. At the same time, we have to be careful that we don't get the idea that we have to become "first century Jewish Christians" - the sentiment is laudable and understandable, but we aren't in the first century anymore (and even Jewish scholars are clear that the Jews asked the Christians to leave, not vice-versa). Just seeking wisdom.
The Monday cleaning crew are not connected to the parish; we see it as an opportunity to give someone some honest work and pay them well for their few hours. Every other time food gets made, though, all the parishioners present are responsible for the clean-up.
Dana
p.s. I hear the longing in your heart, Graham. May Christ fill it overflowing. He is risen!
Thanks for this, Dana. I think my main motivation for asking the question -- one that I've had for years -- is not to try to reconstruct or retrieve the first century, but rather because, more than ever before, we deeply need communion *with one another* face to face -- which was the entire point of the Lord's Supper, as construed by the NT.
I can also hear the longing in your heart Graham as you reach for something you are envisioning. I’m not an Orthodox Christian or a church-goer, I can’t remember the last time I received the Eucharist and I am more hermit than community person. But I can relate to longing for an experience of the mysterious collective result of our individual transformative encounters with the divine, to gain a vision of us moving together as we become the rebuilding of the Kingdom by the Master. Not sure if I’m in left field here but this is what your writing triggered in me.
Beautiful, Mary. "Longing for an experience of the mysterious collective result of our individual transformative encounters with the divine, to gain a vision of us moving together as we become the rebuilding of the Kingdom by the Master..." So very much my heart exactly! I would love to have you along on my journey, my dreaming -- I'd love to gift you a full subscription to my substack, if you can bear more reading (or listening -- I read everything aloud now, too). If that's of interest, you can message me and say so, or just sign up as a free sub and I'll change you to paid.
What's the drive to do this? At my church, as is traditional, there is food after the liturgy. The congregation makes food and brings it along. At the monastery here there is always an agape meal. Perhaps this is eastern European culture at work. Perhaps your experience is more American, and therefore individualist?
But the liturgy itself, building as it does towards the (real) magic of communion, is such a powerful thing. Unique. And Christ is there. What's the incentive for change here? And didn't the protestants try all this 500 years ago?!
I have fond memories of sharing just such a post-liturgical meal with you in Madison, Paul! And I believe I said something earnestly hyperbolic (as usual) to the effect that "This is the most beautiful Orthodox place in America" -- and it was, and is. And is not very much like what my normal experience has been. Yes, I think there is a cultural wound around table fellowship that is particularly acute in America. We hardly know what it is to share meals with other people. Making eye contact and sharing our lives is almost unthinkable. In my church, many people show up for Eucharist, then leave. Of those who stay, many have their phones out and are showing each other things on their phones, and I don't know how to engage with that. I often spent a lot of time at "coffee hour" sitting and not talking with anyone. Certainly, there was no sense that when we are sitting down and eating together, this is the time when we are most fully "the church" - - the gathering -- now gathering together to use our spiritual gifts to minister to one another face to face. As for the agape meal at the monastery -- are you allowed to talk during the meal? When I've been to monasteries, there is not table fellowship in that sense. You quickly fuel up, while silently listening to one of the brothers or sisters read from Macarius the Great or something. You asked about "incentive for change" and the protestants. I think you might be imagining something different from what I'm imagining, which is re-integrating the liturgical prayers and chants and hymns, and the blessing of the bread and wine, with the rest of the meal, instead of separating them, as has become normal, but is not original. I question the incentive for making that separation, which seems to have set us on the long road toward what Sherrard and Schmemann are talking about: The eucharist as individually consumable magic, separable from the church as a gathering embodying the arrival of God's kingdom through face to face table fellowship. And no, I don't think the protestants ever tried that -- they kept the wafer and the sip as a given, and changed the interpretation of what's happening, or not happening, with them. There are maybe some Mennonite groups or Christian Brethren or something -- some groups in the Radical Reformation stream, anyway -- which I think did the Lord's Supper as a supper? I'm hazy on most of that history. But anyway, my main incentive for resisting the tokenization of the Lord's Supper is actually seeing what happened in 2020. If we had had a healthy culture of table fellowship in small groups, we could have been thriving, instead of just barely hanging on, watching other people do religion over the live stream.
I would like to find a church like this. Talking to a Muslim coworker about her happy communal meals during Ramadan made me sad that my experience of religion growing up was sitting in a Catholic church where no one really interacted for an hour and then leaving. Doughnuts in the lobby doesn't really cut it. Does anyone have any suggestions for where to look? Do all Orthodox churches tend to be more community-oriented, or does it just depend?
I hear you, Apj. What country do you live in, and roughly where?
East Coast USA.
Right on. If you're in the South, find a smallish Orthodox church where everybody sings real loud and they have a meal after liturgy, you'll be all set.
That was a great gathering. I remember it fondly, and was really impressed. It's the same kind of thing that happens in our monastery here, though here it's smaller (and more Romanian!)
Reading your comments, I get the feeling that this lack of fellowship is really what you're getting at. I don't think that's a eucharistic matter. I believe that Christ is in the bread and the wine. It's a solemn occasion, appropriate for ritual. But it can be what happens afterwards that determines whether a church is a brethren or, as you say, just some people who don't know each other turning up for communion (some at my church come just for that too.)
It seems to me this is a cultural issue. Yes, we don't know how to do fellowship any more. But it also strikes me that in these early Christian stories we're all talking about, the Christians are a small - and, crucially, persecuted - minority. And that was what drove the fellowship. Whereas today's comfortable 'cultural Christianity' does not.
Luckily, the culture is about to solve this problem for us, as it ramps up towards the persecution of Christians for their beliefs again. We may rediscover the necessity of fellowship at that point!
Yes, you're right, Paul -- the feeling of lack of fellowship is the heart of it. Though I don't understand how that can be anything other than a eucharistic matter!! How is it, exactly, that we've arrived at this "cultural issue" in which "we don't know how to do fellowship anymore" --in this time when fellowship is what all of most deeply need? It's no accident that this cultural problem is most pronounced in the post-Christian world of the West. I'll say what Sherrard said again, which touches on the heart of the problem: "The Church and the Eucharist have lost their meaning as an integrating and creative focus of communal life. From being a 'common cause' they have become a means of individual salvation. The Christian’s own religiousness has become his chief preoccupation. And in this context the concept of the Christian’s responsibility for the fate of the world has inescapably lost all meaning." McGilchrist talks about the Protestant revolution overseeing the transformation of sacred centers into centers of attention -- but I think the root of that transformation is in the far earlier one: A transformation of the Eucharist as fellowship with one another, to the locus of a magic which can be individually consumed. I think we both know that I see the world through kaleidoscopic bifocals as thick as Pink Floyd prisms, but I think that earlier transformation is what we're experiencing the painful fruit of now, in our various "cultural issues" where eating and drinking and relating to Earth and our bodies and one another face to face have been separated from sacred meaning, and thus desecrated, purely material, utilitarian. As for the early Christians, they were a small, persecuted minority -- yes. But that in itself was not the main factor of fellowship; table fellowship in which there was no longer "Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or free" was the main embodiment of Christian life well before any persecutions broke out. That fellowship in itself was the kingdom of God dawning on Earth. And also, persecution in and of itself doesn't necessarily drive us back into the fellowship which ought to be our bread and butter. The more I reflect on 2020, the more it bothers me that persecution had largely the opposite effect in highly sacramental churches -- instead of hiding out Soviet Era-style in small groups in our homes, rediscovering one another as the church, we were commanded to stay at home by ourselves and consume the religious spectacle of the eucharist over the live stream. If we think another round of persecution -- maybe like actual real persecution instead of just health bureaucrats intimidating the bishops into compliance -- is going to resolve our cultural issues with not knowing how to fellowship with one another next time, then I think that's some pretty fanciful wishful thinking (says the pot, calling the kettle black). I think we need to get really, really serious about relearning fellowship now.
A few thoughts:
I think you do point to a real lack in contemporary Christianity—the division between the "sacred stuff" we do like celebrate the Eucharist, and the "secular stuff" we do, like feed ourselves and others. This is implicit materialism, as perhaps you already realize. There is no "mere body," no "pure nature" in scholastic terms, that can be satisfied with "mere food."
Opposing "real" to "symbolic" seems to me to be a false division, however. The symbolic connects us to the really real, which is spiritual. Even a meal in which everyone eats to satisfy their hunger is symbolic in that sense.
Eating is a nodal point at which communion with others meets communion with the earth, and the Eucharist unveils this moment as inherently sacred. But how often do we let the light of the Eucharist shine on our other meals, and how often do we reduce each other, and the earth, to mere fuel for our own selfish existence?
As an Orthodox, I feel that I would lose something of inestimable worth by transforming the Eucharistic meal of bread and wine to a full meal. I need the ceremony and solemnity of the service to get myself into the proper frame of mind to accept it as something sacred. This is a form of weakness, but one probably not unique to myself, I'd wager.
Rather than tampering with the sacramental order of the Eucharist, I think we need to take that sense of sacrality of food out into the world with us. Other cultures have already been doing this with much greater seriousness than we often recognize. In one of Patrick Leigh Fermor's books about Greece, he recalls eating with a Cretan shepherd during the German occupation of the island. At the end of the meal, the shepherd, before putting away the remains of the bread in a box, kissed them with reverence. And my wife tells me that, among Italians, it is a custom to never eat a piece of bread without breaking it first (an act with obvious symbolic associations). American Christians, even some Orthodox, like to deride these little customs as "folk religion" or "cultural Christianity." But what is a Christianity that doesn't shine out of the altar into the world beyond it? In the accumulation of such meaningful habits, or their neglect, culture lives or dies.
This is awesome, John. One of the things that's been the most alienating to me is exactly this "implicit materialism," which in some ways reaches an ironic crescendo in the phenomenon of people celebrating the Divine Liturgy, then going downstairs to wolf down sloppy joes with plastic forks on paper plates, and drink from plastic cups, and generate all this trash, and just talk about whatever -- as if the Divine Liturgy has no relationship at all to what directly follows it. I have my own mental issues which make this kind of dissonance especially unbearable, and I realize -- but don't understand -- that for most normal people, this kind of almost chasmic disjunction of sacred and profane is no big deal. Obviously; that's why they live this way. But I would like to un-tamper with the sacramental order of the Eucharist -- reintegrate the ritual and the meal -- precisely because I see a need for us to see that the meal -- the normal meal, where we are feeding our bodies in the usual way -- is sacred. Being together is sacred. Conversation is sacred. For you, you need the meal to be tokenized and abstracted from the meal (I realize, yes, "symbolic" is not the right word) so that you can see it as sacred, and then let the sacredness flow from there to the rest of the normal world -- and that does make sense. That's a way to get to the vision of everything holy. Or, I hope it is, since there seems to be exactly zero interest in de-tokenized the eucharist. But, as for me, I question whether it's really working. It might be backfiring; it obviously is backfiring, when people think that, now that the Divine Liturgy is over, the sacred thing has been completed, and now I no longer need to act in a sacred manner.
I can sympathize very strongly with your sense of dissonance. I feel it myself, even though at my parish we generally eat better food than what you describe and people tend to engage in real conversation. Still, there's the trash, the plastic, the waste, and the indirect support of a soul-crushing form of animal abuse and land degeneration through purchasing and serving food from our industrial food system. It's disheartening to dwell on, and I comfort myself with the thought that most of this is done in ignorance. I could even do more myself, like bring my own plate to coffee hour to eat off, as some friends of mine do.
I don't believe that it's the ritualization of the Eucharist that's behind this unconscious materialism, however. This flippant attitude toward the sacred act of eating, and therefore to the earth herself, belongs to a world that has succumbed to a view of nature and humanity as what Heidegger called a "standing resource" rather than a theophanic reality. It takes extreme form in America, the land where implicit materialism reigns supreme. I don't believe that Greek or Serbian villagers still living a peasant life would ever have this attitude. I actually think that the problem is not due to ritualization, but to its loss. The protestant critique of ritual is that it's mindless or rote repetition. The counter-critique is that ritual calls us to attend to what we're doing and raise our mind to the level of our words.
I think that, 2,000 years after Christ walked the earth, we are only just starting to understand the implications of his life for ours. People like you and I and a lot of other people on this comment board realize that a recovery of the sacred is where we need to begin healing our broken culture. I strongly agree that crucial to this healing is breaking down the false boundary between what we do at 11 am and what we do at 12:30 pm on a Sunday. Former Orthodox and other Christians did not have to face this problem because they lived in a world that was already alive; for them, attendance at a liturgy was a focal point for that divine life in the world, yes, but not something cut off thereby from the rest of life. Even today, in rural Russia and other places not yet taken over by Americanization, the soil is seen as sacred.
More than insisting that other people do things differently, however, I think the most powerful thing we can do is provide counter-examples. For example, I'd love to see groups in every parish band together to actually grow the wheat that's used to bake the Eucharistic bread, and to make the wine themselves. On a grander scale, what about Christian agricultural cooperatives that support small farmers across the country to do this and more? What's lacking is imagination, not ability or even will. Encounter with the past, especially with the peasant consciousness, is crucial, I think; not in order to repeat it exactly, but in order to revive that sense of the material world as the manifestation of spiritual reality. The traces, the momuments of that past form of consciousness are all around us, we just have to give them life again. Just yesterday my kids taught me the name of a mushroom that grows in our area: "Dryad's Saddle." What? There are deep riches buried in those old folk names and customs that we dismiss with a wave of the hand as unscientific. Paul's series on holy wells, which I love, is a similar example.
Pax.
Thanks for this, John. I love what you say here. "What's lacking is imagination, not ability or even will" -- YES. And banding together to actually grow the wheat for the Eucharist -- YES. YES, YES -- that would indeed be a powerful counter-ritual to the desecrating rituals of the Machine! And is the very idea I advocated for as well in my essay, "The Lily Archipelago" which you may get a kick out of: https://sabbathempire.substack.com/p/essay-6-the-lily-archipelago. A couple of clarifications: I'm not asking for a de-ritualization of the Eucharist, just its de-tokenization. It should be a full meal, which symbolizes the feast of the messianic age by being a feast, as was the original practice. As I said in a recent essay (https://sabbathempire.substack.com/p/remembering-the-forgotten-messianic) largely met by crickets, "Only a feast can symbolize a feast." I mean, imagine if practicing Jews, instead of having an actual, ritual Sabbath meal together at home on Friday, went somewhere else and had a piece of bread and a sip of wine representing the Sabbath meal, but not actually being it -- how long does Jewish identity last if that's how things go? There's a reason why they have been able to handle deportations, exiles, destructions of temples, etc etc. As for nature seen as a "standing resource" it's easy to blame America for that, but where does that desecrated vision of the world actually begin? It wasn't invented in America, just perfected. If you go back far enough, you'll see its origin in the catholic Christianity that is the heritage of East and West, argues Sherrard in Christianity: Lineaments of a Sacred Tradition. I know you mentioned rural Russia as being a place where the soil is still seen as sacred, and I wonder if one reason why you have to say "rural" is because that's where there are vestiges of paganism that haven't been totally erased. Urban Russia has been Orthodox for a thousand years. Russia today is what Orthodoxy looks like when you do it for a thousand years. If you do Orthodoxy for a thousand years, I don't think you necessarily see people loving nature more and more, treating nature more and more as sacred. Can you point to a place where a sense of nature as sacred has come from a longstanding commitment to Orthodoxy, and has allowed people to resist the encroachment of the Machine? (That's an actual question).
"Can you point to a place where a sense of nature as sacred has come from a longstanding commitment to Orthodoxy, and has allowed people to resist the encroachment of the Machine?"
Peasant Christians across the Orthodox world saw nature as sacred until they were taught otherwise by those supposedly wiser than they to see it as a standing reserve. In some places I don't doubt that there are probably still holdouts hanging on to an older worldview.
The machine is relatively new, and comes from the west. I am a strong believer in the adage that where the poison is, so is the antidote. It's up to us in the west to figure out how to draw on the wisdom of the past for the sake of an alternative future than the one envisioned by the machine.
Amen!
Wandering the vast (pop/death) cultural circus I noticed a few interesting things this week. First, OpenAI's introduction of GPT-4o has got everyone gleefully claiming the company have realized the technology from director Spike Jonze's 2013 film 'Her'. And I'd say they really are about 40 percent of the way there. What no one seems to have noticed, however, is that 'Her' was actually quite a dark and cutting critique of technology and the way it tends to first mediate and finally supplant real human connection, and what that ultimately costs us. More about the technology is here:
https://openai.com/index/hello-gpt-4o/
And a good(?) interview with CEO Sam Altman today:
https://youtu.be/fMtbrKhXMWc
Some astute observers have noted how South Korea has in recent years seized the pop-cultural zeitgeist from Hollywood and now makes by far the best movies and popular music. And it really can't be denied, as a film like 'Parasite' from filmmaker Bong Joon-Ho is so much better than anything Hollywood has made in decades it's shocking. Similarly, South Korea creates at industrial scale the most immaculately produced and (generally) wholesome-seeming pop brainworms, music that has thrilled audiences across the globe, such as the following:
NewJeans 'Super Shy'
https://youtu.be/ArmDp-zijuc
Twice 'Likey'
https://youtu.be/V2hlQkVJZhE
BLACKPINK 'As If It's Your Last'
https://youtu.be/Amq-qlqbjYA
However, where the bright, shiny lights of fame fall off in Seoul, there's a real darkness circling. Anyone who has actually been to Hollywood and has any sensitivity can feel the visceral waves of (no other word for it) evil that pervade the place. In South Korea, this takes the form of deeply shady exclusive nightclubs (https://youtu.be/kFLuckWYBWg) and cults (https://youtu.be/mQXCnFnCJQ8). Cults are apparently a big thing in South Korea, and at least one group- the tellingly named Le Sserafim- is pitching the same sort of mansonic/Satanic symbolism as you'll find all over Hollywood:
https://youtu.be/bNKXxwOQYB8
In any case, all of it, from AI to K-pop, is terribly shiny and superficially irresistible. As Paul has noted, however, the suspicion there is a grinning face at the bottom awaiting the unwary is difficult to avoid. Once again, the bluesman's lament: why does the devil get all the good music (and movies)?
I'm afraid I don't really think that K-pop is innocent. There is what I can't help calling a "jailbait" undercurrent to a lot of the vids that feature girl groups, while the boy bands often flaunt a certain amount of androgyny. I do find some of the music enjoyable despite its "music by corporate committee" feel, but the videos kind of creep me out -- they have a patina of innocence but there seems to be something going on under the surface that's not quite kosher. As you say, a grinning face....
Sure, the entirety of popular culture is youth-obsessed and nothing is seen as worse than being old. Youthful actors and pop stars "shift product". Most people of a certain age won't admit that markers of youth remain attractive to them no matter their own age, but it's basic biology. Clear skin, a full head of hair, a symmetrical face, nice teeth, a youthful and fit body are nearly universally appealing as they signal health and people generally only want to mate with the healthy. As far as Humbert Humbert-style pedophiles, most of these women are in their late teens through mid-twenties, and are not kids.
When I try to really home in on what the problem is, I think it's this: chasing dopamine highs through things like music and art and film (really, anything that might give you a rush such as Likes on a Substack comment) is the fact that over time you need harder hits and novel slugs to get the same rush, or even to just feel okay. It's essentially no different than a heroin habit. This is where the road begins snaking towards extremes like snuff films, gory horror movies, and South Korean GHB rape clubs.
I mean, the only way out of this trap is moderation (or total abstinence/asceticism). One thing being an adult should teach a person is they can't eat 12 pints of ice cream in a sitting, even though they have the money to do so.
Agreed. I do think the "Lolita" thing is valid in that these women might be late teens/early 20's in real life, but it's a tween/high-school vibe that's being portrayed a lot of the time -- not exactly pedo, but not really "adult" either.
By the way, the first K-pop vid I ever saw was also by Twice -- "Knock Knock." Insanely catchy song, but I found the video subtly troubling.
Well, like American boy bands in their mid-twenties trying to look like high schoolers, a lot of this is pandering to the bulk of their audience who come out to their concerts and buy their merchandise, and that's a lot of high schoolers. God knows that's the age I spend the most money on music.
Most of these girl groups also have enormous female fanbases. I dunno, like I said, I don't blame people for finding attractive people attractive, whereas lots of people have what William Burroughs called "the policeman inside" that makes them avert their eyes rather than ogle a hot 24 year old woman. That really doesn't impress me at all. I have a deep aversion to liars, and that includes people who lie to themselves.
I dunno -- ogling an attractive 24 year old seems different to me than ogling an attractive 22 year old trying to look and act fifteen. Sometimes the policeman inside is right.
Did you notice there were actual pop songs happening, or were you just trying to suppress a boner? As both a former music producer and a filmmaker it's primarily the unrivaled production of these South Korean pop cultural artifacts that sets them apart from American pop equivalents who pander in exactly the same way to the same demographic that pays the bills. I don't pay attention to it, however, because it's mediocre, do you understand?
As for the dopamine issue, Ted Gioia has written insightfully on this point. This is perhaps the first of several of his posts on the subject. https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-state-of-the-culture-2024
Fantastic article and absolutely on-target, thank you!
I'm just wrapping up a book I picked up on a whim, "The Authentic Reactionary, selected scholia of Nicolas Gomez Davila". Each aphorism has a commentary by Ramon Elani. I was not familiar with either Davila or Elani. But for some reason, like a kid in freshman English, I now find that I have underlined pretty much the whole damned book (I seldom underline anything). I wish there was more by both men out there in English. Has anyone else picked this book up? "The carelessness with which contemporary humanity is squandering its goods suggests that it does not expect to have any descendants."
"The carelessness with which contemporary humanity is squandering its goods suggests that it does not expect to have any descendants."
"Après moi, le déluge"
While a lot of people take this to be an indication of egoism, maybe it is primarily the result of not having the spiritual or intellectual means of imagining a/the future ?
Davila's name comes up occasionally in both paleoconservative and traditionalist Catholic circles. I'm more familiar with the former, but there is some overlap among them. He's one of these guys whose name I've had on my list for years but whom I've never read.
I would not call it structured, but our community encourages lots of time spent together. For instance, the other day after Bright Thursday Liturgy, about 8 of us went to eat together. It is common for some of the folks to go camping or visit monasteries or hang out together at each others' homes. It is also common for the several groups and individuals to ask for prayers, for rides to the doctor or the store or to church, and plenty of people respond. (Some of our parishioners need quite a bit of assistance, young and old.) Also, we have families that travel together to retreats. We host weddings and receptions that include all of us bringing potluck and putting together flowers from everyone's yards. We sew for one another and bring meals when people are new parents and when sick or taking care of a loved one. We have Myrrhbearers who prepare the body for a parishioner who has died, and parishioners offer at least a mercy meal.
It has organically grown with the growth of our parish.
I am also wondering though about what you see as the implications of the apostle Paul's admonitions about eating the meal referenced in that scripture without regard to some of the other people. It seems that led to the practice of keeping the Eucharistic celebration to the bread and wine, but maybe I am misunderstanding.
And yes, if people bring wine or special libations, we share that too.
Ah, so beautiful -- that is lovely. I long for that.
Re: 1 Corinthians, I think Paul is talking about social divisions continuing to exist at the Lord's Supper -- specifically, the well-off believers eating their own food at home, without sharing food with the poor believers, who show up hungry and are ashamed. "When you meet together in the same place, it is not to eat the Lord’s Supper— for each one takes his own supper beforehand, and one goes hungry while another gets drunk...Do you despise God’s community and try to humiliate those who have nothing?" He's saying it is not, in fact, the Lord's Supper when how it works is some people eat at home, then show up and get wasted on the ritual wine, while others show up hungry and leave hungry again, feeling humiliated. In pagan ritual banquets, it would be normal for people of the same social class only to sit with one another, but the Lord's Supper was supposed to break down divisions, and it is not in fact the Lord's Supper if it doesn't.
(I can send you my essay on it, if you direct message me your email or something)
Ah, but are you so sure that the poor want to sit with the rich ?
Most of the time we believe that the rich don't want to sit with the poor, but what if the poor don't want to sit with the rich ?...
I'm not making any kinds of blanket claims about the psychology of rich or poor people. I'm just talking about what Paul said to the Corinthians. Since he said "Do you despise God’s community and try to humiliate those who have nothing?" it seems like he is addressing himself to the rich, and they have been the problem, not the poor.
(The problem being cliquishness, and keeping the meal separate from the ritual, leaving some hungry)
I particularly enjoy inviting people into my home for meals, because I have noticed that eating together binds people together, and that there is maybe room to share words along with the food. One of the warning bells that went off in my head about American culture was the relative demise of meals around a table, with the whole family gathered to eat together. The advent of a snacking culture. But it is not necessarily easy to get people to sit down and eat together around a table. Social mixity is not easy to bring about, I think, because people tend to exclude themselves from certain contexts out of feelings of social ? caste ? loyalty. If I say this, it is because I have personally seen this going on, and I myself tend to exclude myself socially from certain contexts.
Maybe... this is sin ? It could be, but I do it anyway, because I feel uncomfortable in certain settings. Because I do it, I can imagine other people doing it too.
And beyond this, there is a big problem, the one of charity, which is anathema to many people who feel humiliated by it, sometimes with... no cause, because of their own.. pride ?
As for the ritual, maybe it is a problem of navigating between Scylla and Charybis ? Many people, like me, like to have something to set ritual apart, to make it stand out, and seem beautiful, while others want it to be... familiar, and melt into a more common, homey experience ?
As for the rich and the poor, I was not accusing you. But we live in a world where it is far easier to see the abuses and sins of the rich than the sins of the poor. (When the U.S. was still prosperous there was a MIDDLE class, and middle ground.) But we are all sinners...
This is wonderful, Debra. Thanks for following up -- and I see what you mean now. What you've noticed -- "Eating together binds people together, and that there is maybe room to share words along with the food" -- not only noticed, but enacted -- is I think exactly why table fellowship was the heart of early Christianity, and is exactly what's lost when you have a spiritual culture -- as in America -- where it's OK to show up, partake of Communion, then go home and have your "real" life -- meals, etc -- without having seen that opening your heart to others in conversation, listening to others in conversation, while building body together over a meal, is what builds the social body of the church. And yes, you're exactly right -- self-exclusion from table fellowship is a sin that can go in any direction, and can come out of a lot of motivations. As for Scylla and Charybis...I'm not at all imagining taking a more or less "casual" meal and simply calling it the Eucharist, as is sometimes done in Protestant quarters. The Last Supper was in fact an actual supper for eating food to solve the problem of hunger, and involved some pretty intense heart to heart conversation, I'm sure -- but Yeshua ritually blessed the bread and passed it, ritually blessed the wine and passed it, and hymns were sung -- it was a meal, but a Jewish sacred meal. Navigation between Scylla and Charybis had already been long since figured out, as sacred meals in the home were the center of Jewish life since at least Babylon.
You know, Graham, I got to thinking about this cliquishness...
It seems to me that much of the heritage of the Christian faith has led to people having stars in their eyes about poor people, and not understanding that everybody, everybody, has their "têtes de turc". In French, a "tête de turc" used to be an expression used to talk about a "scapegoat". Literally it means "head of a Turc". I say "used to be" because using it now could possibly get you landed in prison with a sentence for a hate crime. In France, you USED TO BE able to tell jokes about how many Belgian people it took to screw a lightbulb in, but these days... I wonder.
When you think about it, hasn't this tendency become.... silly, even ?...Just how far are we going to push this until you have to.. collapse in laughter ?
When... are we going to collapse in laughter ?
Wow, that sounds wonderful. You are all quite fortunate in each other.
We are battered to have the right opinion on things we have no real understanding of...ancient conflicts, covid vaccines, the constant nudging to be on the correct side of history and do it fast!. And then we discover that what we felt so self righteously convicted about turns out to the opposite. Having a slow, quiet, private life (the way most of us lived for millenia seems to be an indulgence.
Yes, I suppose it is one of those human things that southerners hold dear.
Jared, God bless you on your journey to Orthodoxy. I am in my 4 th year and have come to learn that, as has been said previously, nothing can compare to immersing oneself in Holy Liturgy. There are soooooo many books but one can get too bogged down in the education of Orthodoxy and possibly miss the simple beauty of it. In any case, we all need some education in the history of the faith and learning about all the holy traditions. I agree that Thinking Orthodoxy by Dr. Constantinou is a good one. I found Know the Faith by Michael Shanbour quite helpful. Also, anything by Fr. Thomas Hopko is wonderful.
Hi Im new here and just now working through The Machine reading. Has anyone read Vaclav Smils How the Works Really Works? Not exactly a page turner, but very much into the nuts and bolts of how the Machine actually functions. For instance, did you know each supermarket tomato you consume requires 6 tablespoons of diesel to get to your mouth.
meant to say How the WORLD Really works
That looks interesting. Is it mostly little facts like that or does he construct an argument?
I think his main goal as an engineer and writer is simply to help the average reader understand the enormity and complexity of the global economy. Most average individuals have no conception of where or how 99% of the things they use daily come from. So mostly, like a naturalist cataloguing nature to help others understand it, he’s cataloguing the Machine.
I could also recommend the Underground Empire: How America Weaponized the World Economy by Henry Farrell, fascinating read on how the US has a strangehold on global finance and the internet.
Trivial question incoming . . . . . . . . Have you ever considered changing your publishing font to one easier to read?
For me, fonts like Times New Roman and similar are easier to read than your current font. I wonder if others feel the same way? Maybe many do; maybe none do. NOT a deal breaker by any means, just thought I would throw this out there! Thoughts?
You mean the main text font, that I'm writing in now?
On Substack there are only two or three fonts available, I think. I find this one quite clear, but I suppose we all have our preferences. I'm always open to fiddling around.
Yes the main text font. I didn’t realize your options were that limited! And you’re correct the one you’re using is clear — I’m probably too picky when it comes to fonts anyway. I’ve just found the Times New Roman-style fonts easier to read when reading longer essays/books.
But frankly, upon further thought, it probably wouldn’t be worth fiddling with as likely half your audience would like the new and half would prefer the old thus it would be a wash. Perhaps this is one of those “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” situations.
I love your writing, though, man! Keep it coming!!
What I’ve been after, lately, is to find that dialogue between the Orthodox Phronema and what Tolkien's pointing at by the term “Mythopoeia”. I have an intimation that that with which I’m after has to do with this “Age of Amnesia” and that stories, legends, myths, etc… are meant to remind us of an authenticity that lies dormant in many of us and needs to be remembered and lived out.
Not a mere acquisition of knowledge or entertainment but a cenotaph as a doorway to that original path from which one has strayed so long ago.
Hello digital friends, Mr. Kingsnorth,
I would love to talk about medicine.
The system is broken and as a physician in California, I feel it would not be healthy for any one of you if I told you how corroded the “disease maintenance” system is, which I deem a better name for “health care”.
There is a distinct lack of God in even the Catholic hospital system (INO) I work for.
I am in the process of breaking free from that bloody machine through Integrative Medicine and a practice idea I have that is centered around God again, where it started and where it belongs.
I would love to explore this.
Blessings!
Check out the Institute for Functional Medicine. Not God centered necessarily but at least treats the patient as whole and not a collection of sub-specialties that each need a drug. I recall a lecture that viewed the placebo effect as a healing reflex that can be fostered by a human connection, not just an inexplicable anomaly.
I see what is practiced in the western medical industry as “Medicine”, starting with a singular focus on the teaching in Med. School of what drugs correspond to what symptoms/conditions.
What is needed is “Healthcare”; how to maintain/recover a person’s health.
I agree..mostly funded by Pharma and a way to push and collect data on your prescription use. Totally captured and corrupt IMHO. Avoid if possible.
I see someone with integrity who retired from the system but sees some patients . I pay her cash and she spends close to an hr with me...She is a trained Dr( Osteopath) and does Cranial body work too...I have heard there are younger doc's who are braking away from this system too, and finding ways to practice with real care. Good luck!
"the system is broken" (hello GK--)
broken only from the perspective that doctors used to be free to practice as they please-- which would be debatable in my view as med schools have always churned out doctors who obey and practice according to establishment "medical science". that's what the whole licensing thing is all about. you play by their rules or you're a "quack" without a license. not that there aren't things in their rulebook that help and have helped many, many people, just that critical thinkers and innovators who stray from the rulebook and think for themselves tend to run into license problems.
"the system" is actually being refined and upgraded to streamline function that serves commercial/power interests-- interests that are not motivated/served by keeping people happy and healthy.
good for you, walking away from all that. may you find a way to earn a living doing good, honest doctoring, GK.
Eagerly awaiting the full scope of your Machine writings 🙏…as once again I sent your prophetic “Rage Against the Machine” essay to a friend today after a deep spiritual conversation…who was so moved after reading she sent it onto others…