A Christmas Present

Frederica Mathewes-Green's recent book, Welcome to the Orthodox Church has quite a generous portion on preview at Google Books.  

Doc Bubbles is shocked!

Shocked, she was, to discover after the four hour service that downstairs the Nativity Fast included a gigantic bottle of---bourbon?  Aren't Russians supposed to drink vodka?  What is this?  But she does not complain, since bourbon is the only liquor she enjoys straight.  And the merriment was true to her vision of the Russian soul. "You are my family" Father toasted those seated around the table, including, she felt, Doc Bubbles.

And Father was right:  the joy of the feast is only truly experienced by those who have fasted. At least that is the only way she can explain why she is the only one in the house awake and merry at 10:45 Christmas morning. (And she did not follow the fast strictly. She doesn't have to yet, since she can't take Communion yet. She can only imagine how she would be floating now if she had…)

Earlier, Doc Bubbles and Stepdaughter1 had gone to the 7 p.m. service at the Methodists, to hear Mr. Crackles last time singing in the choir. SD1 likes to sing carols though she won't say prayers. It was pleasant, and Doc B did feel wistful seeing everyone again (and there was only one prayer that was so poorly written her hackles had to raise.)

Then, back at the house, she packed up the quiche she had made for the feast and bid adieu to Mr. Crackles and SD1 who were sure she had to be completely mad. (It was the first SD1 heard about the practice of standing throughout the service. Though, as it happened, there was quite a bit of sitting during the first part, which was the Nativity of Christ Vigil. The Nativity of Christ Divine Liturgy began at 0:00 a.m. as per the schedule. She hadn't known there was such a time.) She tried to explain it to herself, standing there, listening and crossing herself. The best explanation she can offer is that the Orthodox Liturgy is more like a meditation than a performance.

Christ is born!
Glorify him!

Dr. Who on Christmas Morning

Well, perhaps Doc Bubbles would read the Gospel into any episode she happened to turn on this morning on the Dr. Who marathon, but "The Witch's Familiar" certainly seemed perfect for her first Orthodox Christmas. The word "mercy" is the giveaway that Clara is trapped inside the Dalek. Mercy should not be in the evil one's DNA/vocabulary and would not be if Dr. Who had not shown mercy to Davros. And of course, the whole capture the Doctor's regeneration energy (resurrection power) to use for evil purposes is the devil's plan that is, as always from eternity, thwarted.

Amen.

Christ is Born!
Glorify Him!

You go girl

So on Wednesday America had the first mass shooting apparently orchestrated by a female terrorist. On Thursday "Defense Secretary Ashton Carter ruled Thursday that women will be allowed to serve in all combat jobs in the U.S. military."  http://time.com/4135583/women-combat-marines-ash-carter/.  Am I the only person finding this  ironic? Or sad?

All but diss and dat

Last night she dreamed she was still in graduate school and had not yet become Doc Bubbles. One of her professors was angry with her and said she should not continue, even though the dissertation was practically complete. Not-yet-doc was devastated. She found her way to a reception desk at health services and asked what they could do for an emotional emergency and they shook their heads and said they had no time for that. Continuing to despair, she tried to decide whether being a perpetual ABD (all but dissertation) was good enough but mustered up the strength to fight, and sought out her other committee members to argue her case.

Hmm, perhaps she feels the catechumenate is like the process of initiation required for the lofty states of education.  Or perhaps she feels that this process is stripping her of these markers of her worldly accomplishments and identity.  Or both.

This catechumenate

Doc Bubbles finds this  a very strange and unsettling time, this catechumenate. A lonely time. She has left behind friends at the Methodist Church. Her husband is annoyed when he isn't just making light of it. There seems to be no clear schedule of classes to guide her through the  five months she has to wait before making confession and availing herself of the sacraments. They say you cannot be an internet Orthodox but that is mostly all she has.

Still, at Thanksgiving Dinner, she reported being thankful for that she was still, at her advanced age, learning new things. She did not specify what things, as it was a small but very religiously diverse group of people who this year managed not to get into any conversations that would make her and Mr. Crackles feel persecuted. In fact, they had a very enjoyable time, especially when they played the game Story Cubes. The silliness reminded her of the last time she taught Sunday School at the Methodists when she had the children make up a game using random objects, as an object lesson in why God provides the Ten Commandments. She felt a pang of missing those the kids and knew that, even if someday she taught SS at the Orthodox Church it wouldn't be so playful. Perhaps she will look into becoming a Big Sister.

"Say a prayer"

That was no brief little prayer and poof you're a catechumen thing. She is learning that there is no such thing as a cursory prayer in the Orthodox Church.

She stood behind Father at the door to the nave. First he faced away from her and she was confused. Then he turned around and laid his hand on her head (he hardly had to bend his arm to do this, because he is so tall and she is small and felt even smaller staring at his cassock. No wonder so many wear such high heels to church.) He prayed over her and hesitated at her name. She thought he had forgotten it and murmured it but no, it was because he was meditating for a moment on the possible patron saints she had mentioned but she guesses he was not sold on St. Isadora (her choice at the moment). So he said we'll call you (her name) (no, it is not really Doc Bubbles) for now and went on. Then he stopped and said, "Now we go to the icon" and when she looked she saw all the people who had come already for Matins were turned to face them. Of course, they would face the Priest when he was praying, but Doc Bubbles had no idea anyone was paying attention! So she was startled and touched to see that this was not just a private event, but one in which they were all participating. (It's cool the way these things happen without a lot of preparation and put it in the bulletin and this and that. It's like naturally there are going to be special ministrations.) He brought her up to the main icon of today's martyrs to venerate and then to the icon of the Virgin of the Sign that is visiting. Then he lead her over to the confessional, and explained that is where confessions take place, and there's an icon of Jesus on the wall and the Gospel Book  and a Cross  on the table. These represent the Word and God's Love and she was to kiss them.  When asked later what he told her over there, the best way she could explain it was "that's the Jesus corner." (He says everything in these unique ways that are hard to repeat.) Then he blessed her again and took her by the hand (so she wouldn't trip down the stairs) and said she could go back to her usual spot (which she has kind of settled on). But on the way many of the ladies came to say "congratulations" and "welcome" and kiss her so she felt really warm and good.

Oh and there are two Divine Liturgies to attend next weekend!

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.