Here she goes

First Doc Bubbles had to check to see if she would have to give up paying attention to her dreams and using them for 1) poetry and 2) insight into her unconscious. Apparently, it is acceptable in Orthodoxy. Just no soothsaying. (See http://holy-transfiguration.org/library_en/ct_dreams.html.)  Got it. So she has been struggling with what Father had said to her after the Inquirer's class on Friday. He wanted to say a prayer before a service that would mark the start of her becoming a catechumen but only after she was done with the conflict of having to go back to her old church to teach Sunday School.

When she told him, Mr. Crackles got huffy: this means he doesn't even think Protestant Churches are Christian! Well, he probably doesn't, but she didn't think that was really what it was about. The Divine Liturgy teaches. She would be missing those lessons. She wouldn't yet be fully committed. It's not that she's fleeing Sodom like Lot's wife, or even quite slavery in Egypt (but Methodists do give those Egyptian slave masters a run for their money) but she needed to put her hand to the plough and not look back. She hated to let the other teachers down. They needed their breaks so they could be in the worship service sometimes. She had promised to teach. Well, originally she had offered to teach in November, but J. said they wanted the teachers to take two months at a time so could she do December as well. Doc B didn't want to say yes but she felt obliged. Now she would be letting them down for not a couple more Sundays but for more like 6. And the pageant! Maybe she can still help with the pageant.  Why is she saying that? Why is it hard to leave at all, when the Methodist worship style has left her so empty for so long now? Now that she is going, she feels a little sad and admires them: they work so hard.

So last night she dreamed she found herself at the Methodist Church and wasn't sure how she got there and why she was there. She looked up at the fake tree they cover with Chrismons in Advent. Two years ago she was introduced to the making of Chrismons and they were then to be her thing for ever. Chrismons are symbols made out of white felt and glitter modge podge. They are as close to Methodists come to icons. She saw that the tree was looking pretty good and they had managed it just fine without her.  If her dream was telling her anything it was telling her to be free like the Chrismon butterfly

and fly.  So today she wrote J an email and she was fine with taking the kids back over.

So Doc Bubbles is free to go start the process. What is she doing?!!!!!

God is not messing around with Doc Bubbles. No sirree. You want to submit to tradition and wear a pretty head scarf, you say you accept that women cannot be priests since, after all, the purpose of Divine service is not "career fulfillment," let's see how you react to the embodiment of that reality.  In the Orthodox Church, she is learning, all truth is embodied (and she loves that).  Three weeks ago a baby was churched. She had never seen this before. Father took the baby so gently in his arms, smiled lovingly, and carried her through the nave, said prayers, and finally, held her up as high as he could in front of the royal doors (and as he is tall, that is quite high!). The baby took it all in silently. Doc Bubbles thought, what a wonderful look she is getting. A peek perhaps of the holy of holies? But certainly, a bird's eye view of this place where God is worshipped. Doc Bubbles felt deeply touched.

Yesterday, another baby had been baptized on Saturday (she has yet to learn why baptisms don't take place during the main Divine Liturgy and has no doubt that Father can fully explain that) and this baby too was embraced by Father (did she hear him call him a "new warrior for Christ"?--it sounded like that, but she does not hear everything perfectly) and prayed for him through the places. Then this baby, a boy, was not just held before the iconostasis but carried in through the South Doors (she learned their name here). A shockwave rippled through her. Not because it meant boys and girls will have different roles in the Kingdom of God but because it felt like "you are excluded: you are unclean: you are inferior." Surely this is a remnant of that sense that women are unclean? Wouldn't you know, Pravmir has an article up on its page on just this topic of gendered churching that assures her that women are not 100% excluded from entering the altar: Archpriest John Whiteford writes "First off, it should be pointed out that there is not an absolute prohibition against women entering the altar. No one should go into the altar who does not have a blessing to do so. Normally, the altar servers are in fact all male, but in convents, nuns often serve as altar servers…" She can probably accept this and is praying for that. Meantime, she can peek behind the screen by watching Fountain of Immortality.

(She forgot to get to the point. Here it is.) What story does the fact that she rejoiced when she saw girl baby's churching but then, later, said, wait a minute, remind her of? Hmm, it's on the tip… oh yeah, the workers who all got the same wage whether they came late or early. The workers who came early got as much as they agreed on. They got a fair wage.  They were fine with it until they compared themselves to the late comers. Lesson: do not compare. Rejoice in your assigned joy.  And here's another point. The book she's been assigned to read, Mystery of Faith by Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev  mentions this about angels: "According to tradition, not all angels are equal in dignity and closeness to God: there is a hierarchy" (45). And yet, they are happy (or the ones that didn't fall for perhaps this very reason) are.

Getting hooked

Doc Bubbles made a point to fill up her car with gas the other day, as she did not want to have to worry about filling up on the way down to the city for Divine Liturgy at 9:30: she felt proud for remembering this on Thursday and stopping, even though she had to go to the bathroom. Then, when her tank was full, she remembered that she was not actually going to the Orthodox Church this Sunday and was sad. She had to return to Egypt, for her bondage as a Sunday School teacher. Why is it that the burdens of daily prayer and twice weekly fasting (so far) seem lighter than the bondage of the works demanded of everyone at the Methodist Church? Perhaps her attitude will change in a couple weeks when she begins the Nativity Fast. But that fast, at first anyway, contains lots of fish wine and oil allowed days (not that she is really doing the no oil part) so she knows she will not suffer much except for Mr. Crackle's jokes and eye rolling. It is true: probably she will have duties at church when she becomes Orthodox, like bringing all the food for a meal after Divine Liturgy every so often, but for now, her only duty is learning and she is happy! So having only have her five minutes of driving, rather than a half hour is not consoling her. She is hooked, friends. Not to mention, she stopped in Goodwill and got a couple lovely scarves, and is already wearing one to pray at home, but can't wait to "fit in" (even though not all the women at the Orthodox Church she is going to wear them) and wear these pretty scarves. Oh vanity, girl! Are the accessories of piety so attractive now?

The gap

To sum up the last few years, she will quote from Psalm 42:

 These things I remember,
    as I pour out my soul:
how I went with the throng,
    and led them in procession to the house of God,
with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving,
    a multitude keeping festival.

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
    and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
    my help and my God. 

Yes, she did process in and out in those stirring Episcopal Church processions back in days gone by. In and around the Church; even around the Town Common on a rogation day, not long after 9/11. There was joy and hope. She can not explain where it drained away to, but eventually, she left TEC and tried, of all things (it was Mr. Crackle's doing) the Methodists. She tried to help them take their very own sacraments and the writings of the one they were named after (Wesley) more seriously, but… Mr. Crackle's liked having a parking lot. The church is convenient, no one will disagree. And anyone watching Doc Bubbles will wonder greatly as she drives past the big shiny church with the parking lot, driving early before anyone has yet even arrived to open that church, because she is driving a long way, forty minutes, down the highway, through some sketchy neighborhoods to a city that she never has reason to visit, to another church. An Orthodox Church, where half the time she barely knows what is being said!

She's baaack

Doc Bubbles has decided to revive this blog, and write about her current spiritual journey in the third person. She finds her last post from almost three years ago creates a perfect segue way, since the journey involves moving from head knowledge about God to experiential worship. Stay tuned!

Reflections on the Nativity

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, various lectionaries and Bible studies had me reading over and over those passages in which the angels announce various unexpected plans. After a while, the repetition starts sounding ritualistic:

Yikes, an angel.
Don't be afraid. This is going to happen.
Whaaa?

One thing bothered me. It seemed that Zechariah and Mary both had questions to ask about the predicted unnatural pregnancies, but Zechariah got punished for it by being unable to speak until the baby was born, while Mary did not. Was it just because she was young and probably cuter? In the English, their questions seem the same:

Zechariah: How shall I know this?
Mary: How will this be?


To my ear, these sound very similar, and I wondered about the Greek and lo and behold, I found this: http://www.scripture4all.org/OnlineInterlinear/Greek_Index.htm which allowed me to get a rudimentary understanding of the Greek words used.

Zechariah uses the word gnOsomai: he's asking about how he shall know--have knowledge. Mary's question pOs estai is asking how shall this be. In other words, it's a practical, procedural question, not an epistemological one. Given Mary's position and tasks in life, she is just wondering how to implement the plan, not how to understand it. That, apparently, is the correct approach to take when an angel tells you something.

Occupy the North Pole

Times are tough for Santa this year. I can tell because I have seen two television commercials in which the cookies and milk left for him are devoured by others, or begrudged him. In one case, they don’t realize who he is, believing he’s just another car salesman. In another, the shopper has beaten him at his game by purchasing all the presents she needs. I never imagined I’d feel sorry for Santa. I’ve always thought of him as little more than a marketing tool, but this worries me.

It would be nice if Santa’s downgrade really was another symptom, like the tent cities in our cities’ downtowns, of our disgust with the materialistic trappings of American culture, but I fear it is the opposite. We are such amazing consumers, we don’t even need a miracle to help us shop successfully and get what we want anymore. If even our corrupt symbol with its hint of the generosity that Christmas is supposed to be about has become obsolete, we are in serious trouble.

Even my eighteen-year-old stepdaughter, a shopaholic if ever there was one, must be sensing this danger, when she pipes up that she is looking forward to having children, so she can tell them all about Santa and create beautiful Christmases for them. Well, she may just be wishing she weren’t too old to have that magic feeling she vaguely remembers now, as well as hinting that we really ought to be buying nicer gifts for her so she doesn’t feel her loss so keenly. But perhaps she senses it too: Santa is dying. We no longer need to cloak our greed in a jolly red suit: it can prance naked about the streets.

Pharisee babe

Lection meditation Luke 20:19-26

The problem with all the imaginative depictions of the Pharisees in art and film is that they look like what they are inside. So they're all kind of craggy and nasty. That can't be how they really looked. They were probably tall, dark and handsome, with shining eyes that gazed compellingly at folk. Try imagining them that way and see what it reveals. The beautiful and powerful vs. he who had no comeliness.

Relgious rituals and child worship

Having returned from my cousin’s daughter’s bat mitzvah, I want to reflect a bit on my reactions to the service and what that means about my faith. There is so much to admire: the Rabbi’s incredible high heels, the abilities of my young cousins to read Hebrew, the elderly woman beside me who drove their wheelchair bound 90 year old grandmother) to all the services and was following along with the prayers, her finger under the Hebrew letters, the ability of all these people to sit through both an hour and a half service on Friday night and a full two hours on Saturday, the touching moment when she lit the yhartzeit candle for the seven-year=old Holocaust victim she’d been assigned as her twin. And this is actually a key point, what makes this service, though it does delight in the young person, and the family and the passing on of tradition, different from the child worship of St. Jonah’s and so many other protestant churches. It is one thing for those at the top of the social order to cluck over their children. It is frankly a bit unseemly. They have picked it up from the ethnic groups—the bat mitzvahs of the Jews, the quinceanos of the Latinos, etc. St. Jonah’s people admitted it: when they went to a bat mitzvah they were envious. But when they try to translate such rituals into Episcopalianism, and create new quasi-confirmation celebrations, it becomes self-aggrandizement. You see, the difference is not in how deeply both groups hold their faith, or whether or not they really believe any of the things they profess. How many of the Jews holding their prayer books to the Torah and kissing them really believe this to be God’s word? Some. Many, perhaps. But not all. In both liberal traditions, people are welcome and accepted whatever they think, because, after all, how important are all our thoughts? Not very, in truth. But when a victimized group like the Jews delights that our children are here, are alive and understand their connection to the God of our Tradition, it is truly something to fill all hearts with thankfullness; it eases the pain of the terrible loss that mars us all. To look at a beautiful young person reading this ancient text, the very scroll that was rescued from a synogogue where none of the people survived, no matter who or what we believe in, we must be in awe, and thankful. I’m sorry: white middle class Protestants can never emulate this. Don’t try. Let your children sit and behave themselves, please.

The good old days

An Anti-Israeli musician articulates the desire underlying all those who object to Israel's right to defend itself when he states that he will play music "from the time when Jews didn't have armies and police to harass freedom fighters, when Jews were victims..." Ah yes, I remember those days. Wasn't there something about ovens back then? See Gaza Protesters for the full story, including reasonable explanations of why the Israelis are not the ones using innocent people as cannon fodder: Hamas is guilty of that.

Lectionary Meditation

Feeling rather gloomy, after the prayers for the people at the Ascension Day service suggested in not so many words, that the nation of Israel ought to just roll over and play dead (be dead) I was struck in today's office reading that Luke says Jesus was 'full of joy through the Holy Spirit." Luke 10:21-24

I'll have to do a search on this later, but it seems to me that Jesus doesn't really express a lot of joy or delight or pleasure. Mostly he is weeping or mad or just plain exasperated, particularly because the disciples just don't get what he is saying about his impending death. This time he is joyful because they are having an aha moment. As a teacher, I can relate! Okay, he may not have succeeded in reaching the "wise and learned" but he got through the "little children."

Please stop clinging desperately to the wisdom of this world. Read this: "Palestine Betrayed"

Multiverses

The miserable chaplain who's losing his faith in Catch-22, which I'm listening to on my iPod, wonders what God was doing for all that endless infinite time before the creation of the universe. That's actually a theologically correct question to ask, because God must exist outside time and space, whether there is one universe or many. You are probably aware that there is a sudden spate of programs explaining astrophysics to laypeople. Likely this is due to how good the images all look in Hi Def. The last one we watched dealt with the possibility of parallel universes. I knew physicists consider this a possibility, but I didn't know they'd actually got funding to run experiments in their giant collider that might possibly create a particle that could somehow prove their existence. Of course, it could go on indefinitely without disproving it.

Mr. Crackles and I got to talking. Maybe Heaven and Hell are just parallel universes. Heaven's the place where everything went right and we can't get there in these bodies but our souls can slip through the wormhole. There could be zillions of Hells. Maybe God exists in that Heaven dimension. He can reach through to us, but we can only reach Him with spiritual energy: prayer. Hmmm. The scientists say someday we could replicate our universe if we can figure out how to send something through to a parallel universe. Maybe God did that, made our universe that way.

I get a chill. Mr. Crackles doesn't see what my problem is. He likes that God can be explained as a possibility even scientists can accept. But then he's just bigger and better than us but not ontologically different. I can be annoying and use words like ontologically when I have to. But he's soo soo vastly beyond us: isn't that what God is? I don't think so, actually. Better isn't better enough for me to give my soul over even if my soul would benefit. My God can enter the space/time continuum but He doesn't have to. The God of a parallel universe seems stuck there somehow, not really infinite. My God does exist in some way I can't understand before time and space.

Deja Vu

Listening to the news revealing more details about the behavior that drove a teenage girl in a neighboring town to hang herself, I find myself reacting the same way as I did during the hearings for Clarence Thomas, when Anita Hill described his sexual harassment. Oh, you mean that isn't just normal boss behavior, school behavior? The sad fact is, both kinds of harassment have been standard operating procedure since time immemorial. Now we are bringing it to light and saying it is wrong. Will that change it? I don't know. I just wish Phoebe had been tougher, like me, and like all the others who survived the malicious talk and threats.

Lectionary Meditation

January 8, 2010

Today’s readings all present pairings: there’s the “Massah and Meribah” of Exodus 17, aka, Kvetchin’ and Moanin’ a name that could be given to some churches I know. “Is the Lord with us or not” is the question those who were thirsty were asking. Moses names the places after the behaviors. In the time of John’s gospel, the places named are already redolent with associations: Bethlehem, the place of royal promise, Galilee, the place of those who do not count. Which one is Jesus from? It can’t be both, can it? But that is the genius of the Gospel narrative. It is both. And Colossians proclaims that union: visible, invisible, earth, heaven. What with holding all those things together, combining Galilee and Bethlehem was a small feat indeed!

Unauthorized intercessions

I just noticed that the rubrics for many liturgies in the BCP include an opportunity for "authorized intercessions." Does this mean that if prayers are invited all prayers are authorized? What if someone prayed for something unacceptable to the community, like, I dunno, that more Republicans win the mid-term elections? I've never heard of an officiant screening the intercessions before they are offered. The subversion potential is great. I think I'll name my next blog "unauthorized intercessions."

naming a new disease

We talk about people who can't keep from stealing as kleptomaniacs. We need to name a disease for writers who can't keep from plagiarizing. I really think there is a developing syndrome. It's happening more and more among published writers who definitely know better. And a recent student of mine, whom I thought I had put the fear of the Lord into on this matter, starting copying my posts in her comments to others students!

The Gospel According to Dr. Who

I'm told that the exec producer and head writer of Dr. Who (Russell T. Davis) is an atheist, but he must have imbibed the Christian story in his mother's milk, because it seems to be the Ur-Story behind all the stories. I just finished watching (most of, missed a few) Season II.

WARNING: SEASON II (ROSE TYLER) SPOILERS.

I was struck by how Rose's trajectory illustrates this passage from the Gospel according to Mark, chapter 10:


29"I tell you the truth," Jesus replied, "no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel 30will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life. 31But many who are first will be last, and the last first." (New International Version).

In the last, "Doomsday," episode, she reminds the Doctor that she has already made the choice of him over her mother (whom she loves). She is willing to die with him to save the world again. At the last minute before she dies, she's whisked away to the parallel dimension where she will live with a restored family, including a father who died when she was very small. Of course, unlike the Kingdom of Heaven, she doesn't get to see the Doctor anymore when she's there. But still.

Kid stuff

So I’d probably seen about twenty or so Dr. Who episodes before I found out that the British consider this a children’s program. While Buffy was a teen-oriented show, it wasn’t for children, and we wouldn’t let the girls watch it when they were younger. Dr. Who is for children? Have I already entered my second youth then, that I find it engrossing and even scary at times? I wouldn’t even have known it was considered a children’s show if I hadn’t watched some of the supplemental material on the DVD and heard the actor speak of it that way. When I started watching, I did tell my husband he’d probably like it, because there wasn’t graphic violence (the fight scenes on Buffy used to bother him). But that didn’t detract from the fact that one usually gets caught up in the real possibility that the universe might be extinguished, or all human life made into stew for the delectation of some alien species. The suspense feels real, though one knows that the doctor, in some incarnation or other, will survive. His survival is pretty much the only thing one can count on.

I remember railing against the crap the girls used to watch on Disney or the other kids’ channels. They all told the same message: kids are powerful; kids know best; kids will fix the world. (It’s no wonder they voted for the big kid who promised to do so.) So I guess that’s the pabulum I expect from children’s programming. The kind of stuff that moves product!

Children in the US were not to be told that the universe is a deeply mysterious and deeply dangerous place, full of aliens that are basically the same as Buffy’s demons, only with pseudo-scientific explanations. They should never be told the truth about human loneliness and fragility. So what makes the British consider it reasonable to reveal it to the young ones? Well, the answer is clear, and was made so in the third episode of the new series, “The Empty Child” which takes us back to England’s primal trauma: World War II. Homeless children fend for themselves, and one in particular who wanders around asking “are you my mummy” haunts the city, spreads like an infection (due to some nanobots, of course).

English children experienced conditions that Americans never have and they have grown up and passed to their children an awareness of the darkness and fragility. Americans still believe they are Superman or at least Mighty Mouse come “to save the day.” I have to say that I find the British view far truer and more compelling. We do need a doctor, because we are very sick.

I have a writing coach

Julia had suggested that I divorce the writing process from work: get out of the office, get away from the computer. It is working, as I now begin to think of scribbling the novel as a relaxing activity, something I can do even if I’m a bit tired, or have already poured a glass of wine. That doesn’t mean I don’t still have to use a system of rewards and threats: no tv or novel reading until you’ve put in your fifteen minutes. Yes, fifteen minutes is what I start with and sometimes it’s longer and sometimes it isn’t, but even fifteen can produce a handwritten page or two. And, thanks to the liberal use of dialogue, the pages start to add up. It’s really much easier than all the agonizing I’d been experiencing. But the practice has not yet become truly a daily one. Particularly now with the thought of a possible full time position at Online U. and the reality of needing to finish prepping for the other online class, the discipline is slipping. When I went to see Julia last Wednesday, with pages I’d hurriedly typed up that morning, (having snatched the time from grading, so I’d have to complete that around 10 pm for the midnight deadline), I thought perhaps I’d not make a follow-up appointment, tell her I’d call to make one. Was it really worth it, after all, paying her when I was barely hanging on to do this thing? It’s still hard for me to define what role she plays in my life. Is she just a writing coach or is she also a therapist? My ambivalence washed away when I walked in the door and she welcomed me. She is so nice! What is it about her? Is it the way she somehow feels like a grandmother: happy to see me, totally accepting? I’ve really never had a therapist that made me feel that way. Let yourself experience that, I told myself. You need it!

Unwelcome blurbs, or appropriate ones?

Sorry, I'm ROTL, that Jimmy-gone-to-the-dark-side-Carter and Stephen Walt are upset that their books have been endorsed by Osama Bin Laden. It is absolutely predictable that their anti-Semitic lies are in accordance with his distorted and warped vision. I hope his "recommendations" ring in the heads of those who choose to read these books and help to keep their propaganda in perspective.