My Journey to Orthodoxy

Yesterday after I posted a little "gem" of political insight written some time ago, I realized that my blog is very heavily weighted toward political commentary. Though the situation in our world requires some action on that front, I didn't ever have the intention of making this my political pulpit. I also realized that, unlike several of the orthodox blogs I read occasionally, I didn't have the story of my journey to Orthodoxy posted. So, in the spirit of digging things out of the hard drive, here is the story of my journey as I wrote it just over two years ago.

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My journey to Orthodoxy started about a year before I had ever heard of such a creature. As part of our preparations for marriage, my wife and I had been meeting regularly with Rev. Buddy Walker at A&M United Methodist Church. I was raised in a series of progressively more liberal Baptist churches, and Ashley had been raised in the Episcopalian Church. We both deigned to visit the denomination of the other, and both found worship in the unfamiliar setting unfulfilling.
As we began wedding preparations, one of our chief concerns was finding a beautiful church to be wed in. A&M United Methodist, because of its prominence and classic architecture, was an early favorite. We contacted the church office and found that a prerequisite for marriage in the church for non-members was attendance at seven worship services. We began visiting A&M United Methodist for worship in the Spring of 1998.

Also at this time I was taking a course on “Nature in Literature” and found the nature communing spirit of Emerson, Muir, Matthiessen, and Dillard very appealing. Further, I found in these works mystic connection and affirmation of the connection of spiritual and material things. I was especially interested to read the Buddhist thought in Matthiessen and even attended a talk given by a visiting Buddhist monk that semester.

When I talked with Rev. Buddy, I brought up the attraction that these philosophies held for me and his response was the first time that I believe that I had really been shaken out of a spiritual slumber. He indicated that the Christ who had spoken the Beatitudes would have no problem with the tenets of peace and communion in many Eastern philosophies. Rev. Buddy and I spend many afternoons together talking, especially because, at that point, his journey mirrored my own: he was raised in the Baptist church and had become Methodist as a young adult. The biggest points of contention for me, coming from an evangelical protestant background, were the things that Rev. Buddy told me about infant baptism and salvation as a process instead of an intellectual decision.
As I read the articles that Rev. Buddy gave me and listened to the sermons given by Rev. Charles Anderson on Sundays, I generally became more aware of the truth in the position that I was balking at. By the beginning of 1999, Ashley and I had decided to become full members of the Methodist Church, effectively negating our obligation to prove our attendance to be married. Of course, our attendance promptly fell off.

For a number of reasons, about six months prior to our wedding, I fell into a spiritual and emotional funk which gradually grew to a crisis. As any man at a time of crisis will, I thrashed about, looking for any sort of life preserver I could find. As it happened, my salvation had been sitting on my bookshelf for a year or so. My mom and stepfather are fond of giving me books as gifts; and I am equally fond of receiving them. The book, given to me by my parent, was The God Who Is There, by Francis Schaeffer. In this book, Schaeffer takes American society to task for becoming so relativistic, and, in the process, making God an optional entity. I mentioned to my parents that this book had made an incredible impact on my life, and I would be interested in reading more by the same author. This life-affirming work helped me re-establish perspective, along with the loving patience of my then-fiancée, and I was feeling generally good again.

My parents, meanwhile, started looking for Schaeffer in the library and bookstores. Instead of the Protestant apologist Francis, they found his son Frank. Frank Schaeffer’s book Dancing Alone: The Quest for Orthodox Faith in the Age of False Religion was their introduction to Orthodoxy. My parents had the opportunity after reading the book to visit Orthodox churches in California and near their home in St. Louis and were generally making their way toward the East. They sent me a copy of Dancing Alone for my birthday just before our wedding. In a phone conversation with my mom, I asked her what Orthodoxy was about. Her answer frustrated me and, admittedly, turned me away. She said, “you have to experience it.” I put the book away and went on with life. I know that my mother is an intelligent, articulate woman, and I just couldn't understand how she couldn't convey the sense of her experience.

Just after our wedding and honeymoon, my National Guard unit did a rotation at the National Training Center at Ft. Irwin, CA. I packed several books, among them Dancing Alone. My trip to the Mojave Desert was challenging for a number of reasons, among them my recent diagnosis with asthma and the harsh conditions, including wind, sand, and CS gas, which exacerbated it. Our presence at NTC was just a handful of support personnel attached to a company in our home battalion, guys who we knew vaguely, but not men we had trained with on a regular basis. Once at NTC, we were reassigned to the Quartermaster of the battalion that our tank company was sent to support. No one knew us personally, we were not faces—we were assets. Our experience at NTC was plagued by poor leadership, which at one point lost two vehicles in a night road march through the desert, and at another point left a remote fuel point unsupplied for two days. To make matters worse, the NCOIC of our detachment was a timid despot that refused to act as a filter for the abuse that came from above. Early in our stay at NTC, one of our small group of six, my co-driver, was called home because of the death of a grandparent. As a result, I was paired with the above NCOIC.

I was disappointed, but resigned. Of everyone in our group, my personality was best suited for rolling with the punches. Also, as a result I had lots of time to think and read. I read all of my other books before picking up Dancing Alone, but once I began reading, I found myself having an transcendent experience. Here was someone putting together pieces that I had been trying to sort out of all of the faith professions I had encountered over the years, and was making sense. Granted, Frank’s approach is acerbic, for which reason he has been subject to censure by some Orthodox bodies, but it worked well for me as a generally disillusioned seeker. My joy was so complete that I composed a song.
Upon returning home, I began my search in earnest. However, there were no Orthodox churches in Bryan/College Station; the nearest was in Houston, and I was not so committed yet to make the weekly pilgrimage. I did find out that the Orthodox Christian Fellowship, a student group at A&M, sponsored bi-monthly Liturgy at All Faiths Chapel. I started attending these sporadically, convincing Ashley to visit even less frequently. In early Spring of 2001, my journey had a jump start.

My parents had, as a result of reading and searching on their own, decided to become catechumens at a Greek Orthodox church near their home. We traveled to St. Louis to see my parents and two younger siblings be baptized at Assumption Greek Orthodox Church. We also had the privilege of seeing my parents’ marriage blessed. Over the course of the weekend, I had the opportunity to speak with their priest and sponsors, as well as experience my first Liturgy in a “real” church. The combination of sight, sound, smell, and touch made the experience almost overwhelming. Having come from a non-liturgical background, I felt completely out of place—but like I had finally made it home.

Once back in Bryan/College Station, I became even more ardent in my desire to learn more about the historical church. My interest coincided with the establishment of a mission community sponsored by an Antiochian parish in Houston. I attended Liturgies when I could, both on campus and at the mission. I was sincerely impressed by the talk given by Fr. Peter Gillquist about how his group of evangelical protestants had left the Campus Crusade group looking to find the authentic faith of the New Testament. What they discovered in the end was that the Church is alive and well.

The mission group started hosting Thursday-night discussion groups that acted as a catechism of sorts. I began to see in Orthodox theology the missing pieces, such as the ideas of the linking of spiritual and physical things that I had searched for in the Far Eastern philosophies. The overriding sense I had the more I studied Orthodoxy was that it was cohesive, not only internally, but externally as well. I read books such as Ladder of the Beatitudes by Jim Forrest, and Sacred Symbols that Speak, vol I & II that reaffirmed biblical Christianity on the firm ground of two millennia of consistent interpretation. I will readily admit that the appeal to historical evidence was one of the greatest factors in my decision to become Orthodox. I find it intellectually and spiritually fulfilling to affirm that God participates in, yet is not bound by the laws of, His creation.

On that note, the mysticism of the Church fulfilled the inveterate fantasy lover in me. Having had spiritual experiences in my life, and being presented with the overwhelming evidence of the supernatural across cultures and time, I found the complete disavowal of mysticism in the evangelical protestant tradition unfulfilling. In Orthodoxy I found some concrete answers, but more importantly, an allowance for the interaction of the spiritual and physical.

After having studied and spent a lot of time participating in worship, I contacted Fr. Matthew, the priest at St. Joseph Antiochian Orthodox Church in Houston—our sponsor parish, in the spring of 2002 to let him know that I felt that I had overstayed my welcome as a seeker and wanted to move forward toward formally committing myself to the Church as a catechumen. Fr. Matthew let me know that he already considered me a catechumen, though there was a service it make it “official.” Before we could get any farther, however, Fr. Matthew asked me how Ashley felt about becoming Orthodox. I had anticipated the question, but my answer “she’s got some hesitation, but she’s ok with it” didn’t cut the mustard. At this point, Fr. Matthew let me know that my marriage was an important component of my life spiritually—something I hadn’t thought much about—and that if my pursuit of Orthodoxy was going to become a point of contention in my marriage, that I should remain outside as a “friend of the Church.”

Having made such an arduous intellectual journey, I was floored. How could the “One, True Church” advise me to stay away? Gradually it dawned on me that the Church is the visible expression of the invisible God in this world and that by supporting and affirming my marriage—as it is intended to mirror the complete unity of the Trinity—the Church is affirming its own being. Thankfully, Ashley was interested in pursuing Orthodoxy as well, she just wanted to study and have some questions answered. To meet this need, we began meeting regularly with Fr. Matthew.

My wife is continuously a spiritual help to me because just as soon as I feel confident that I know something about God, she gives me a perspective or asks a question that is truly humbling. When we began our meetings with Fr. Matthew, I felt like I knew everything I needed to know. However, paradise keeps turning out like the end of C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle; we keep going further up and further in. Fr. Matthew started at the beginning, all in all, quite a logical place to start.

In the Orthodox understanding of Creation is the root of the difference between Eastern and Western Christianity. The Orthodox understanding of the Fall is an incredible study and worthy of its own treatment; to sum up here: the direct consequence of Adam and Eve’s sin was the disruption of their communion with God. What is interesting is that studying the Biblical account shows that God didn’t just say, “that’s it, you’re outta here!” Instead, he gives them a chance to reestablish contact in asking them to confess, however, they persist in their sin and choose to blame anyone but themselves. By eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, Adam and Eve are imbued with knowledge that their experience was not mature enough to handle. Their actions also brought Death into the world and made them subject to his power. As an act of mercy, before Adam and Eve could disobey and eat of the other tree from which they had been warned, the Tree of Life, God removed Adam and Eve and all creation from Paradise. If He had not and they had eaten of the Tree of Life as well they would have become immortal and been forever subject to Death.

There is a wealth of theological implications here, one of which is that mankind is responsible for the removal of the Earth from a state of Paradise because we needed it to sustain us—therefore, our stewardship takes on a new level of responsibility. The best analogy for the Fall that I’ve heard is that Adam and Eve were like two people in a big warm house sitting next to the fire. They had been warned that if they were to go outside, they would not be able to get back in, yet they decide to go out of the warmth into the cold regardless. As a result, their children are born outside of the house unable to get back in, yet are innocent of making the decision to step outside in the first place. This is the Orthodox understanding of the Fall—our curse is not innate, it is the situation into which we are born. God made Adam and Eve a promise that He would send a deliverer that would reunite mankind to God; that is why Eve says after Cain’s birth “I have made a man with the LORD”—she believes that the promise is already being fulfilled.

The upshot of the Orthodox view of the Fall is that the image of God in man is not destroyed, it is marred, and damaged. Our salvation depends on the reestablishment of communion with God which was achieved in the person of Christ. This is why an Orthodox Christian will emphasize Christ’s birth, life, death and resurrection as all equally important to our salvation, whereas the evangelical protestant sees the rest as incidental to the crucifixion. In His Incarnation, Christ, God the Creator enters his Creation (time and space) and becomes physical matter for the sake of communion with us. As a result, all matter is sanctified. Christ’s baptism, likewise sanctifies all water and makes participation in the act of baptism mystical participation in the transformative life of Christ. Christ’s death is important because as God, He is the only being that could enter Death’s realm and defeat him, releasing humanity from Death’s rule. As a result of living in a fallen world, our physical bodies will still die, but we will not be eternally subject to Death. The caveat to this is that holy men and women throughout history, as a result of their faithful participation in the transformative life of Christ are so physically changed that their bodies are not corrupted even after death. This is why the Church says that salvation cannot be outside of the Church—because the Church is the only designated repository for the sacraments, which are the ways in which we participate in a mystical way in the physical life of Christ. Yet, at the same time, the Church affirms that truth is found all throughout creation because the image of God remains in man, it is only in the Church that the fullness of Truth resides. Further, the Church would affirm that salvation is God’s work and He can effect it anyway He so chooses; we are only given one path, and we must do what we know.

A total of four years passed between my starting to research the Ancient Church and my baptism. I was made a catechumen just eight months before my baptism. While I felt ready for conversion long before that, I think that God granted my priest insight about what I needed to learn that I didn't have. When I first started searching, participating in Orthodox worship in our town meant the once-a-month Liturgy that Fr. Matthew would do, and a smattering of OCF on-campus Liturgies. I read, my wife and I attended services, and I began to attend catechism classes. After about two-and-a-half years I felt moved to approach Fr. Matthew and tell him I felt I had overstayed my welcome as a seeker, and that I would like to become a catechumen. At that point he made me realize that my wife and I weren't in the same place and that we needed to be...so I waited a bit longer. When we were made catechumens, it was a special event for our mission, and one that helped build a sense of community. We were received into the church, I through Baptism and Ashley through Chrismation, on Holy Saturday 2003.

There is so much that I have found corresponds with Orthodox theology; I continually find that it is a very satisfactory and robust explanatory framework for every facet of life. This has, as I noted earlier, been the most significant realization that I have made in my Journey. The idea that each of us is an icon of Christ in that the image of God remains in each of us resounds with the best aspects of progressive social theory. In the lives of the saints the consistent teaching of the Church is reaffirmed throughout history in a manner that only the worst kind of revisionism can ignore.

Radicalism as a Democratic Social Indicator

This was written almost exactly two years ago. Not recalling the impetus, I did a quick news search, and apparently the most important thing happening in the U.S. that day was the opening of Star Wars Episode III. Anyhow, it seems even more relevant today
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In a society that purports to be democratic, revolutionary or regime changing tendency ought to be successfully channeled through the democratic process, assuming equal representation for all. Thus, widespread sentiment advocating radical change in a democratic society is a signal that the democratic process is not working and is in need of change.

Though this is a simple idea, it is one whose salience is lost on the majority of those in a position to negotiate change. A survey of major sociopolitical watershed moments in American history reveals that it is only when those in positions of power within the democratic society are threatened with embarrassment due to the inconsistency of their positions that change is made. One need only reflect on the slow and tortuous history of struggle for equal rights for women and persons of color in this country to discover the veracity of this statement.

I believe that the power of this idea is due in large part to the work of the framers of our nation’s government. Guided by a general principle of equal representation, the men that set out the governing principles for the country insisted on a pragmatic solution. They were more interested in forming a lasting government than a perfect one, and that is reflected in the adaptability of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.*
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*In contrast to the Declaration of Independence, which articulates a more idealistic sense of government, the Constitution and Bill of Rights are more liberal in the application of the principles that infuse the spirit of the Declaration of Independence.

Christ is Risen!

This past Thursday, on which the Orthodox Church celebrated Christ's Ascension, I called a friend to make plans for the weekend. She greeted me with a hearty "happy feast day." I responded "Christ is Risen!"

My friend, who is not a convert (edit: like me), paused for a moment and then responded in Greek, "Alithos Anesti!" before asking whether or not we were allowed to use that greeting now, and I had to stumble through an apology for a bad religious pun (rise/ascend). I didn't broach the subject of St. Seraphim of Sarov's use of the Paschal greeting year round.

Anyhow, check out Fr. Joseph Hunnycutt's post (& podcast!) It's good for what ails me.

Prognosticating Peace

U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich - OH has been chillingly prescient in foretelling the disastrous effects of Bush43's administrative consolidation of power in the executive branch. With respect to the U.S.A. Patriot Act, Kucinich recognized the dangerous and unwarranted expansion of power as a serious threat to Fourth Amendment rights, a truth that is only now being widely recognized.

One of the leaders in Congress against Bush43's Orwellian onslaught and the rush to war in Iraq, Kucinich stood alone on the Democratic ticket in 2004 emphatically denouncing the war and the lack of universal healthcare (though, by that time, he was joined by others in denouncing the U.S.A. Patriot Act). It seems as though Kucinich was just "ahead of his time" since the "frontrunners" in the 2008 Democratic race now sound like they're using D.K.'s 2004 talking points. Let's step back and consider for a moment where we might be had Kucinich been given more respect (from his party and the media) in 2004, and the Iraq War and national healthcare were issues we tackled three years (and $300 billion) ago...

Kucinich's major obstacle in 2004 and also in 2008 is also the strongest argument in favor of his candidacy. As a candidate with no strings attached, Kucinich is depending on well-reasoned argument, common sense, and grassroots support to get the Dem nod for 2008. The downside to not being in someone's pocket is that its a lot harder to be visible when you can't buy the million-dollar TV spots. Let's be clear on one thing: it's not just the media that's to blame for the lack of coverage for Kucinich's big ideas. The Democratic National Committee was so keen on declaring a nominee for 2004 that they effectively declared the race after the media frenzy over Dean's post-primary speech in Iowa. I truly believe that the Democrats lost in 2004 because they effectively silenced competition so early that they failed to realize that the most "electable" candidate was the most uninspiring.

Kucinich is electable if you vote for him.

All of which begs the question, why should we vote for Kucinich? Think about Bush43. What are your criticisms of his presidency? (Mine are) belligerence, cronyism, abridgment of constitutional freedoms, shortsightedness. Kucinich, by contrast, is committed to peace and diplomacy, is as much a threat to the DNC establishment as he is to the GOP, has been a voice in the wilderness since the passage of U.S.A. Patriot Act, and was delivering this message long before it was just so much old news rehashed on the 24-hour networks.

[Edit]I've taken down this video so that you can load the page without having to wait for this to load or listen to it again, but I highly recommend this compilation of quotes from Dennis Kucinich as an example of what we knew and when we knew it.

April Snowshowers bring May's...

A snowy central Texas Easter - photo courtesy of Donna O'Connor











...Global Warming?

One of my biggest pet peeves right now are the folks (in the media and otherwise) who point to unseasonably cold weather as evidence against "global warming." I'll readily admit that the term "global warming" probably does a disservice to the cause in that it is easily interpreted to be something other than what it is not (much in same way as the term "gifted" seems to imply that children two standard deviations above normal IQ don't require special services when those in the opposite position do). Perhaps a better descriptor is "global climate change," though I suspect that this phrase doesn't have quite the alarmist overtones that serve both supporters and detractors.

For those who have yet (or are unwilling) to see Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, I'll give the two minute version here. Yes, Gore does use his bully-pulpit to make a few good-natured jabs at the 2000 elections. he also masterfully translates the science of global climate change into common parlance much in the same way that Dr. Stephen Hawking does for theoretical physics. There are a few points to the take-away message: 1) The ocean currents power our global weather; 2) Increased temperatures at the poles result in ice melt, ice melt results in exponentially faster ice melt because water absorbs the sun's energy and melts the ice from below (when frozen, most of this energy is reflected back into space); 3) increasingly warm water at the poles will shut off ocean currents causing massive, widespread climate change in a matter of years instead of millenia.

Those who would point to unseasonably cool weather to disprove global climate change fundamentally misunderstand the thesis; they are, in fact, unwittingly drawing attention to the harbingers of such a shift. Though "global warming" accurately describes the root of the problem at the poles, the resultant climate shift everywhere else won't necessarily mean higher temperatures. It might mean less rainfall, or more. It might mean more big, destructive weather for some, and milder weather for others. Certainly, one year of cooler-than-average springtime doesn't provide conclusive evidence for climate shift, but three years looks like a trend, and in five we might have completely different weather patterns.

Taking a broad view of the global ecosystem, one might argue that there have been much warmer periods in earth's history (Mr. Gore does point this out). What is markedly different about this moment in history is that the change is likely to happen far more quickly than it has in the past, and with much greater impact on the world's ecosystems, which are already hard-pressed by other man-made threats such as habitat elimination and excessive harvesting.

The sobering, and hopeful, coda to An Inconvenient Truth is that we can make a difference. Start thinking about your carbon footprint and how you can live a lower-impact lifestyle. Check out Slate.com's Green Challenge. Save your gas money and ride a bike...or a Segway. Vote for green energy and sustainable practices with your wallet.

In closing, I offer these thoughts penned by His All Holiness Patriarch Bartholomew

The Lord suffuses all of creation with His Divine presence in one continuous legato from the substance of atoms to the Mind of God. Let us renew the harmony between heaven and earth, and transfigure every detail, every particle of life. Let us love one another, and lovingly learn from one another, for the edification of God's people, for the sanctification of God's creation, and for the glorification of God's most holy Name. Amen.

So long, and thanks for all the fish

Kurt Vonnegut's death this week has left me with a peculiar sadness that is hard to describe. Though I enjoyed (very much) the two books of his I have read (Galapagos, Timequake) and have fond memories of my stepdad telling stories about Tralfamador, from which planet a younger brother was purported to hail, I've never really thought of myself as a Vonnegut fan. Thinking about it now, I suppose that Mr. Vonnegut might have thought about the concept of fans as slightly ridiculous anyhow. I've not yet read Slaughterhouse-Five or Cat's Cradle, though I have vague plans to do so in the way that I think all English majors have a list of great books they just haven't gotten around to reading yet. In spite of this all this good-natured disinterest, Vonnegut's death leaves a hole in my world that I don't think I could define better than Jon Stewart's comment, "the world got less interesting." Vonnegut was one of those rare authors who seemed to be able to work hope out of postmodernism. A comment made in a literary obituary in The Observer sums up Vonnegut's genius this way: "he told us the hardest of truths, but in the gentlest, funniest and most amiable way he knew how." I really think Vonnegut is what Mark Twain would have been like had he been an optimist.

Vonnegut's death made me think of another unexpected loss of an author whose distillation of hope from the absurd has helped me understand the human condition. Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy and all its related stories, and Last Chance to See. Though Adams' death is several years past, his passing also permeates the sense of loss I feel for Vonnegut. I think that it is increasingly rare to see such selfless truth-giving from authors, and that we're worse off without them. I don't think that their perspectives necessarily need to be lost, though, as their readers--dare I say, fans--can take advantage of a cultural tipping-point in calling to account the absurd abuse of power in the world. I don't think their lessons are being lost, we just have to act rationally irrational. Both might agree, "Don't Panic."

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

This time last year I was on a trip abroad with my Century Scholar Learning Community class visiting London. On March 17, Ashley and I took a day trip to Glastonbury Abbey in Somerset. The trip itself was quite an adventure. We got up early to catch the first train to Bath where we spent the better part of the morning. Towards noon, we finally purchased bus tickets for the rest of the journey to Glastonbury. The bus ride was close to three hours...we had anticipated spending about half of that time traveling. We arrived at Glastonbury Abbey about two hours before they were to close and stayed until close to 6:00 PM.

Glastonbury Abbey is noted as the site of the earliest above-ground Christian church in Europe. Legend holds that Joseph of Arimathea (who purportedly dealt in tin...a good reason to travel to Britain) established a daub and wattle structure on the spot thirty years after Christ's Ascension (and his staff, once planted, also bloomed into a unique thorn tree). The oldest ruins extant, the Lady Chapel, are about 1100 years newer, but are dwarfed by the ruins of the later church. The disrepair dates from Henry VIII's schism and subsequent persecution of English monastics. In the small museum on the grounds, I was sorely disappointed to find a brass etching plate of Henry VIII among other icon rubbing plates, given his hand in destroying the vibrant community there. I was similarly disappointed by the lack of recognition of the historic church in England that, no doubt, stems from inherited distrust of anything Catholic. How ironic that one of Prince Charles' favorite retreats hearkens to that rich heritage.

Glastonbury Abbey is rich in legend. In addition to Joseph of Arimathea, other storied visitors (and sometime residents) are St. Patrick, Arthur and Guinevere, and perhaps even Christ Himself! I was particularly pleased to say a prayer at the old stone altar in the chapel dedicated to St. Patrick on the Abbey grounds which was spared in the Reformation. There are competing legends about where St. Patrick is buried, but one claim holds that he was buried on the grounds of Glastonbury Abbey with the honor of being its first abbot. This is the closest I've come to a pilgrimage, and was incredibly humbling to honor St. Patrick on his feast day.

Through the prayers of Sts. Patrick, Dunstan, Benedict, David, and Bridget, and of all of the British and Celtic saints, may God Bless and keep you all!

Peace for our time?

This post is ambitious. I hope to look at the nature of war, the threat of perpetual war, my take on the proper Christian response, and what we can do about it. I should make a note here that while I have faithfully tried to represent Orthodox Christian teaching as I understand it, there are a number of Orthodox Christians who would disagree with my take that all war (understood as combat between humans) is evil and avoidable for Christians. I earnestly entreat the forgiveness of any who might be scandalized by what I've written here.

Though I’ve been actively involved in peace-making since 2002, the particular stimulus for sitting down to write now is a pair of interviews on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. Most recent was Zbigniew Brzezinski’s evaluation of how the last three presidential administrations have squandered opportunities to change our foreign policy to effect peace.



AND

Ted Koppel on “Our Children’s Children’s War”

After watching Brzezinski’s interview, my wife turned to me, holding our three and a half week old boy and said,” I don’t want us to still be at war in twenty years.” Her statement was fraught with meaning. What would perpetual war mean for an already de-stabilized economy? How much further might our socio-political relations crumble in the face of increased fundamentalism (on all sides)? What role might our son be forced to play in this future? I responded that we have to be proactive in pursuing peace.

During my military training (Army National Guard), I came to a realization that I would wrestle with for five years. The realization didn’t crystallize overnight, but was something I came to gradually. The first germ of the realization was in the cognitive dissonance I had trying to integrate the training I was receiving into my still-developing value system. My mother had instructed me never to start fights, but told me to finish one if someone else started a fight with me. My drill instructor told us that he believed he was damned to hell because he had participated in war. If the notion that a strong military is a deterrent to military aggression, thereby securing peace, was true, then it seemed as though civilization was being held together by training men and women to do the most uncivilized of things. To Kill. Basic training has a number of facets. New soldiers learn chain of command, equipment recognition, disaster response, first aid, teamwork, and self-respect (and probably not enough military history and ethics). But, if all that had to be trimmed out of the training process, what would remain would be combat training: rifles, grenades, bayonets, and hand-to-hand combat. I recognized that the change in me was that I now knew how to kill someone. I don’t expect that 17-, 18- and 19-year-olds regularly engage in this kind of metacognitive evaluation (neither, I suspect, does the military establishment).

War has become a very useful metaphor in the English language. We can wage war against drugs, cancer, obesity, poverty, and a number of other social and physical ills. We are also able to war against an idea: Terrorism. In Western Christian history, the idea of the “Just War” developed to provide some insight into the always sticky prospect of Christian participation in war. One thing that just war theory, and most wars up until our “War on Terror” commenced, assume is a known enemy. War, as it has been redefined, is not limited to a particular theatre, enemy, or timeframe. Instead the war against terrorism mirrors those socio-political “wars” in that it is a protracted, consuming struggle, or “jihad” as the concept is known in Islam. In Christianity, an analogue might be asceticism. I don’t believe that Bush43’s polarizing statements about an “axis of evil” and a fight between the forces of good versus evil are gaffes. I think that in those moments he is being truly transparent and revealing in that language his moral understanding of the stakes of this war. This is truly and epic, ongoing, and eternal struggle.

If that doesn’t trouble you, then I suspect that you are among the growing number of American revolutionists that wish to change our form of government. If you are troubled by the thought of becoming the (nominally) Christian answer to RadIslamism (not to mention the financial stake that this administration, broadly imagined, stands to gain from perpetual war) our call to action is simple. We need a radical politic of peace.

In the process of working for peace, Christians must be careful not to make the struggle an end unto itself, but understand such work as serving Christ, however disfigured His image might be, in our enemies, in the poor and destitute, in those imprisoned, and those dealing with spiritual and physical illness. We have to be careful not to expect Paradise here on earth (chiliaism), but to be good stewards of the economic and political power we’ve been granted. We Christians that have the privilege of living in the United States should certainly be grateful for the freedom we enjoy to practice our faith. At the same time though, that security is not worth mortgaging our faith. We should look to the early martyrs as examples of fidelity. If we truly believe in Christ’s radical transformation of reality, and that we have the opportunity to participate (however imperfectly) in Paradise now, we need step into a role of active peacemakers, forgiving and loving our enemies. For the obvious reasons, this would be an inappropriate stance for the United States government to take, given its role in the social contract to protect its citizens. Indeed, this would be an inappropriate stance for any secular government to take, as it would require its citizenry to be willing to become martyrs. As individuals, however, we can utilize the means at our disposal—wealth, influence, and votes—to influence a compromise in the direction of true Peace.

My response to my wife’s concern about perpetual war, that we have to proactively wage peace, is ultimately a personal choice with universal implications. St. Seraphim of Sarov told us that if we could acquire peace, thousands around us would be saved. I believe that St. Seraphim is talking about physical and metaphysical salvation. Ghandi’s experience with Christianity in practice led him to conclude that Christians aren’t much like Christ. As Christians practicing in what is arguably the most permissive (on all sides) society we have ever known, we don’t all naturally get the privilege of suffering for Christ. Like the men and women that fled to the desert to preserve Christianity, I think that modern Christians can find a useful ascetic yoke in pursuing peace through practicing a personal politic of peace. We have few examples of this path which seems difficult to our comfortable sensibilities.

In persons like Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Theresa and Mohandas Ghandi, Christians can distill a sense of the spiritual import of waging peace. For Orthodox Christians, the example of St. Maria of Paris, and countless other Holy Fools for Christ stand out as shining examples of how we can put into practice the hard sayings of our Lord. Nor is this a journey that needs to be taken alone. The Orthodox Peace Fellowship is one of many Christian organizations (also Sojourners, CPT, Fellowship of Reconciliation) that persons with pacifistic mindsets can turn to for support and guidance in waging peace. There are analogous peace organizations that represent a number of religious and political affiliations. The crux of the matter is that peacemakers can’t be passive; we have to actively assert love and forgiveness, speak truth to power, and engage in these actions in our own lives.

Selected peacemaker resources:

Orthodox Peace Fellowship

Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors

The Saints on Peacemaking

The Early Fathers on War and Military Service – Louis J. Swift (out of print…I have permission from the author to distribute copies to my friends as necessary. Contact me if you need one)

The Peace Alliance – Campaign to establish a cabinet-level U.S. Department of Peace

Ladder of the Beatitudes - Jim Forest. This is a nice meditation on how to actually live out the "hard sayings" of Christ.

Love is the Measure - Jim Forest. A biography of Dorothy Day.

Mother Maria Skobtsova - Essential Writings - St. Maria of Paris

Noah at 3 Weeks

Last night Noah turned three weeks old. To mark the occasion, we held a bath party. It wasn't so much a party as a well-documented bath, but it was a bunch of fun. Noah seemed to enjoy the comfort of floating in warm water again.

Yesterday also marked our transition to cloth diapers. Much thanks to Pam for providing the bulk of our cloth diapers. Our Ebay purchased Swaddlebees made overnight changes much easier.

Pictures will be added as soon as I can figure out how to do frame capture from DVD (or even better, add video from YouTube).

Kucinich: The Black Candidate?

The current Doonesbury Straw Poll asks which candidate has the most authentic claim to blackness

Obama. His grandfather served as a houseboy in Jim Crow-era Africa. His white mom's from Kansas. How much more African-American can you get? If he wins, he goes down in history as the first black president -- so why are we having this conversation? Say Amen, somebody.

Hillary Clinton. Sure, technically she's white, but you could say the same thing about Obama, whose mixed parentage doesn't make him any more black than white. Also, she grew up in Chicago, city of blues and hoods, whereas Obama was raised in Honolulu, about as gay a hometown as there is. Plus, Hil's guy, headquartered in Harlem, still brings it, community cred-wise.

Not surprisingly, Dennis Kucinich is invisible in this discussion of Democratic candidates. What is troubling is that the good folks at Doonesbury had to stretch to include Edwards in this lineup:

John Edwards. Looked down on for being a trial lawyer, referred to by Rush as "Breck Girl", bashed by Ann Coulter as a "faggot" -- Edwards knows about having to fight for respect. Besides, we need three choices for the poll.

(emphasis mine)

Dennis Kucinich, on the other hand might have been and easy choice to include in the line up if there was actually some equivalent coverage of candidates. The Black Agenda Report ran a story with the headline, "Kucinich: The Black Candidate." BAR managing editor Bruce Dixon notes that Kucinich's voting record matches up with the best of the Black Congressional Caucus' voting record "across the board."

The Doonesbury Straw Poll cites "a recent poll" that says 84 percent of Americans claim that a candidate's blackness will have no bearing on the way they vote. Since the performance of racial/ethnic identity is something of a personal project (another story, another time?) I am very interested in the implications of both polls. First, the inherent privilege of whiteness is to disavow the existence of privilege. From Beverly Daniel Tatum's concept of passive racism (and here, and here), we see that uncritical participation in the accumulated privilege of whiteness is problematic. I don't trust the majority of white america to know that they would unconsciously seek to consolidate their relative positions of power by limiting access to the Oval Office (or any other threat, real or perceived to their way of life). Second, BAR's implicit and explicit (re)definition of blackness vis-a-vis Kuchinich mirrors my own thought that there is a voluntary, cultural element to black identity that could be universally accessible. I say the foregoing with full understanding that such a train of thought could go in a number of wrong directions including thinking of black identity and culture as a monolith; ignorance of/insensitivity to the involuntary participation in being stigmatized, excluded, and violated based on skin color.

What remains to be seen is just how accessible media-poor candidates like Kucinich will be to a voting public who desperately needs them. I got a call from a Democratic National Committee fundraiser the other day, who despite his persistence, finally got the message that the DNC screwed up '04 by encouraging the major media outlets to focus on Dean and then Kerry almost exclusively in the primaries. He finally conceded the point that while the DNC is going to support who the public supports (in the primaries) they have the power to make sure that the primaries are, in fact, democratic.

To Do items...marked Urgent

The New York Times has published a list of actions that need to be undertaken in order to reverse the slide into despotism that has marked the Bush43 presidency. Hopefully, these items can be checked off by Congress before the next President takes office. If not, here's hoping that Dennis Kucinich will be the person who oversees the final mop-up.

No matter who is elected to the Oval Office, my great desire is that the American people will see the last decade as an object lesson in what happens when we abdicate our democratic rights and responsibilities and let ego and money become the prerequisites for holding office.

He's Red, He's Curly...

Thanks to Amy Toth for this delightful homage. = )

I am working on the burly part...

More about Fish Camp, the biggest, baddest and most successful student-led college orientation program there is.

What's the deal with Hyberbilirubinemia?

[Please note, I am not a doctor and this is not intended to be medical advice.]

Several of you have asked for more information about the health issues that Noah has dealt with since his birth a week ago. Since his mom and I are first-class worriers, we've taken the time to study up on hyperbilirubinemia, the condition that Noah's doctors believe he has. Hyperbilirubinemia is a condition that is characterized by early jaundice in newborns, but is confirmed by blood test.

Many babies develop jaundice within a couple of days after birth. This is a result of their immature liver trying to recycle red blood cells. Bilirubin is part of the blood that if not flushed out of the body properly can cause jaundice (it also is responsible for that yellow color in bruises and the brown color of stool). In a very few number of cases, babies with very high bilirubin levels can end up with deposits in the brain that can cause mental deficits. Noah's doctors responded aggressively to an early high reading with phototherapy, which can help break down the bilirubin and get it to pass out of the body. In the first couple of days, while the baby's stool is transitioning from the meconium stool to the breastmilk (or formula, I suppose) stool, the color is dark green and looks like it has little black seeds in it. The appearance of these seeds in the diaper means the body is getting rid of the excess bilirubin.

Noah's levels have been coming down from a high of 16 at about two days after birth to just over 14 this afternoon. The older the baby gets, the higher the level they can tolerate, though eventually the levels settle somewhere around 1 for adults.

For those interested, a couple links to read up on hyperbilirubinemia and breastmilk jaundice:

American Association of Pediatrics - Mangement of Hyperbilirubinemia

Cost Consideration in Hyperbilirubinemia Treatment (requires registration)

Breastmilk Jaundice

A Very Merry-Unbirthday...

This particular unbirthday finds Noah at one week old (well later tonight it does). An unbirthday is not the same as a half-birthday, which Becca always manages to remember. Noah is continuing to adapt to home life despite daily visits to the doctor's office (and/or phlebotomist's office) for follow-up bilirubin tests.

This post will have a side-rant now to talk for a second about quality of healthcare. I am a supporter of Dennis Kucinich's Healthcare for All plan, and think that socialized medicine is the only way that we're going to correct the incredible disparity between rich and poor peaople's healthcare access in our nation. One issue that is being solved is the doctor shortage, and while med school enrollment is going up, we need to also address patient care expectations. In the last week we've had a doctor tell us that our baby is starving (he isn't and wasn't) and have had pescriptions for bilirubin management made without consulting--much less being familiar with--Noah's patient history. I explained to the healthcare worker that was relaying this recommendation that I understood that they talk to many patients every day with the same problem, but that this was our first time to deal with it. She agreed and thanked me for correcting her when I said that it was irresponsible to make reccomendations without knowing the context of our case. Our goals for building a sustainable, openly accessible healthcare system, I think, depends on training enough capable doctors to know their patients personally.

Oh, and we need an ethics examination prior to medical training. Our national "Burger King Mentality" has resulted in a generation of doctors (and I realize this is a broad brush; take some responsibility for the integrity of your profession...physician, heal thyself) that are more willing to do surgery than insist on lifestyle change.

[/end rant]

Poor bedside manner aside, we're doing well given where we are at with the jaundice. We had a wonderful consultant come out yesterday to talk to us about making sure that Noah is getting enough food. Why can't they all be like this?

So, now for some photos...

Our phototherapy has gone from Tron/Buckaroo Banzai sci-fi

to

Aeon Flux


Perspective...Grandparents for the first time...
grandparents for the eight time...

Thanks to all who have called, written, and visited. Hope to see you again soon!

Baby K...

Has arrived. Presenting Anthony Noah Kotinek!

Through the prayers of St. Anthony the Great and the All-Praised Theotokos, God grant wisdom, health, and grace to this our first-born child.

Noah is a Bradley Baby. We had a wonderful experience with our nurses at St. Joseph Hospital!


A QUICK UPDATE: We're still at St. Joseph's waiting on the results of a second bilirubin test after some intensive phototherapy. Though jaundice is common in all babies, hospital staff knew that it could be an issue for Noah because his extremely ruddy color indicated a lot of blood volume at birth.








Mom and Noah are doing great! Here we are enjoying a brief respite from those horrid goggles and nasty bright light.

Deep in the Heart of Texas...

We all know what sport reigns. That's right.

Basketball?!?

Seriously, though, it's really nice to see Aggie hoops have this kind of success. Though I might wish I could still walk into Reed Arena and sit wherever I like, I'm content with not even being able to get a ticket because students are filling all available seats (well, almost).

Though we're maintaining in the Top 10 (what will today's #1 Florida loss to Vandy do to the rankings?) nicely, TTU still manages to have our number. We're getting solid play off of our bench, and I was especially pleased to see the score continue to build in our favor when Acie had to sit down during the tu game with an injury. I can't say enough good things about Billy Gillispie...I hope we can keep him around.

Maybe he would like to coach football, too?

Thankee Sai

I've just received my copies of The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born and accompanying sketchbook from Marvel Comics. For the unititiated, Stephen King's The Dark Tower series is the only story he's ever written. All the other stories are bits and pieces of the larger universe in which he writes. I had started espousing this view in the early nineties, but was pleasantly surprised to find that I wasn't grasping at straws when King admitted he interconnection of his work in an epilouge to Insomnia. Since then, a number of guides have become available to document the rich detail of King's imagination, most significantly the Complete Guide to the Works of Stephen King, The Stephen King Universe, and The Road to the Dark Tower.

I'm looking forward to reading King's version of Roland's prehistory, but I know that the read will also be a little sad because it won't be my version of Roland's story. OK, so it's not totally mine...it was a sort of "writer's roulette" on-line RPG that started out at OneList.com (later absorbed into Yahoo! Groups); other contributors were Dennis, Jill, Juli, Karen and Tracy.. My apologies for the horrible site layout, etc.

At any rate, I'm grateful that King hasn't quite mothballed the typewriter yet. Thankee Sai!

Die-hard King fans might be interested in joining SKEMERs.

Theocracy Now?

Email forwards continue to be the most invigorating source of response that will spill over here. Yes, I did make it into 2007 (for those that were worried). It's just been an especially busy start to the year what with group review, the impending arrival of Baby K, work, school, and being named a 2007 Fish Camp namesake (!!!).

Today I received a message with a link to the Diamond Rio video for "In God We Still Trust." A particular lyric stuck out because it was the subject of conversation ending our parish's annual Meatfare Sunday BBQ lunch. Diamond Rio puts it this way, "There's no separation...we're one nation under Him," after first describing the fact that God's name is on our "most important" monuments and on our money. I had already intended to post my thoughts deriving from the lunch conversation, which started by talking about Mitt Romney and his chances for garnering the GOP nod.

My position was that, Romney's Mormon background notwithstanding, we've seen enough evidence from neocons in positions of power and enough blind support for the current administration's consolidation of power to believe that there is a sizable contingent that wouldn't mind dismantling our government to establish a theocracy. Even if the Southern Baptist vote wouldn't swing for Romney (I'm not sure that it wouldn't, and that it would matter if it didn't), it's far less likely that the Baptists with whom I grew up would vote for a Catholic candidate than a Mormon one.

As if to prove my point, one young gentleman joined the conversation by indicating that ours is a Christian nation (at least that's what I thought he said). I started to talk about the economic reasons for emigration to the U.S. and the myth of a Christian agenda on the part of the founding fathers. He quickly interrupted and noted that he understood that we didn't start off that way, but that he hoped we would become a Christian nation. We discussed for a moment, the relative benefits of living in a system that promotes your particular moral and social code, and both agreed that there isn't a better system than what we enjoy now, whatever work might still need to be done. I further pointed out that his suggestion that we become a Christian nation and prohibit public practice of other religions (if acted upon) constitued treason and is the very thing that our armed forces are sworn to protect against. Amazingly, he thoughtfully agreed.

Before hearing Diamond Rio's song, I wasn't sure how representative this young man's position might be, but I'm afraid that we're worse off than I imagined. I'm afraid that since we've allowed our democratic participation to be commodified, people are treating it as a luxury. Though my experience with the U.S. military has helped bring me to a conclusion that all war and preparation for war is at odds with a Christian worldview, I think that mandatory military service would force people to become more invested in the process...and it would certainly cool the urge to surge.

Red-Headed Stepchild

When I first came to A&M in the mid 90's, the titular epithet was a favorite for describing Texas Tech's relative rank as a state "flagship" school. Much has been written on the "rivalry" (e.g. here, here) or lack thereof in recent years. Talk from school administrators about holding the annual game in Dallas certainly does nothing to quash such debate [sidebar: Dr. Gates recently outed himself as Ranger65 on the premiere on-line destination for Texas Aggies, where he reported his own opinions that 1) the game should not be moved to Dallas, and 2) Tech shouldn't be considered our principal rivals].

I started this post two months ago after the first of three heartbreaking losses at Kyle Field that would have gone our way but for the combined total of six points. I saw the loss coming when, at a crucial third and two...from the two yard line...Coach Fran calls a timeout and J. Train knows what's coming because you could see a disgusted look on his face as he pulled his helmet off going to the sideline. Sure enough, when the Ags took the field again, we go for the pass (when we haven't completed one all night) and muff it, settling for a field goal. There are a lot of things that are out of the control of a coaching staff, but play calling is not one of them. (One astute poster at Texags.com put together this impressive set of data, knowing Coach Fran's penchant for coaching by the book, illustrating how thick-skulled this call was.)

Another thing that is a coach's responsibility, in my opinion, is a sense of urgency. Throughout the season I've commented on our apparent lack of a "hurry-up" offense and the lacksadasical manner in which the offense trots from the huddle to the line. I know, it's apples and oranges, but when I played in high school Coach Basinger taught us that the intensity it takes to drive your opponent off the line begins with the attitude you bring from the huddle. The commentators at last night's debacle of a Holiday Bowl echoed those concerns.

I closely resemble the titular epithet, though I can gladly report I wasn't mistreated the way the rest of the saying usually goes. I wonder if the Aggies (at least in football, hopefully not in basketball) are taking Tech's place as the hopelessly ill-fated younger siblings to the perennial powerhouses of the Big XII South (the recent win over t.u. notwithstanding).

Earlier in the week, my brother asked me if the Aggies were going to help him win his fantasy football bracket and I had to confess that the outcome depended alot on whether or not our secondary could stop the big plays. The defense in general and the secondary in particular have made great strides this season. But, we still couldn't shut down Cal's passing attack...and then were too demoralized to shut down their running attack. Perhaps one reason is that it looks like we spend too much time trying to strip the ball. I'd much rather see us hit with abandon (and wrap up!) and let the turnovers happen as they will.

So, I have an idea: co-head coaches. Has this been done before? Could we afford it? We give the Defense to R.C. Slocum and the Offense to Fran...maybe between the two of them they can strike the necessary balance of emotional connectedness and strategy we so despereately need.

Goodbye to 2006

A quick end to the year's postings...since I doubt I'll get the opportunity to set anything else down this weekend, and I'm apparently being quite prolific tonight. Here's hoping that some of you 80 visitors will check back and be rewarded with new (not necessarily useful or interesting) content for doing so.

It has been a year of travel for me: London, Seattle, Vancouver, Oahu, Galveston, Denver, NYC, Philadelphia, Marshall, Shreveport, and Dallas (and that's just nine months!)

I'm a first time daddy (or will be shortly)!

Aggie football gave us hope, Aggie basketball will hopefully give more results than hope.

Big-Government Republicanism failed, let's see what the Dems can do.

Here's hoping for Kucinich in '08 (let's see, in '04 his platform was universal health care and ending the war in Iraq)...maybe Obama will run with him...Dennis is, apparently, the black candidate in the race.

Rummy's out and Dr. Gates is in...

Saddam is also out

and so much more to be thankful for and cry God's mercy. May He bless each of you richly in the coming year!