Mount Zion Ryan

The kids are listening to what’s being said/sung/read in church, so be careful where you take them!

Paul (age 8 ) and I regularly go to vespers at least once per week (our parish has Daily Vespers on Wednesday evening and Great Vespers on Saturday evening.) As usual, Paul serves in the altar.

Since he is out of view for most of the service, I have no idea what he’s up to.

————————-
So the other day we’re having a discussion about why God made wasps. My wife and I are giving the usual answers, but we’re all being a little silly. So we decide we’re not really sure why God made mosquitoes.

And Paul says, “What good are rocks?”
[beat]
And he continues “Well, they are a home for the rabbits.”
————————-

Vespers begins with the Priest proclaiming “Blessed is our God.” Then the reader chants “Come let us worship…” followed by Psalm 103.

The high mountains are a refuge for the stags, [and] the rock for the rabbits.

Ps 103:18

Share on Facebook

[I'm reading The Ladder of Divine Ascent over Great Lent and will share bits and thoughts as they occur.]

Step 3 On Exile or Pilgrimage
9. Run from places of sin as from the plague. For when fruit is not present, we have no frequent desire to eat it.
10. Be on the lookout for this trick and wile of the thieves. For they suggest to us that we need not separate ourselves from people in the world, and maintain that we shall receive a great reward if we can look upon women and still remain continent. We must not believe these suggestions, but rather the opposite.

There is a strange phenomenon in our culture that says there is a greater portion of moral superiority in facing down one’s temptation than avoiding it altogether. I don’t think it overt, but it’s there. Part of it, I think, is our desire to participate in victory, even vicariously, and when someone faces down temptation successfully, we can do just that. The person who was smart, and did not place themselves close to temptation at all is invisible to us. We can’t participate in their victory. And here is a greater danger the tempted one. Should I face temptation and fail, I sin. But now, even if I resist temptation, I have made a spectacle out of myself and there is a strong temptation to pride. Oh look how strong I am. I faced my demons head on. Meanwhile, the wise person avoided temptation in the first place and so avoids it in the second place as well.

This whole Step is of great use. As someone living in the world, the advice about exile is not so much pragmatic as it is allegorical. But still of great value. And it makes me wonder whether I should have even posted this.

Share on Facebook

Because Orthodoxy should find it’s full expression locally:

Share on Facebook

Sometime, however, I express myself in verse. For posterity then, here’s a few (two may have been posted here, but I can’t find them).

Song of the Pastry
As the Sirens called to the sailors
And the Kitsune to the samurai,
As Delilah seduced Samson
And Barbara Stanwyck seduced Fred MacMurray,
So too this box named Krispy Kreme.
I wield a banana in defiance
And hold fast.

I Want an Office with a Window
The florescent lights, the computer’s fan
And the air conditioner’s gentle murmur
Are all the sounds I hear.
They aspire to be crickets and whippoorwills
In the meadow of my standard government issued office.

A box labeled, “Personal desk starter kit”
Boosts my monitor to eye level.
How can “21 indispensable office products
in one convenient kit”
be personal?

Coffee and Its Imitators
There is a great difference
Between coffee-flavored-water and coffee.
Like the difference between
Watching baseball on T.V.
And playing baseball.

One is a vital fluid, like blood
Or the sap of a mighty tree.
The other is imitative at best, like skim milk
Or the scent of a scratch-and-sniff sticker.

Coffee-flavored-water is for people
Who like to pretend they like coffee
But don’t.
So they take their coffee-flavored-water
the same color as the walls of my office,
just barely on the brown side of white.

Coffee-flavored-water drinkers
Make life hard for coffee drinkers,
Because they do not know the difference.
Coffee-flavored-water drinkers
don’t care which they drink.
By the time they have diluted their black liquid
To color of sand, it doesn’t matter
Whether the office coffee pot contains
Coffee or its imitators.

Share on Facebook

A conversation, well two actually, after Liturgy prompted me to write this post.

First, I love reading lives of Saints. Whether as short pieces in a collection of lives or a full length work. I used to love reading theology. In a sense I still do, because the saints are living theology. There’s some good links along that line at a previous post.

Second, while there is certainly much to be learned from a book length study of a single Saint, the saints themselves realized the value in collections.¹ St. Nicholai (Velimirovic) of Ohrid and Ziča collected and edited the Prologue from Ohrid. St. Dmitri of Rostov wrote The Great Collection of the Lives of the Saints. And many contributed to the Great Synaxaristes.

With that in mind I though I would share a few of my favorite sources of Saints lives written for children.

The OCA Department of Christian Education has put together some good introductory collections in their Activity Books. These are pdf files that you can print. They include: Saints Commemorated in the Litiya Prayers, Saints in Times of Trouble, and Saints of North America. These are free and a great basic introduction for any age.

For a more indepth reading, you should check out the OCA’s Lives of Saints section of their website.

You can also read the lives and additional information from the aforementioned Prologue from Ohrid online.

For printed books, Paul and I have really enjoyed the series Saints for All Ages. They include the following titles²:

• WOMEN MARTYRS OF THE LORD
  Sts Perpetua and Felicitus, Barbara, Tatiana, Eugenia, Agape, Chionia and agape.
• ENLIGHTENERS OF ANCIENT KINGDOMS
  Sts. Nina of Georgia, Gregory the Illuminator, Frumentius of Ethiopia, Isaac of Armenia, and the Forty Martyrs of Sebastea.
• NEW APOSTLES OF CHRIST
  Sts. Cyril and Methodius, Stephen of Perm, Innocent of Irkutsk, and Nicholas of Japan.
• RULERS OF NATIONS, SERVANTS OF CHRIST
  Sts. Constantine and Helen, Pulcheria, Justinian and Theodora, Vladimir and Olga.
• PILLARS OF THE CHURCH
  Sts. Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, Justin the Philosopher, and Irenaeus of Lyons.
• SAINTS OF THE BRITISH ISLES
  Sts. Patrick of Ireland, Columba of Iona, Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, and Augustine of Canterbury.
• FOUNDERS OF RUSSIAN MONASTICISM
  Sts. Anthony and Theodosius of the Kievan Caves, Sergius of Radonezh, Nilus of Sora and Joseph of Volotsk, and Seraphim of Sarov.
• GREAT MONKS OF THE DESERT
  Sts. Anthony the Great, Pachomius the Great, Macarius the Great, Euthymius the Great, Sabbas the Sanctified, and Theodosius the Great.
• POETS AND HYMNOGRAPHERS OF THE CHURCH
  Sts. Ephrem the Syrian, Nicetas of Remensiana, Auxentius of Bithynia, Romanos the Melodist, Andrew of Crete, John of Damascus, and Theodore of Studion.
• FIGHTERS FOR THE FAITH
  Sts. Cyprian of Carthage, Athanasius the Great, John Chrysostom, and Cyril of Alexandria.

I also heartily endorse the following:

• The Blackbird’s Nest: Saint Kevin of Ireland
• The Boy, A Kitchen, and His Cave
• North Star: St Herman of Alaska
• Story of Mary the Mother of God

If you know of any more, leave a comment.

---

1. I add this to address a specific comment that I heard second-hand. I hope the value of Synaxaria is not something that really needs apology.

2. These may prove hard to find. My parish has a set in the library, and some are available from St Vladimirs Press and Saint Nectorios Press Online Bookstore

The soundtrack for this post was provided by Rökkurró.


Share on Facebook

November weather in East Tennessee is cool, gray, wet, and a little bleak. I love this weather. It reminds me of Middle Earth. The hollars are shrouded in mist and an orc raiding party could be just over the next hill.

Anyway, here’s some music that reminds me of November weather (or vice verse).

Radical Face.
Ben Cooper creates glitch-folk-pop-indie beauty. “Welcome Home, Son” is simply stunning. His album,Ghosts, is on the Moor Music label. It should come as no surprise that Sin Fang Bous and Seabear are also on Morr Music. They have a similar sound.
Radical Face, Welcome Home, Son
Radical Face, Winter Is Coming

Svartsinn
I love dark ambient music. And November is a perfect fit for it. Try listening to Svartsinn and reading House of Leaves. It’ll give you the willies. Here are a couple of tracks from Of Darkness And Re-Creation.
Svartsinn, The Oblivious Faces
Svartsinn, Towards The Dark And Cold

Eddie Vedder, Into the Wild OST
Maybe it’s because Chris McCandless adventure always inspires to take to the road and November weather always inspires me to go out into the woods, but Eddie Vedder;s music for the film, sounds like hiking in the cool wet November woods. These songs are fantastic even if you haven’t seen the movie (Vedder won a Golden Globe for “Guaranteed”). My recommendation? Read the book first. Then watch the movie (Hal Holbrook was nominated for an Oscar for his supporting role).
Eddie Vedder, No Ceiling
Eddie Vedder, Society This is one of my favorite songs of all time. The lyrics are truly inspiring.
Eddie Vedder, Guaranteed

---

Note: All these albums are available on eMusic.com, my preferred source for acquiring new tunes. If you’re not a member, let me know and I’ll send you an invite with 50 free tracks.

Share on Facebook

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

In preparing for Sunday school, I read an essay by Hieromonk Damascene called “The Place of Lives of Saints in the Spiritual Life.”

He makes extensive use of St Justin Popovic, Orthodox Faith and Life in Christ. Largely the “Introduction to the Lives of Saints.”

Here’s a few small quotes:

The fact of the God-man, the Theanthropos, is the axis of the universe: it is the reality according to which everything else must be viewed, whether it be the nature of the Church or the problems and issues of everyday life.

He goes on to say

The Lives of the Saints not only bear witness to the Life in Christ: they may even be said to be the continuation of the Life of Christ on earth. “The Lives of the Saints,” says St. Justin, “are nothing else but the Life of the Lord Christ, repeated in every Saint to a greater or lesser degree in this or that form.

At the same time the Lives of the Saints are also

nothing else but a certain kind of continuation of the ‘Acts of the Apostles.’ In them is found the same Gospel, the same life, the same truth, the same righteousness, the same love, the same faith, the same eternity, the same ‘power from on high,’ the same God and Lord. For Jesus Christ [is] the same yesterday, and today, and for ever (Heb. 13:8): the same for all peoples of all times, distributing the same gifts and the same Divine Energies to all who believe in Him.”

And here’s the kicker:

We might well ask ourselves if Orthodox spiritual life is even possible without the testimony of the Lives of the Saints. The answer to this, I believe, must be “no.” True spiritual life begins when we live in Christ and Christ lives in us, right here on this earth. And the Lives of the Saints bear witness to us
that the Life of Christ on earth did not end with His Ascension into Heaven, nor with the martyrdom of His Apostles. His Life continues to this day in His Church, and is seen most brilliantly in His Saints. And we, too, in our own spiritual lives, are to enter into that continuing,
never-ending Life.

---

Who am I? I don’t really know.
I know who I want to be.
I want to be the cool, pious, funny, helpful, friendly, gentle, strong guy. (The order of the adjectives vary according to circumstances.)
I want to be a builder of boats, a writer of books, a blogger widely-read.
I want to work with my hands and leave the world of cubicles, weekly reports, monthly reports, annual performance appraisals, time-sheets, of buzzing neon lights casting their pale shade of sickness.
I want to be someone who reads and appreciates poetry.
I want to write poetry.
I want to be a good father, husband, son, brother, friend.
But none of this is who I am. It is all my ego taunting me with what could be, throwing the “if onlys” at me like autumn leaves.

Who I am is not even fully known to me. Who I am is known only by the degree to which I know Christ.
(Hunh. That’s kinda startling.)

This what St. Paul meant in the third chapter of his Letter the the Colossians.

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you once walked, when you lived in them. But now put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old nature with its practices and have put on the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. Here there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scyth’ian, slave, free man, but Christ is all, and in all.
[Emphasis mine-MZR]

The soundtrack for this post was Mouneïssa, the debut album from Malian singer Rokia Traoré.
Here’s the title track.

Share on Facebook

“How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.”
- Henry David Thoreau

The Idea
For an explanation, albeit brief, of why, read “Hopping off the Merry-Go-Round“.

My Methodology
I am on a computer all day at work, there’s no avoiding that. So, my overall goal wasn’t a complete withdrawal from the internet. Instead I wanted to spend my internet time in a directed, goal-oriented way. For me, it is too easy to waste hours just surfing. There’s always something else to learn, some new fact, a new forum post to read. It was making my crazy.

So I avoided certain things and changed certain behaviors.

• I avoided Twitter.
• I stayed away from the forums.
• I rearranged my Google Reader by collecting my regular web comics and a few blogs into one folder and only checked the items in that folder.
• When at work, I exited my browser when I wasn’t using it.
• When at home, I only turned on the computer to do some specific task.

Implementation
For the first week or so, I was pretty strict with myself. However, at some point I did check a few blogs not in my ‘daily’ folder. These were current events type blogs, and I was always aware of what I was doing and deliberate in how much of the blogs I would read.

Staying off the forums was pretty easy, for the most part. I did look in at WoodenBoat from time to time to see what people had said about specific boat designs. As with the blogs, I was aware and deliberate in my reading.

I never opened my browser just to check in on Facebook, but I did look in about once a day or so.

If my ‘cutting back’ sounds like I am still on the computer a lot more than many people, it’s the nature of my job.

Reflections
In many ways it was much easier than I expected. I read more. I started a snail mail correspondence with a long-distance friend (ironically, an e-friend I haven’t met face to face). I felt more relaxed and in control of my mind. I felt more spiritually aware.

I missed commenting and liking and posting on Facebook. For many of my friends, Facebook is the primary means of keeping in touch and I missed interacting with them (if only electronically).

I did not, and do not miss twitter…much. Being on twitter and following enough people that you’re always getting updates (and being followed by as many people as you follow) is exciting. It can be exhilarating. A rousing conversation is always going on and you’re only 140 characters away from taking part.

I’ll point out that one’s twitter experience largely depends on who you follow. I didn’t follow anyone who regularly made inane tweets, so my experience was largely positive. For a while it was the main means of communicating with a certain number of my online friends. But it is to frenzied for me.

When I go large bookstore or library I step in and am momentarily awed by the sheer volume of information. I feel like cackling maniacally and saying, “It’s mine, all mine!” in my best villain voice. But I can’t focus. I wander aimlessly, in a kind of euphoric daze, looking at titles, hoping to remember something that I wanted to find. But! this is not the case if I have a list of books I want to check out. If I have a list, I can enjoy the bookstore and find what I want.

For me, the internet is like that. If I don’t have a goal in mind, I wander around in a euphoric daze, lulled into a 21st century stupor by the glow of my flat-screen.

By the way, one thing I am going to start doing again is actively participating on Facebook, but only deliberately.

I don’t know if any of this is helpful to anyone but me, but for me it was a valuable experience.

“Moderation, which consists in an indifference about little things, and in a prudent and well-proportioned zeal about things of importance, can proceed from nothing but true knowledge, which has its foundation in self-acquaintance.”
—Plato

Share on Facebook

More than half-way through my experiment and still going strongish, kinda…or not.

So, checking in from the wild edges of my former internet worship, things are still going pretty well. I’ve softened slightly on my goal of staying away from certain blogs and forums, but my visits to those sites weren’t about random surfing, but in line with my goal of directed internet usage.

I had to log in to twitter recently to connect privately with a friend (I forgot about Facebook PM) and was immediately overwhelmed by the traffic of vapidity! So far I don’t miss twitter.

---

One amazing thing I’ve realized is how little I love God. I am quick to make an idol out of the internet, my latest hobby, news, gossip, anything my mind¹ latches on to. I make these idols in my own image and have the audacity/blindness to ask why my life isn’t spiritual. How ridiculous I am. As if there is a life that is somehow separate from our spirit. I even try to make an idol out of this very realization!

And yet…

God gives weak men the Grace of a little snatch, a mere glimpse, of the heavenly kingdom, so they can know what the goal is. He reminds us what home looks like so we keep longing for the homecoming.

---

I have done much less blogging than I intended, but that’s alright with me. I am doing some reflecting and writing and praying. Perhaps my blogging will pick up soon. (I have reason to think it may.)

My biggest temptation continues to be Orthodox news blogs and sites. Somehow, my mind says, if my gluttony is dressed in a riassa it’s okay. It’s at least kinda spiritual to obsessively check on all the latest news headlines from AOI Observer or Byzantine Texas or where ever you get your Orthodox news gossip. Yeah, right!

---

1 A great (and concise) article that expands on this was published in Divine Ascent by the Monastery of St John of San Francisco. The article, by the current abbot, Fr. Meletios Webber, is here.

Share on Facebook

[First a note: I meant to say yesterday that I am going to reevaluate all my web use in 30 days (Oct 15). Hopefully by then I will be over the withdrawal symptoms and be in a new habit of web usage. ]

Since posting my manifesto yesterday, I’ve checked my email 4 times. Once yesterday afternoon, once yesterday evening, this morning, and just a few moments ago. I checked my Google reader this morning and afternoon and read the posts in my newly abbreviated list.

---

I’ve started reading Our Thoughts Determine Our Lives: The Life and teachings of Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica. I’ve finished Part One: The Life of Elder Thaddeus. His life reminds me of 1 Cor 1:25, “For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” Although not a Fool-for-Christ, his life and struggles remind me that God’s strength is in His weakness.

---

We regularly hear that “God is Love” “love is all you need” “love will conquer all” and so forth. But what does this mean? Until recently I thought I knew. I’ve had an image of Love in my mind (not my nous!) that has recently started to be polished away.

When I saw the movie The Fellowship of the Ring, I scoffed at how Rivendell looked. “Harrumph,” I thought, “That’s not right. I’ve read the books, several times, I should know.” Then I reread Tolkien’s description of Rivendell and found that the movie set designers had nailed it.

---

That’s kinda how I am feeling right know about Love and God and Orthodoxy. I thought I knew, but I am finding that I was seeing through a glass darkly (1 Cor 13:12).¹

I am not even really sure how to put this into words. Love is everything. The Faith, the meaning of our lives, everything is about loving God so completely that we are in communion with all of creation. That our heart opens and the ‘me’ of the Jesus prayer encompassed the entire universe.² I am starting to understand this now I need to work on practicing it. (Thank God for confession!)

I guess the Beatles had it right: All you need is love.

---

1 Funny that. I didn’t remember where in the Epistles that phase came from. Rather appropriate that it is in the preeminent description of love in 1 Corinthians.

2 I know I heard Met. Jonah it put this way, but I’m not sure where else (although I am certain I’ve read it other places). I haven’t read more than a few quotes from Elder Sophrony, but I think I got some of it from him.

Share on Facebook