Usettling times.
From my observations, a blog is an uncertain environment with an unusual and ambiguous nature. My intent for this blog is to avoid that, not because the typical blog is bad, but because I need something of a fixed place to spread out and arrange my disparate thoughts. Moving and adjusting to a new city, finding myself in a university setting where ideas shift and change like fall or spring air, being close to other Eastern Christians like Melkites, Copts and Ukrainian Catholics that seem to blur the typical Orthodox lines we draw and simply being exposed to Orthodoxy in a different place, with a different feel and different set of issues gives rise to a lot of confusion. This blog will be a bit serious for a while and maybe a bit too bland or arid but by God's grace it will open up a bit eventually.
What follows will hopefully avoid mere academic or dull peripatetic prose. Because I am still stuck in my mind I will probably do more thinking and pondering than is good for me but I need to do it. I'm in school and I need to think, reflect and all that. But God help me, I do not want to "mistake my mind for a nous."
Number 1
If I am going to reach any positive end in my studies, I have to discover my heart - my gut. I spent the day infront of the computer writing an extremely broad research paper on relationship between Coptic and Eastern Orthodox Churches and our prospects for reunion. It was interesting but I wasn't there. My brain was there but I was not. Living out of the to 1/8 of my body gets boring. My heart was invisible and mostly forgotten. Thankfully my memories of the priest at St. Mary's Coptic Orthodox Church in Ottawa, Fr. Shenouda, gave me some inspiration. I got the feeling he is a man composed in his heart, in his body. A beautiful man. He gave me a beautiful traditional leather cross hand crafted by monastics in the deserts of Egypt.
St. John Chrysostom says, "When you discover the door of your heart you discover the gate of heaven." Thankfully there are people at the Cathedral who also live in the heart, who have the grace of God dwelling in them and actually know how to share it. There are people here who like Fr. Maximos in "Mountian of Silence" think prayer is a teachable "science" with techniques that can be learned and lived. There's hope for me yet.
What follows will hopefully avoid mere academic or dull peripatetic prose. Because I am still stuck in my mind I will probably do more thinking and pondering than is good for me but I need to do it. I'm in school and I need to think, reflect and all that. But God help me, I do not want to "mistake my mind for a nous."
Number 1
If I am going to reach any positive end in my studies, I have to discover my heart - my gut. I spent the day infront of the computer writing an extremely broad research paper on relationship between Coptic and Eastern Orthodox Churches and our prospects for reunion. It was interesting but I wasn't there. My brain was there but I was not. Living out of the to 1/8 of my body gets boring. My heart was invisible and mostly forgotten. Thankfully my memories of the priest at St. Mary's Coptic Orthodox Church in Ottawa, Fr. Shenouda, gave me some inspiration. I got the feeling he is a man composed in his heart, in his body. A beautiful man. He gave me a beautiful traditional leather cross hand crafted by monastics in the deserts of Egypt.
St. John Chrysostom says, "When you discover the door of your heart you discover the gate of heaven." Thankfully there are people at the Cathedral who also live in the heart, who have the grace of God dwelling in them and actually know how to share it. There are people here who like Fr. Maximos in "Mountian of Silence" think prayer is a teachable "science" with techniques that can be learned and lived. There's hope for me yet.
posted by Enthymemosis at 11:15 p.m.
3 Comments:
Sounds like pretty rich soil you've been planted in there!
Having been exposed to the one Orthodox way in several of its various local "feels," - I can vouch somewhat for the disorientation you speak of. But you are right, it shakes us probably just enough to keep our eyes focused on Christ Himself, and on the desperate hope that our hearts stay with Him.
All that, and the food gets pretty interesting too!
Thanks for making this blog and sharing what's yet inchoate in your nous.
i agree... leaving your first orthodox church is a bit disorienting... but things slowly are righted and i think what we find ourselves in then is a wider space, yet still within a wonderful structure [the Church] where our true freedom is...
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