16 posts tagged “love”
So many others' words are better than mine, the Shulamite and the Portuguese in particular.
I will borrow from them and ask their help.
Despise me not for my love for thee
though it be low and dark,
alternatively deep and shallow,
inconstant though returning,
forever warm, whether enthralled or angry
both attentive and forgetting,
careless and regretting.
I pray my repentance will be enough.
My friend Don has a wonderful blog in which he recounts this incredible story about he and his son.
I used to listen to this song over and over in 4th grade. I loved Chet Atkins and had a few of his other records too.
I fear I have not been clear in my treatment of Shakespeare.
The characters seem blindly and passionately motivated by their hearts. They have a very narrow worldview and they operate in a simplistic narrow fashion towards those around them. I am not very precise in my memory of each character, but I'll try.
Hamlet's self-destructive (which also destroyed Ophelia et al) depression and anger over the killing of his father, Romeo and Juliet's suicides in a narrow-minded moment where their impression of the whole of life and reality was based on immediate circumstantial evidence, etc for example. His comic relief in these situations is usually very baudy humor that I find offensive.
About his odes to love. They seem too creaturely oriented. As if a person can draw their whole life and happiness from another person. No wonder they commit suicide if they don't get the one they want. This is also why I've quit reading Jane Austen - do we have to have that person?
The Orthodox view of marriage is that you have to be a martyr in a marriage, and learning to selflessly love that person is for your salvation - not that they are your dream come true - but that you learn to selflessly consider and eventually desire their needs above your own. Yes there are moments when you feel the ecstasy of being in love, but there shouldn't be such a demand and requirement of feeling that way all the time, or else.
I watched part of the Wedding Planner last night with Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughy and was dissapointed with how the heart's desire thing was portrayed there as well. They had a heart-soul-mind-body attraction when he was engaged to someone else. The way to guiltlessly get out of the engagement was to make his fiancee decide she didn't really love him after all. But what if she did? J-lo and Matt would have to drudge out their existence with the wrong people the rest of their lives in Cinderella type martyrdom? Or else be jerks and break the girl's heart? And what about J-lo's other guy's heart that all, she, he and her parents, finally mutually decided should get broken in order to preserve hers? And then when they finally got together, I wasn't convinced that it would be happiness ever after. After all he did have an annoying habbit of hiking up his pants leg when he ate too much.
My going theory is that after the schism between the eastern ("Orthdox") and western ("Catholic") churches in 1054, the west increasingly became split from it's mind and it's heart so that the heart became irrational and the mind became cold, giving rise to the dialectical split between intellectuals and artists. Western art became sensual and creaturely oriented as a result. It is only in Christ in His properly balanced Church where the heart, mind, soul, spirit, and body connection can be satisfactorily found, fed, nourished, and elevated. Then our relationships with other people spill out from the bounteous overflow of life and love that spring from Christ.
However, I don't like how modern stories are about succombing to passions at all costs. We are manipulated into sympathizing with a white hero who deserves happiness over the black antagonist who deserves what's coming to him. It's way too simplistic. In addition to that, I think story tellers have lost the ability to really engage us in the motivations from the male's point of view especially as to why he feels so passionately, or doesn't towards the female. In Spiderman, I understand MJ's passion towards Parker, but his character seems to be able to take her or leave her. It doesn't matter either way. The Illusionist, Eisenheim, says the right words and does the right things (except for the love scene being too "that's what it's all about" which I fastforwarded while the kids closed their eyes), but I am dissatisfied with the background or motivating factors as to why so much. Nowadays it seems to be about animalistic physical attraction, the fulfilment of which can be done without or done with someone else almost just as easily. I want more development as to why and how two souls are knit together, though the symbolic necklace was a good prop. I want to really believe that if they were sundered, a painful broken heart would be justified.
What the kids really got into, and was very well done, was the nature of the illusions. Beautifully cool. I would show the trailer from Youtube, but I think it gives too much away.
His father was away working on the Panama canal when he was growing up, and he was sent off at a young age to live atop a grocery store where he worked. He ran away to Mt. Athos when he was only 12 wanting to emulate Saint John the Hut Dweller - a hermit monk. I wonder if his upbringing contributes to his saying,
"There are often orphan children at a school. It's a hard thing to be an orphan. A child who's deprived of its parents, especially at an early age, becomes unhappy in life. But if it acquires spiritual parents in Christ and our Holy Lady, it becomes a saint. Treat orphan children with love and understanding, but above all bring them into contact with Christ and the Church."
from Wounded By Love
Thursday is the feast day for Christ's Ascension. I have always gotten kind of sad that Christ left us here on earth, as if I was abandoned in some way until after my death when I could be rejoined with Him. I know He told His disciples that it was better for them that He go away so that the Holy Spirit could come and teach us all things. But still. So as we approach the Feast of Pentecost, I want to be convinced in my heart that it is really better that Christ left to be seated at the right hand of the Father and that we can experience Him more fully through the Holy Spirit. I think this article from the University of Athens demonstrates how we commune with the Trinity. I like the focus on interpenetration, rather than a separate vessel/contents description.
The Trinity
The Orthodox Christian considers that God's glory is revealed to hurnan kind as knowledge about the Holy Trinity. God is one in essence (nature) and Triune in persons. In our ecclesial prayer and life we the Orthodox, confess and glorify God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity, without confusing the persons or dividing the nature of God All Orthodox theology, all ecclesiology and Christian ethos is based on and oriented towards this triune mystery. The blessed Trinity is the solid basis for every Theological investigation, for all spiritual experience and life, for all piety and ecclesial action.
The creation of the entire cosmos is the work in time of the Holy Trinity. The world is never considered as self-created; its existence is the product of the love, the wisdom and the creative power of the All-Holy Trinity.
In the Eastern Orthodox tradition the contemplation of the mystery of the Holy Trinity take place in an attitude, spirit and language of glorification and thanksgiving. This spiritual atmosphere is clearly expressed in the liturgical life of the Orthodox Church. A characteristic example is the ancient hymn which is still used today, during the feast of Pentecost: "Come, you people, worship the Godhead in three persons, the Father in the Son with the Holy Spirit. For the Father from all eternity begets a co-eternal Son, reigning with Him and the Holy Spirit is in the Father, glorified with the Son - one only power, one only substance, one only Godhead; Him do we worship, repeating together: Holy God, who created all things through the Son with the cooperation of the Holy Spirit; holy Strong One, through whom we have known the Father and through whom the Holy Spirit came into the world; holy Deathless One, Spirit of Consolation, who proceeds from the Father and rests in the Son: Holy Trinity, glory to Thee»5.
Christ
In the Orthodox Church we confess that Jesus Christ is truly God, the only-begotten Son of the Father; not created of another essence but begotten of the very essence of the Father before all ages. He is co-essential (consubstantial) with the Father, according to His divinity. Through His incarnation, He also became truly man, like us in every respect with the exception of sin. Thus, He is of the same essence with us all, according to His humanity. The two natures of Christ remain distinct, but nevertheless being united in the one Person of Christ, without being transformed into one another, they interpenetrate one another.
The mystery of the two natures in the one Person of Christ, the incarnate Word of God, constitutes the foundation and the pledge for the restoration and the salvation of human beings. Through Christ the human person has immense potentiality: he-she has the possibility to overcome his-her individuality and isolation and be in communion with God The Fathers of the Church constantly and repeatedly declare that, Christ became what we are so that we might become what He is.
The Holy Spirit the Church and deification
In the theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the divinity which is common to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is communicated by the Holy Spirit to human beings within the Church, making them partakers of divine life6 This does not mean that humans partake of God's essence, which is absolutely unapproachable for created beings, but rather that they partake of His energies. Thus, the deification of the human person is based on the fact that the Holy Spirit interpenetrates and influences his or her entire being. This means that participation in the divine life of the Holy Trinity is realized and perfected through the presence and the operation of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity, is distinct from the Father and the Son, but nevertheless He is in every respect perfect God, coessential, coequal and coeternal with the Father and the Son. Gift of the Father, source of life and freedom, the Holy Spirit is called "the Spirit of God" "the Spirit of Christ" "the Mind of Christ" "the Spirit of the Lord" and Lord Himself; He is also called Spirit of Truth, of Wisdom, of Adoption, of Liberty; The Holy Spirit is the "Heavenly King" the "Comforter", "Treasury of goodness and Giver of Life".
The Holy Spirit grants the divine gifts to human persons: "the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord" (Is. II: 2). The Holy Spirit, as the source of the uncreated and infinite divine gifts, was sent into the Church and the world in order to communicate divine grace to humans. This is indeed what we call in the Orthodox tradition deification or "divinization" ("theosis"). Through the transforming light of the Holy Spirit the human person becomes a vehicle and receptacle of divinity. The human being transcends his corporeal limitations, or rather enriches his earthly life with heavenly gifts7 for, as St. Gregory the Theologian says: He is the source of light and life, and he makes a temple of me, he deifies me, he perfects me, he is before baptism and is sought after baptism. Whatever God does, it is the Spirit who does it. He multiplies himself in tongues of fire and adds gift to gift"7.
For Orthodox theology the Church, founded by Jesus Christ for the salvation of human beings, is filled by the Holy Spirit. The Church is the fullness of Him who fills all in all (Eph. I: 23). The Church is described by Paul as fullness in the sense that the Spirit dwells within her body and guides her to fulfill her mission. St. Irenaeus explicitly declares that "where the Church is, there is the Spirit of God; where the Spirit of God is, there is the Church and every kind of grace8. Thus, the Church, through the uninterrupted presence of the Holy Spirit, becomes a holy institution. In the Creed of Nicaea-Constantinople the Church is described as: "One in so far as Jesus Christ is the only Lord who founded not many churches but one Church. "Holy because her Head, Christ, is the incarnation of holiness and because she is guided by the Holy Spirit. "Catholic» because she transcends every local and cultural limitation. "Apostolic" since she was built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone» (Eph. 2:20).
The ecclesial life is a profoundly spiritual and mystical way. It is an attitude which is based on and expresses the doctrinal tradition of Orthodoxy; it is a way of being closely related with what is known as sacramental life. The Orthodox recognize the Sacraments of Baptism, Chrism or Confirmation, Holy Eucharist, Confession of sins, Ordination to Priesthood, Marriage and Holy Unction as channels leading to a dynamic rather than a static Christian life.
More precisely, the mystical and at the same time communal character and attitude of Orthodoxy is expressed in the eucharistic gathering. In this gathering, around the table of the Lord, all division and individuality is abolished and all are united with the bishop, the living image of Christ, who offers the bread and wine in all and for all The communion by all believers of the bread and wine, the body and the blood of Christi is the realization of the unity both with Christ and with all the members of the Church. Thus, through the Eucharistic communion our human nature is elevated to the divine level, being united with the divine in the Person of the incarnate Word of God.
It is within the context of eucharistic theology that one can understand the teaching of the Orthodox Church concerning death and the life to come. The Eucharist is a foretaste of the perfect co-celestial communion, which will be a communion penetrated by the uncreated divine light. The resurrected bodies of the friends of God will be glorious, like the glorified body of Christ which the disciples beheld on the day of His Transfiguration.Saturday, we (George the kids and I) went to see Spiderman 3, here's Frederica Matthewes Green's review. On the way home, we started talking about Peter Parker's landlord's daughter who is seen in Spiderman 2 as well. Someone said they thought she was in love with him, but that ruffled my feathers a bit. I hastily pointed out that she was very supportive of his relationship with MJ, and even happy about it, not exactly a sign of being in love. "But she made him cookies." Give me a break, just because a girl makes you cookies, doesn't mean she's in love with you.
But I think the type of attention she shows Peter is confusing to most recipients, and even the givers. In Superman Returns, Lois is also confused by her feelings for the superhero, and he probably is too. I also thought of Eowyn's attention to Aragorn in
I think it is a religious attachment to Christ-like, or those who can convince of it, men that women are so desperately looking for. It is mistaken for being in love in an overly romantic sense. It is also easily taken advantage of and belittled, or rejected as attention that will lead to unfaithfulness, which easily and all too often can happen.
I really liked Peter Parker's (initial) and Aragorn's response to this attention of quiet stillness, and returning the gaze with non-judgmental, non-seductive, and unthreatened openness. Faithfulness to the ones whom they had attached themselves to was not breached, and their respect for the generosity of this attention was for the giver, not for themselves as motivating it. But maybe it's ok for them to really think about what these women are seeing in them - Christ's image and likeness - and to pray that that increase, and that these women will worship the source with them.
Though coming to be Orthodox happens in bits and pieces, the progression is one of incremental acceptance of her teachings and practices, or one has to turn back. When I initially encountered Orthodoxy, I pretty quickly identified it as my heart’s desire and came to, sometimes painfully, realize that where I disagreed, I was wrong and had to throw out my previous misconceptions. I have subsequently discovered however, that my Protestant circle who I thought would see it as I did when they discovered Orthodoxy’s vast previously-hidden treasures, didn’t. There was some initial interest, but then one by one most hit a wall and turned back.
I like how Sophocles described the wall, in the context of dialogue with Roman Catholics, in his comment in Energetic Procession, a blog which brilliantly and philosophically clears up muddy water that we'd sadly
gotten used to.
"I myself continue to experince that Orthodoxy cannot be accepted in bits and pieces. It’s either all true or it is from the very pit of hell and to be rejected outright, the quicker the better.
What I believe Mr. Kimel and the other Romans are experiencing is the gradual unfolding realization that the Orthodox Faith and those who hold it are not going to suddenly “wake up” and get the Roman position which to them seems so gracious, them being willing to meet us half way and all, but us refusing to budge even a step in their direction is maddening to them.
I would say that this is healthy [stopping the dialogue]. It is not healthy(for them) to continue to engage us in conversation, run across the occasional Orthodox who really doesn’t see why we’re debating the points we are and simply wants “everyone to get along, it’s all the same after all”.
The Orthodox Church stands, as always, as a hospital for the healing of the human person. Her medicine remains potent for the destruction of the old man and the creating of the new man. Orthodoxy is not where one can come to “pontificate” and this is why the Church must be rejected by those that insist She can “be fixed” or improved. In a sense, I believe, the Orthodox Church is “the last house on the block”. When all else fails, when all my best ideas exhaust themselves, then maybe I have a shot at allowing the Physician to operate. Until then, I’m still too well to avail myself of his ministration.
Continue, I would urge you, to write this blog as you do. For one day, many of our RC friends may come to the Orthodox Church and praise God that she did not budge from Her course, seeing that their previous desire that She do so was nothing other than a manifestation of the fickle and ever changing whims within them to bend Reality to suit them.
We may all very well be surprised at what transpires in and through us as we simply continue to hold fast to that which we have received, as we continue to be a simple Orthodox."
Catch the inconsistency - Judgmental people are the worst!
Not that judging right from wrong, or true from false, or healthy from harmful is bad, but to stay loving, peaceful and wise with what I know and to have the humility to understand that I don't know everything...
Be still and know that I am God. Psalm 46:10
