2. Waiting for spring, which comes reluctantly, per usual. Mostly I anticipate it because I'd like to take my four year old outside to places like the park and playground. But also because it is a nice respite, light in your eyes.
3. Anticipating Pascha at my local Orthodox parish, a week away from my neighbor's own celebration. If you've never experienced Orthodox Holy Week services or Pascha, now is the time. This is an open invitation, and you can still have your own easter celebration, since on our calendar it falls on April 19th. If you are near Lawrence and would like to come to any of the services including Pascha (i.e., Easter), feel free to contact me. You are invited.
4. Tentatively planning a return to college in the Fall to, perhaps, eventually pursue an MFA and ultimately to teach. Unless I change my mind, or providence directs me otherly.
5. Wrote eighty poems in three months last year. A couple of them might be okay. I am thinking about writing a couple of children's books, inspired by a latent talent I did not know I had, but once knew. That is, I know how to tell a story, which I have been doing almost every night for my kids the last several months, impromptu. There are a couple I may write down and expand upon, and others the boys reminded me of in amazing detail, stories that I had forgotten having told. Sometimes the stories are magical, and flow that way, other times I am too tired to work at it, and give them a moral tale in an ongoing series about the Big Bad Wolf, who is a recovering bad wolf, lives in the city, struggles with regret, eats pizza, takes up bowling. I won't be writing down the stories about him.
6. Here.
Bomb Crater
She crawled up the edge, up
not quite out, not in, feet
dangling, thoughts flutter
on death, face of child, dead,
her husband, mother, woman
who haggled over minutia at market,
man she secretly adores who
speaks with a lisp -- whom she watched
yes, she watched as one looks
out toward the line of the sea,
as one watches children --
also dead. Thoughts of the sky broiling,
that should not be there,
of a garden she once kept,
of a halved-worm that still squirms,
disconnected from itself by her spade,
an image that flashes, no meaning.
The world fell in, she sits
at its lip, a bottomless pit, oblivious
of the soldiers behind her
in another world, beyond her
conception. All she knows now
is the smoking asphalt, the heat,
faces of the loved child, the elderly
woman, the stranger whom she sees in passing.
She has thrown herself up over the slab,
alive, a witness. She does not hear
the pop of machinery, or feel
anything. It embeds in her.
Bloodied, she slumps,
hair for a moment tangled in hands,
slides soundlessly,
too simply, back in.
---
I have been unfaithful to my LJ, and wrestling with the idea of closing down house here. There are many of you whom I would miss however, and I do come back and read often. I'm ambivalent in the true sense of the word. My own writing is focused on the following blogs, and facebook seems to be my online drug of choice lately, since almost everyone I have ever known in the nonvirtual world my entire life is linked to me there. Feel free to look me up too if you haven't already.
----
http://marginalaccretion.blogspot.c
http://wordlumber.blogspot.com -- a poem a day (more or less)
like call to like? My magnetism
pulling in needful filaments,
unbridled passion for a personal
scheme or romantic dream that has
little to nothing to do with me;
I did not dance to discordant notes,
so now you flee, blaming me.
I feel no guilt, if that's what you want;
I'm not a phantasm, a cipher
graphing your wayward scan.
Find me again then, in some dream
or in numerous anonymous
meetings, or rather, your figment
of me, to whom you've responded
all along. God at your back, bye.
“If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; leave there thy gift before the altar, and go away;725725 ἄπελθε, St. Chrys. ὕπαγεἄπελθε and ἀπελθν.—R.]first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.”726726 Matt. v. 23, 24.
O goodness! O exceeding love to man! He makes no account of the honor due unto Himself, for the sake of our love towards our neighbor; implying that not at all from any enmity, nor out of any desire to punish, had He uttered those former threatenings, but out of very tender affection. For what can be milder than these sayings? “Let my service,” saith he, “be interrupted, that thy love may continue; since this also is a sacrifice, thy being reconciled to thy brother.” Yea, for this cause He said not, “after the offering,” or “before the offering;” but, while the very gift lies there, and when the sacrifice is already beginning, He sends thee to be reconciled to thy brother; and neither after removing that which lies before us,727727 συνελντα τ προκεμενα. Mr. Field translates this, “quickly doing the work in hand:” alleging that the word συναιρεν cannot well stand for “removing.” But its strict meaning seems to be “to pack up,” or “put into a small compass.” So Odyss. xx. 95. χλαναν μν συνελν κα κεα, ποσιν νευδεν. And this meaning suits well enough with the word προκεμενα, taken in its liturgical sense. [The technical sense of the verb is “to contract,” and the context favors Field’s view. The command was neither “after hastening through the service (Latin, nec propere confecto sacrificio) nor before beginning it.”—R.]nor before presenting the gift, but while it lies in the midst, He bids thee hasten thither.
With what motive then doth He command so to do, and wherefore? These two ends, as it appears to me, He is hereby shadowing out and providing for. First, as I have said, His will is to point out that He highly values charity,728728 [τν γπην, properly rendered “love” in the next sentence.—R.]and considers it to be the greatest sacrifice: and that without it He doth not receive even that other; next, He is imposing such a necessity of reconciliation, as admits of no excuse. For whoso hath been charged not to offer before he be reconciled, will hasten, if not for love of his neighbor, yet, that this may not lie unconsecrated,729729 ἀτλεστον.to run unto him who hath been grieved, and do away the enmity. For this cause He hath also expressed it all most significantly, to alarm and thoroughly to awaken him. Thus, when He had said, “Leave thy gift,” He stayed not at this, but added, “before the altar” (by the very place again causing him to shudder); “and go away.” And He said not merely, “Go away,” but He added, “first, and then come and offer thy gift.” By all these things making it manifest, that this table receives not them that are at enmity with each other.
Let the initiated hear this, as many as draw nigh in enmity: and let the uninitiated hear too: yea, for the saying hath some relation to them also. For they too offer a gift and a sacrifice: prayer, I mean, and alms-giving. For as to this also being a sacrifice, hear what the prophet saith: “A sacrifice of praise will glorify me;”730730 Ps. l. 23.and again, “Sacrifice to God a sacrifice of praise;”731731 Ps. l. 14.and, “The lifting up of mine hands is an evening sacrifice.”732732 Ps. cxli. 2. So that if it be but a prayer, which thou art offering in such a frame of mind, it were better to leave thy prayer, and become reconciled to thy brother, and then to offer thy prayer.
For to this end were all things done: to this end even God became man, and took order for all those works, that He might set us at one.
And whereas in this place He is sending the wrong doer to the sufferer, in His prayer He leads the sufferer to the wrong doer, and reconciles them. For as there He saith, “Forgive men their debts;” so here, “If he hath ought against thee, go thy way unto him.”
Or rather, even here too He seems to me to be sending the injured person: and for some such reason He said not, “Reconcile thyself to thy brother,” but, “Be thou rec 110 onciled.” And while the saying seems to pertain to the aggressor, the whole of it really pertains to him that is aggrieved. Thus, “If thou art reconciled to him,” saith Christ, “through thy love to him thou wilt have me also propitious, and wilt be able to offer thy sacrifice with great confidence. But if thou art still irritated, consider that even I readily command that which is mine to be lightly esteemed, that ye may become friends; and let these thoughts be soothing to thine anger.”
And He said not, “When thou hast suffered any of the greater wrongs, then be reconciled; but, “Though it be some trifle that he hath against thee.” And He added not, “Whether justly or unjustly;” but merely, “If he hath ought against thee.” For though it be justly, not even in that case oughtest thou to protract the enmity; since Christ also was justly angered with us, yet nevertheless He gave Himself for us to be slain, “not imputing those trespasses.”733733 2 Cor. v. 19.
For this cause Paul also, when urging us in another way to reconciliation, said, “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath.”734734 Eph. iv. 26. For much as Christ by this argument of the sacrifice, so there Paul by that of the day, is urging us on to the self-same point. Because in truth he fears the night, lest it overtake him that is smitten alone, and make the wound greater. For whereas in the day there are many to distract, and draw him off; in the night, when he is alone, and is thinking it over by himself, the waves swell, and the storm becomes greater. Therefore Paul, you see, to prevent this, would fain commit him to the night already reconciled, that the devil may after that have no opportunity, from his solitude, to rekindle the furnace of his wrath, and make it fiercer. Thus also Christ permits not, though it be ever so little delay, lest, the sacrifice being accomplished, such an one become more remiss, procrastinating from day to day: for He knows that the case requires very speedy treatment. And as a skillful physician exhibits not only the preventives of our diseases, but their correctives also, even so doth He likewise. Thus, to forbid our calling “fool,” is a preventive of enmity; but to command reconciliation is a means of removing the diseases that ensue on the enmity.
And mark how both commands are set forth with earnestness. For as in the former case He threatened hell, so here He receives not the gift before the reconciliation, indicating great displeasure, and by all these methods destroying both the root and the produce.
And first of all He saith, “Be not angry;” and after that, “revile not.” For indeed both these are augmented, the one by the other: from enmity is reviling, from reviling enmity. On this account then He heals now the root, and now the fruit; hindering indeed the evil from ever springing up in the first instance: but if perchance it may have sprouted up and borne its most evil fruit, then by all means He burns it down the more.
Shame
I will not invite you in again. Leave me.
I remember you enough as it is. Where
might I find the right medicine? Healing
for memory? If I stitch it up I seal it in.
Tap at the window all you want. I will
gaze at you, even though I buried you.
The delineation of your face, the cross-
hair of flesh at your templed bridge
are my own unstudied features. We
fascinate at zombies, the undead, not
only milking fears of our own ending,
but fears of our rescuscitated pasts, our
former selves (ah the folly of youth)
crawling up, cracking the headstone
on which is etched, "unforgiven". Yet,
I see you in the window, or maybe
reflected there, unworthy. My heart
quakes. I have become a fire, burning
yet not consumed, saltwater fueled. You
gaze or fade, but I will not let you in.
Or, alternately, one from several days ago:
Peter the Tax-Collector
If a dime pays for so much, how much more
a dollar? I will throw off my coat! I will
give you more than a mere bread loaf,
but four meals a day, a hen, a cow, the pillow
that cushions my own head! You may
have my blade -- I'll grow a beard.
What are taxes compared to this?
I'll tithe my own blood, make your feet
walk on sacralized dirt. I'll sell myself
into slavery to unhurt your hurt, clean you,
feed you, uphold you, make you new.
I am the rock that cracks, the hard
heart that churns cleansing dreams;
my eyes are wet with the dew of grace,
my hands ache, my fingers stretch forth,
my bones have turned to hollow,
tenuous shards. The black fire of pain
I call my heart bleeds love for you. I'll
shed tears of need for you. I'm rich
with happy grief through divine greed.
So this has been occupying me, based on an idea from Robert Bly, who for some period of time would not get out of bed in the morning until he had written a poem. Thats fine for him, but I am not awake until I'm out of bed, sittingn at my desk at work, and have had a couple swigs of strong coffee. So instead, I've been writing in the evening, after work, in the quiet, before eating.
let memories of wrongdoing drift
like flakes of a congealed wound,
and thoughts of rightdoing split
like soft words from a lizard tongue.
I will keep pushing, forcing, giving birth,
pressing embarassment, inattentive
to your thoughts. Self-consciousness
is pride. In the tension of stillness we all
still drift, we all still spill forth, emanate
the pretense of the semotic 'I'. So,
you know better than me how I ruined you,
destroyed my reputation, uncovered
my own frenzied cache of maggots.
No more, I press, I push, for release,
employ my own forgetfulness, drink
love in, shitfaced on sobriety, spoiling
the end of me, uncovering all hint of mystery
to reveal more mystery, and that
is the narrative, the gist, the wish,
the swimming verb of me, we're not
our thoughts, which are thin, I'm not
at all what we thought I had been,
or will be, or am.
http://wordlumber.blogspot.com
especially then, remember big Russian women,
lumbering with hair on their chests?
did you know your comedians were merely spouting
propaganda? jokes about bald men, or age,
or human frailties made public like bad stock,
plummetting on the market?
Some mornings seem good for barking like a dog
afraid of the garbage men, whining and pawing,
scratching grooves on the wood door; we
drink cynicism like a carbonated soda.
Anything can be mocked, very little is derisive
as a natural quality. Dogs whine and bark
in packs as the antidote to fear.
What caustic know-it-all laughter fills us
and our living rooms. We sit on barstools,
pouring libations. In dark knowing humor
one has the upper hand, a little more control,
a short supply of money seems thickened,
a certain grief annulled. We hold up crosses,
crucify hope for safety.
Your neighbor is stupid with a thick neck,
your doctor is likely drunk, your cancer
a profanity. Lenny Bruce braves cold waters
by making everything cold, and it's true
death is final and egalitarian. Levity is less
sober than he, on t.v., where nothing is sacred,
everything is absurd.
The walls of our age are made of light, all ye
who enter abandon hope, or better hope
for abandonment, a few quick thrills,
a bitter edge in your gut. No one to trust,
the concept of good is an advertisment,
a flash of color on a screen. we see through,
that. Lust is everything.
So we sing of ownership as if a man ever
owned anything. But things are all we have,
money, some land, the work of our hands, or
better yet, the labor of others. Grasp
what you can, you earned it, it's yours,
this is liberty and death, rolled into one,
a blow-out sale, one life only!
The foregoing is from my new blog, Word Lumber, where I am endeavoring to write one poem a day for a year, for better or more likley for worse. Check it out.
Only a couple of blocks away from me is a main road that has heavier traffic, a few drug dealers, an occasional prostitute. Not too many blocks further from there are more notorious streets, rampant with drugs and gangs, and neighborhoods whose residents have to deal daily with poverty, theft, violence and murder.
The line dividing one from the other, though not strict or final but hazy and gray, is easily discerned by merely walking for five or ten minutes from my front porch. I am far from wealthy, so my situation isn't as stark as it might be for someone who lives in the suburbs, who might see the difference by taking a five or ten minute drive from his two-car garage, but the line, though sometimes indistinct and overlapping, is nevertheless there.
Various political ideologies provide contrary solutions in regard to lines that divide the haves from the have-nots, but none probably are able to offer an holistic view.
There are some who claim that poverty and its attendant grist, the statistical crimes that plague certain localities more than others, is fully the result of a sort of economic determinism. People are victims of their circumstances, and sometimes it is incumbent upon the state to change the structure of the economy in order to help them. Freedom encompasses the idea of breaking the socio-economic shackles that underpin the circumstances of whole segments of the population. The weight of obligation is laid upon everyone, and we are all responsible for each other.
This idea, however, does not seem to take into full account the totality of the human person, the interior struggle between right and wrong, the capacity for free-will and self-determination. Others, usually from a more religious base, latch onto the notion of human potential, and claim that in a free and democratic society, there are opportunities for those who are of sound mind and willing to work hard to lift themselves out of hardship. Usually, the latter view proposes the notion of a very limited government, private charity to help those who are willing to help themselves, and the assumption that as individual agents, freedom encompasses the idea that we have a right to own all that we earn, and each person is really only ultimately responsible for himself.
Like the lines that divide the haves from the have-nots, the simple geographies between those who are physically in a home or a car or a restaurant, and those who are homeless or car-less or starving, there are gradations of overlap and gray and variations of ideology between the two foregoing, generalized views. My personal opinion is that both views contain some truth, but both if adhered to stringently, if allowed to take the central operating status of the heart, informing all of one's politics or outlook or attitude towards wealth and poverty, are errors, sins, and insane. They are both forms of insatiable insobriety as well. Down in the viral domain of that kind of metaphor, I think I might rightly think of a Dennis Kucinich as a lush, and a Ron Paul as a raging drunk.
One could argue for the merits or demerits of both general outlooks endlessly, but as a Christian I think it is better to seek to establish another central reality in the heart than abstract ideology, and to live in the tension between being corrupt and incorrupt, of being in the world and not of it, rich in Christ and poor in spirit, rather than try to balance or syncretize views, or create a new, better or improved ideological program.
What should my attitude be towards the poor? or the criminal? Jesus said that when I address the poor, I am face to face with himself. When I visit the prisoner, who is there no doubt because of his crimes (and not merely his monetary debt as some heretics have maintained), it is Jesus I am visiting. What this means in detail or substance is cause for further exploration, but at this moment, in day to day life, I can take it at face value.
Men and women, whether rich or poor, are created in the image of God, and we are all called -- even amid our crimes, our drugs, our addictions, the various ways we prostitute and degrade ourselves in our pleasures or for money -- to share in His likeness, (whether we discursively believe in God or not). There is no dividing line here, we are all created in his image, we are all stained and defiled by our own self-centeredness (and our attendant lusts and addictions), and we are all called to share in his pure and undefiled, incorrupt likeness. So St. James writes, "pure and undefiled religion is this: to visit the widow and the orphan in their distress, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world."
marginal accretion - http://marginalaccretion.blogspot.c
pieces in progress - http://cheaplit.blogspot.com - fiction in progress
word lumber - http://wordlumber.blogspot.com - poetry
Plus, I am on facebook:
cheaplit.blogspot.com
buzzed your brain, my dear loved friend,
I was beset with madness, poisoned by grief, despair,
I buzzed your brain with a million volts,
blade held fast in your gut,
poured turpentine down your gullet, a mad fiend,
stole your coat and fed it to goats,
shook flies into your bread,
spread your name among the pariahs,
my offense was single but with no end.
I might as well have kissed you on the lips,
turned you up in a garden,
my betrayal reeks, my heart aflame,
my arm grew sore and dropped,
my eyes grew hard like rock,
somewhere, too, I broke.
I see me through you and say, not I,
your pain is a disfiguring mist, but you refuse
my enemy, compadre, whom I ever love --
to be healed, and maybe rightly,
maybe not. Not for me to say. You even
told me not to pray, but again I betray you.
Dear knotted one,
my brother, whom I love,
if I throw myself down
if I flail into a pit of acid,
a substitution for bitterness,
would it all burn up?
I am love today, I have become love and worn out,
I am bent and rinsed with regret,
I will pour noetic gasoline over my head,
light it up with a thick flick of a thumb.
Tell me when, my dear one, my friend,
and let it end.
You've Been Left Behind gives you one last opportunity to reach your lost family and friends For Christ. Imagine being in the presence of the Lord and hearing all of heaven rejoice over the salvation of your loved ones. It is our prayer that this site makes it happen.
We have set up a system to send documents by the email, to the addresses you provide, 6 days after the "Rapture" of the Church. This occurs when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail to log in over a 3 day period. Another 3 days are given to fail safe any false triggering of the system. We give you 150mb of encrypted storage that can be sent to 12 possible email addresses, in Box #1. You up load any documents and choose which documents go to who. You can edit these documents at any time and change the addresses they will be sent to as needed. Box #1 is for your personal private letters to your closest lost friends and relatives. We give you another 100mb. of unencrypted storage that can be sent to up to 50 email addresses, in Box #2. You can edit the documents and the addresses any time. Box #2 is for more generic documents to lost family & friends. The cost is $40 for the first year. Re-subscription will be reduced as the number of subscribers increases. Tell your friends about You've Been left behind.
We all have family and friends who have failed to receive the Good News of the Gospel. The unsaved will be 'left behind' on earth to go through the "tribulation period" after the "Rapture". You remember how, for a short time, after (9/11/01) people were open to spiritual things and answers. (We are still singing "God Bless America" at baseballs' seventh inning stretch.) Imagine how taken back they will be by the millions of missing Christians and devastation at the rapture. They will know it was true and that they have blown it. There will be a small window of time where they might be reached for the Kingdom of God. We have made it possible for you to send them a letter of love and a plea to receive Christ one last time. You can also send information based on scripture as to what will happen next. Each fulfilled prophecy will cause your letter and plea to be remembered and a decision to be made. This is one last chance to bring them to Christ and snatch them from the flames!
A young guy on the corner glanced my way a couple of times, then approached me and asked me where "Tea Drops" is. I said, "straight and to your left." He thanked me and shook my hand, acted very odd. I watched him lope off down the drenched sidewalk. A few minutes later, I meandered down to the corner, and could see the green sign, very clearly, down the street, "Tea Drops". So maybe he couldn't read? Fifteen minutes later, I saw him come back, cross the street and approach a young woman who had just exited her car. I could see she was giving directions to him, and he offered his hand in the same manner he had offered it to me, which she shook, then he was off again. I wondered what his game was. Did he seek human interaction, the semblance of companionship, by asking for directions from strangers? He reminded me for some reason of a Flannery O'Connor character.
So while I was musing on this character in the rain on Westport Road, Aubrey was down the street and like a sensible person inside the establishment waiting for me. She was brighter than me, however, perceived the error, and arrived later. Hummus and talk and later backlava for dessert. Encouraging words drifted into manic sleeplessness, and later at home I talked to Shannon, grateful for her, until sleepfulness knocked me upside the head, and I went down and out.
Work is work is work, and a rose has nothing to do with it. My job feels precarious, so today I fretted with indignity, marshalling arguments and escape plans, a small fist of dread pounding in my chest, hoping a dozen small parachutes might make up for the lack of a big one. Later, contemplating love and forgiveness, things shifted. There will be no war. I will not make excuses, or strive. It's a petty job filled with small rooms and big angry egos, a totally insignificant and meaningless occupation. I am an office clerk, for pete's sake, like that romantic soul in Dostoevsky's Poor Folk, not a knight of chivalry but of faith, marching not to war but stumbling through the gray clouds of ash left over from blank skirmishes that are over the meaning of nothing. So it will come to an end, an end, an end. And all the endings will never end, but I'll move right along through to something else, something better, though the transition is the rough part. For the moment I am calm and collected.
2. I am thinking of cynicism as a sign of death in a decaying cosmos, and mulling over what it means to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves, or what is meant by the notion that love "believes all things". (Gimpel the Fool always intrudes at this thought, but I will bypass him for the moment, for surely he is an exaggerated version of this principle. Right?) It's hard to imagine being filled with divine presence which is the end to which everyone is singly called and must strive toward, seeing uncreated light, exploding with overflowing love for humanity in particular so that each person you see is a joy as it was for the holy Seraphim of Sarov, and also being cynical or suspicious. Cynicism is little more than cloaked fear parading as wisdom, and fear is the embryo of all ruin. Inasmuch as I give in to my inclincation to be cynical, which is strong in me, I am submitting myself to a spiralling dynamic of corruption and depresonalization, death and despair.
3. I went to the park with the kids this morning. They played on the equipment and had a great time. There is a "water park" there too, but not a real water park, a glorified fountain for children to run through. We went there after it started heating up, and the boys cooled down. They are with me now, ever-sweet and innocent.
My first grader is already beginning to write. Yesterday when I picked him up from school he brought along a book he said he had written. It's cover was construction paper encasing several pages of lined paper, stapled together like a book. He drew pictures, and actually wrote therein, sounding out the words (though failing to separate the words in his sentence constructions). In Chapter One a boy went to his first day of school and was sad because at recess he asked the other kids to play with him and they said no. In Chapter Two, the other kids play with him the following week, so he is happy, a big smile replacing his former frown. I'd guess, based on what he told me after his first day of school, it is based on a true story, but he denies it. He brought it with him to show my old friend, and proudly carries it around with him. He said that when he grows up maybe he can write books like I do. (I silently hoped if he did, his would be published, but whatever.) He knew how to make his dad happy.
more flexible than the four phalanges it
submits to without protest and quietly,
in humility it touches each one
with just the right amount of pressure,
and instantaneous release,
small god of the hand,
ubiquitious and holding secrets.
A true eye might unclench a fist,
but painted nails crack.
You have soft hands. Where are
their calluses? evidence against comfort?
Have they worked an inch, or do they fold
in cynical acceptance of the foot?
what have they given or snatched up?
what pilgrimages have they made for the poor,
for those whose palms are hard,
fingers bent like broken sticks?
Do you watch them as they move,
dread enemies clasped at the heart,
more subtle than your words or thought?
So much happens in the undertow. I speak daily now with an LJ friend who is holding my heart. My six year old started first grade and is learning to read. My three year old turns four soon. I have been listening and reading poetry every day, mostly perhaps because I do not understand it that well, but am trying to learn. I digest Donald Hall, C.K. Williams, William Matthews, A.R. Ammons, and many others. I am enjoying reading and listening.
What is there to understand? I am put off by the rumors of bloodshed, purists of various stripes, infighting, snobbery, schools of poets that collaborate together with wide and unblinking eyes nearly prehensile on the sides of their heads, staring with blind isolated judgment to left and right. The implied responsibility of academic rigor superimposed over the quality of sound and word arrangement daunts me, turns me off, or at least away, which is foolish, maybe. Some imaginary narattee with pursed lip and a refined aesthetic hovers on the horizon of my ambition, tut-tutting, rolling her eyes, ready to shoot me down. Even her private ridicule inhibits me, though I cannot hear it. Maybe a confession will send her packing, clean out my consciousness, undo lit'ry guilt, or worse, "poetic" guilt.
Come mantis! Pray and devour! Unstifle me!
Most of the time we think we know who we are. But do we, in fact, know in the full and profound sense who we are? One text that is very important for the Orthodox understanding of the human person is Psalm 64:6 [LXX 63:7]—"The heart is deep." That means the human person is a profound mystery. There are depths—or if you would like, heights—within myself of which I have very little understanding.
Who am I? The answer is not at all obvious. My personhood as a human being ranges widely over space and time. And indeed it reaches out beyond space into infinity, and beyond time into eternity. Our human personhood is created, but it transcends the created order. As is said in 2 Peter 1:4, I am called to be a "partaker of the divine nature." I am called to share, that is to say, in the uncreated energies of the living God. Our human vocation is theosis, deification, divinization. As St. Basil the Great says, "The human being is a creature that is called to become God."
I am reminded of the story of the Fall at the beginning of Genesis, of the promise of the serpent, who says to Eve, "You shall be as God" (Genesis 3:5). The irony behind that story is that this was exactly the divine intention. The humans were indeed called to divine life. But the Fall consisted in the fact that Adam and Eve grasped with self-will that which God, in His own time and way, would have conferred upon them as a gift.
The limits of our personhood are very wide-ranging indeed. We should adopt a dynamic view of what it is to be a person. We shouldn’t think that our personhood is something fixed. To be a person is to grow. To be on a journey. And this journey is a journey that has no limits, that stretches out forever, that goes on even in heaven. Some people have an idea of heaven as a place where you do nothing in particular. But surely that is deceptive. Surely heaven means that we continue to advance by God’s mercy from glory to glory. Heaven is an end without end.
St. Irenaeus remarks, "Even in the age to come God will always have new things to teach us, and we shall always have new things to learn." So even in heaven, we shall never be in a position to say to God, "You are repeating Yourself. We have heard it all before." On the contrary, heaven means continuing wonder and unending discovery. To quote J.R.R. Tolkien in The Hobbit, "Roads go ever ever on."
Now there is a specific reason for this mysterious and indefinable character of human personhood. And this reason is given to us by St. Gregory of Nyssa, writing in the fourth century. "God," says he, "is a mystery beyond all understanding." We humans are formed in God’s image. The image should reproduce the characteristics of the archetype, of the original. So if God is beyond understanding, then the human person formed in God’s image is likewise beyond understanding. Precisely because God is a mystery, I too am a mystery.
Now in mentioning the image, we’ve come to the most important factor in our humanness. Who am I? As a human person, I am formed in the image of God. That is the most significant and basic fact about my personhood. We are God’s living icons. Each of us is a created expression of God’s infinite and uncreated self-expression. So this means it is impossible to understand the human person apart from God. Humans cut off from God are no longer authentically human. They are subhuman.
If we lose our sense of the divine, we lose equally our sense of the human. And that we can see very clearly from the story, for example, of Soviet communism in the 70 years which followed the revolution of 1917. Soviet communism sought to establish a society where the existence of God would be denied and the worship of God would be suppressed and eliminated. At the same time, Soviet communism showed an appalling disregard for the dignity of the human person.
I think those two things go together. Whoever affirms the human also affirms God. Whoever denies God also denies the human person. The human being cannot be properly understood except with reference to the divine. The human being is not autonomous, not self-contained. I do not contain my meaning within myself. As a person in God’s image, I point always beyond myself to the divine realm.
I remember a visit in my student years in Oxford from Archimandrite Sophrony, the disciple of St. Silouan of Mt. Athos. He gave a talk on Orthodoxy, and there was a discussion afterwards. Towards the end, the chairman said, "We have time for just one more question." Somebody got up at the back of the audience and said, "Fr. Sophrony, please tell us—what is God?" And Fr. Sophrony answered very briefly, "You tell me—what is man?" God and the human person are two mysteries that are interconnected, and neither can be understood apart from the other. "In the image of God" means there’s a vertical reference in our personhood. We can only be understood in terms of our link with the divine.
But then, let’s think of another point. "In the image of God" means in the image of the Trinity. As St. Gregory the Theologian says, "When I say God, I mean Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." That is what as Christians we mean by God. We don’t understand God as a series of abstractions. We understand God as three Persons. And that we see very clearly from the Creed. We begin in the Creed by saying, "I believe in One God." And then we don’t continue by saying, "Who is an uncaused cause, who is primordial reality, who is the ground of being." This is the way many modern theologians speak. But in the Creed we say, "I believe in One God . . . the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." We continue, that is to say, in specific personal terms.
God for us is Trinity. And if we’re in the image of God we’re in the image of the Triune God. What does that mean for our understanding of our personhood? Let’s think first of the Trinity, and then of ourselves.
"God is love" (1 John 4:8). And St. John in the same chapter says, in verse 18, "There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear." In true love there is no exclusiveness, no jealousy. True love is open, not closed. God is love. There is no fear in love. And so God is not the love of one. God is not love in the sense of being self-love, turned in upon itself. God is not a closed unit. God is not a unit, but a union. God is love in the sense of shared love, the mutual love of three Persons in one.
When the Cappadocian Fathers in the fourth century are describing God, one of their key words is koinonia, meaning fellowship, communion, or relationship. As St. Basil says in his work on the Holy Spirit, "The union of the Godhead lies in the koinonia, the interrelationship, of the Persons." So this then is what the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is saying: God is shared love, not self-love. God is openness, exchange, solidarity, self-giving.
Now, we are to apply all this to human persons made in the image of God. "God is love," says St. John. And that great English prophet of the eighteenth century, William Blake, says, "Man is love." God is love, not self-love but mutual love, and the same is true then of the human person. God is koinonia, relationship, communion. So also is the human person in the Trinitarian image. God is openness, exchange, solidarity, self-giving. The same is true of the human person when living in a Trinitarian mode according to the divine image.
There’s a very helpful book by a British philosopher, John Macmurray, entitled Persons in Relationship, published in 1961. Macmurray insists that relationship is constitutive of personhood. He argues that there is no true person unless there are at least two persons communicating with each other. In other words, I need you in order to be myself. All this is true because God is Trinity.
From this it follows that the characteristic human word is not "I" but "we". If we are all the time saying, "I, I, I," then we are not realizing our true personhood. That’s expressed in the poem of Walter de la Mare, "Napoleon":
What is the world, O soldiers?
It is I:
I, this incessant snow,
This northern sky;
Soldiers, this solitude
Through which we go
Is I.
Whether the historical Napoleon was actually like that or not, de la Mare's point is surely valid. Self-centeredness is in the end coldness, isolation. It is a desert. It’s no coincidence that in the Lord’s Prayer, the model of prayer that God has given us, and which teaches what we are to be, the word "us" comes five times, the word "our" three times, the word "we" once. But nowhere in the Lord’s Prayer do we find the words "me" or "mine" or "I".
In the beginning of the era of modern philosophy in the early seventeenth century, the philosopher Descartes put forward his famous dictum, "Cogito ergo sum"—"I think therefore I am." And following that model, a great deal of discussion of human personhood since then has centered round the notion of self-awareness, self-consciousness. But the difficulty of that model is that it doesn’t bring in the element of relationship. So instead of saying "Cogito ergo sum—I think therefore I am," ought we not as Christians who believe in the Trinity to say, "Amo ergo sum"—"I love therefore I am"? And still more, ought we not to say, "Amor ergo sum"—"I am loved therefore I am"?
One modern poem that I love particularly, by the English poet Kathleen Raine, has exactly as its title "Amo Ergo Sum." Let me quote some words from it:
Because I love
The sun pours out its rays of living gold
Pours out its gold and silver on the sea.
Because I love
The ferns grow green, and green the grass, and green
The transparent sunlit trees.
Because I love
All night the river flows into my sleep,
Ten thousand living things are sleeping in my arms,
And sleeping wake, and flowing are at rest.
This is the key to personhood according to the Trinitarian image. Not isolated self-awareness, but relationship in mutual love. In the words of the great Romanian theologian Fr. Dumitru Staniloae, "In so far as I am not loved, I am unintelligible to myself."
If, then, we think of the divine image, we should not only think of the vertical dimension of our being the image of God; we should also think of the Trinitarian implication, which means that the image has a horizontal dimension—relationship with my fellow humans. Perhaps the best definition of the human animal is "a creature capable of mutual love after the image of God the Holy Trinity." So here is the essence of our personhood: co-inherence; dwelling in others.
What is said by Christ in His prayer to the Father at the Last Supper is surely very significant for our understanding of personhood: "That they all may be one, as you, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us" (John 17:21). Exactly. The mutual love of the three Divine Persons is seen as the model for our human personhood. This is vital for our salvation. We are here on earth to reproduce within time the love that passes in eternity between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
This article is adapted from Bishop Kallistos Ware’s lecture series, "The Human Person in Orthodox Spirituality," presented at the Eagle River Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies, Eagle River, Alaska, in August 1998. Bishop Kallistos is a Greek Orthodox bishop in Oxford, England, and during 1966 to 2001 he lectured in Eastern Orthodox Studies at the University of Oxford. His books include The Orthodox Church, The Orthodox Way, and The Inner Kingdom.
This article originally appeared in AGAIN Vol. 27 No. 2, Summer 2005.
the right word in an opportune lock,
the door to your talk swings in.
You slip through quiet like in life,
now a little loud in absence,
such noise can strain the ear.
Your ghost don't haunt here, man,
you ain't filled out your name at all,
but, somehow, you filled it in.
There you go now, godchild,
all elevened out and made perfect,
all broken and sweet and made perfect.
I'll see you where the sun dips,
where the birds fall and disappear,
down where the static fades.
Last night I wrote. I'm not blind. The day has unwound. There is no master plan. I sit, listening to the crickets, aware of other insects, all black and creeping and mostly silent. I watched with my son because nothing else was on television the woman's marathon in China, where the 2008 Olympics are apparently taking place. These are the facts. One woman from an Eastern European country (Tomescu-Dita) jumped into the lead, breaking away a full minute from the rest, and kept her pace until she finished. The commentators commented. My son said, "she's faster than the car!" which was following her. I didn't see the need to explain. I just said, "yes." She ran into the stadium that was packed with spectators waiting to see the winner take her final two laps and broach the ribbon at the end. Glancing at the stands, I thought of the phrase "that great cloud of witnesses", and other deft Pauline comparisons between theosis and the race. The spectators missed the majority of the actual struggle, the interior life, and applauded when the obvious victor came into view. If Henry James had written the script, the event would have ended before that final spectacle, which was anti-climactic and smacked of routine. She waved to the crowd before crossing the finish line. The remainder of the race was so casual and devoid of drama, it almost seemed as though the two Chinese and the two Kenyan runners had agreed beforehand as to which of them would accept the silver and the bronze. The remarkers turned their attention to another runner with a painful expression on her face as she strove to pass through, and said she had won, by finishing, "a victory of sorts". And so we all eventually win, perhaps. The first place winner continued to run around waving and smiling, after completing the winner's lap, as if she were incapable of throttling down. No one collapsed.
And then today. I am here, thinking of a novel, of a prayer, of a certain woman. Last night while hoping for a phone call after the boys had fallen asleep, I read an article in the New Yorker about a French guy named Boudin who takes on the identity of helpless children in order to receive care, love and attention from various social services. The article did not touch on the obvious questions regarding identity, or perception, or suspension of disbelief -- just the weird reality that a balding man in his thirties can convince everyone he is thirteen. But an ironic story ensued, as Boudin, who was in a jam in Spain, managed to finagle himself to America posing as a missing teen from Texas, returning to his family. The trouble was that a couple members of the family apparently knew that their family member was not really missing, but had possibly witnessed his death. So Boudin, the chameleon, shows up pretending to be the boy, like a ghost returned to afflict the conscience. What could they do? What could they say? Other family members were fooled. Perhaps they too, trapped in the strange mental fuzz of cognitive dissonance. A very nice true story.
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eric_james- Eric Simpson
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