Toward Attention

Soul, Motility, Vitality: Mind-birthing and Reason-sending

"The soul begets the mind and causes reason to proceed from it [...]" -- Catholicos (Patriarch) Timothy of Baghdad to the Caliph Mahdi.

Interesting: the soul, the motive and generative power, gives rise to mind and reason. How modern.

Regarding the Unity of God

Against univocity, the Catholicos Timothy of Baghdad reportedly told the Caliph Mahdi this:

"It was not indeed with the intention of lowering God to a comparison wiht His creatures, that from the latter I drew a comparison concerning Him who in reality has no comparison with the created beings at all. I made use of such similes solely for the purpose of uplifting my mind from the created things to God. All the things that we have with us compare very imperfectly with the things of God."

and then he continues, on this point:

"Even in saying of God that He is one, we introduce in our mind division concerning Him, because when we say for instance one person, one angel, one denarius, one pearl, we immediately think of a division that singles out and separates one denarius from many denarii, one pearl from many pearls, one angel from many angels, and one person from many persons."

making clear that the attribution of oneness is divisive:

"One would not be counting rightly but promiscuously if one were to say: one person and two angels, one horse and two asses, one denarius and two pence, one pearl and two emeralds. Every entity is counted with the entities of its own species, and we say: one, two, or three persons; one, two, or three angels; one, two, or three denarii; one, two, or three pearls, as the case may be. With all these calculations in saying one we introduce, as I said, the element of division, but in speaking of God we cannot do the same thing, because there are no other entities of the same species as Himself which would introduce division in Him in the same sense as in our saying: one angel or one person. He is one, single and unique in His nature. Likewise when we say three we do not think of bodies or numbers, and when we say: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we do not say it in a way that implies division, separation, or promiscuity, but we think of it as something high above us in a divine, incomprehensible, and indescribable way."

This is an exerpt from Readings in World Christian History, Volume 1:Earliest Christianity to 1453 by Coakley & Sterk.

Traveling Light

I noted in a previous reflection how easy it is to attempt to blunt or change the commandments so that they might suit our current disposition -- we would have God change, not us; we would have God be the solemn confirmation of our largely unrepentant sinful condition. The commandments are inconvenient (they are the real "Inconvenient Truths" for us wicked men), as is God, and so we would modify them. Only dead things can be modified at will this way, like ore.

The commandments would cut away sin from us as a surgeon's scalpel removes cancer, but we usually will not have them. There are those among us -- the saints show us by their example -- who would take up the challenge of the commandments as the only measure of true heroism, as the only means of true love for God ("if you love me, keep my commandments"). But heroism, obedience and love are not equal.

In chapter 10 of the Gospel According to St. Mark, there is a rich young man who comes to Jesus asking him what he must do to be saved. Jesus says that the young man "know[s] the commandments," and cites for him the commandments that concern his fellow men. The young man replies that he has "observed [all these] from [his] youth," and then Jesus "look[s] upon him" and "love[s] him," and says:

You lack one thing; go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.

We could allow our minds to wander immediately to the verse "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also," but our over-familiarity with these verses almost invariably only blunts the Son's words and commands of their power to cut us loose and liberate us into the freedom of the glory of the sons of God.

It is clear: the idea that we are citizens of heaven is quite literal. The kingdom of God is a real kingdom, and if we are to enter into fellowship with her citizens, if we are to submit to her King, if we are to join the angelic liturgy of her perpetual festival, then we must let go of the things of this world, we must not allow this world to chain us. But chained to this world we all are from our birth, and it is the state we come into because of our passions -- our biology, as it were, sets us up from the beginning, though it is plastic enough that it can be liberated, and made to serve the soul and the spirit. Instead of taking baggage here to weigh us down, we must "encumber" ourselves with heavenly things, with virtues, obedience, holy acts and a burning love for the Triune God. These things will secure us with roots in heaven, and lighten us, and so lightened we shall ascend to heaven with an angelic weightlessness, with an upwards gravity.

The stretch of text from 9:33 to 10:45 forms a unit. The motifs of weightlessness, child-likeness, power-and-authority and an angelic human fellowship with the self-emptying Messiah are all wrapped up together in one. Again: the whole stretch of text from 9:33 to 10:45 is really only about one thing, from several angles.

I remember reading a Protestant Pastor once, whose "thing" it was to look into possible Aramaic words that would have lay behind the Greek expressions that have come down to us in the New Testament, to see how these might shed light on the text. One of the passages he singles out for his experiments is the passage in 10:25 about the camel and the needle ("It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."). He claimed that the word for "Camel" is nearly the same as the word for "Rope" in Aramaic, and says that this makes more sense in the passage because the metaphor of the needle is being used. I think the reading of "camel" here is original, though, because a camel is a beast of burden. It is weighed down with so many things, and made to carry a load that is not its own by nature -- someone else makes camels to carry what they do, and not for the camel's convenience.

It is also so with us. We have too much baggage, too many concerns. We are too entangled, as the Lord elsewhere figures us in St. Mark as being choked by thorns (in the parable of the sower, chapter 4).

A man who cuts off entanglements because he fears passions is truly wise. (St. Isaac of Nineveh: 1st Part, 4th Discourse, #14)

Now, children are the best example of a richness that is unfettered, unencumbered by many cares ("Martha, Martha") and (generally) trusting. It is thus that they are held out as examples, as symbols of the children of the Father, adopted brothers of the Word who is the Father's Son by "nature."

Brethren! We ought to throw away the ballast of our cares and concerns and entanglements -- the ballast especially of our sin, as it distracts us from the Countenance of Christ and his commandments, from fellowship with him and his angels and his saints. "if [our] hand causes [us] to sin," we should "cut it off; it would be better for [us] to enter life maimed than with two hands to go to Gehenna, to the unquenchable fire." (9:42+)

First, loosen external bonds from yourself and then be solicitous to bind your heart to God.
(St. Isaac of Nineveh: 1st Part, 4th Discourse, #2)

One who promises abandonment of the world and quarrels with men on account of things, so as not to be deprived of his pleasure, is completely blind. He has left the whole world voluntarily and quarrels for a part of it! (St. Isaac of Nineveh: 1st Part, 4th Discourse, #11)

St. Isaac reminds us elsewhere (I believe in this same work cited above -- I cannot find the place now) that not only are they martyrs who die for the sake of Christ and are put on display before men, but those who keep the commandments. Our American romanticism may look with wistful and saccharine longing on the trials of the martyrs, or else shudder at the prospect in fear or even horror, but we rarely set ourselves to keeping the Lord's words. We think we do, but we usually just keep those which temperament, training or habit align us with, more or less, and we usually move to interpret the commandments in such a fashion as to confirm our current state as "meet and right," instead of ascending the mountain of God, and going deeper into thick darkness. 

Yet, it is hard for many to keep the commandments, because they have never really seen the Face of God in Jesus Christ, and so they are not attracted to the Glory of the Father as it is seen in Christ Jesus -- these do not know what they would be putting on by "putting on Christ." More later.

Prayer and Theology

The Ochlophobist has a great post here. I excerpt a section that struck me:

years ago, some ROCOR monks I met at, of all places, the International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo (an academic conference), told me that if one really wants to learn Orthodox theology, the first step is to cease to self-consciously attempt to learn Orthodox theology - for such is a dangerous reversal of the right ordo. The first thing to do is to learn how to pray, and if you are not to a point where you are ready to learn that sort of prayer which takes real effort (an actual prayer rule), you might start with doing the dishes for the people you are responsible to love, or trying to speak with kindness, or other similar things basic to living a human life (the idea being that it takes some softness of heart to begin any serious regimen of prayer). It seems rather common (though I know this primarily through literature, thus, I don't really know it) that when a monk comes to the monastery, he spends years doing rather mundane things before they let him anywhere near theology.

But in American Orthodoxy, where all your ecclesial/theological dreams get to come true right away if that is what you want, we can bypass such drudgery, and get straight to the point of dismissing the old bad texts by way of the new good texts.

I thought this well-put. We need to repent from sin and not anything else.

St. Isaac the Syrian has many good things to say about the Hours, the traditional prayer-rule of the Church. An example:

The sign in the soul which reveals the onset of thick darkness of mind is this: negligence, at first in the divine office and in prayer. For unless you fall from there in the first place, a path of error cannot be opened in your soul. Then when you are deprived of God's help, which serves as a way to Him, you will fall readily into the hands of the adversary. And further! When you have no care for the things of virtue, then you will be carried off by all means to those things which are contrary. Any departure from one side is the beginning of an approach to the opposite side. Let the work of virtue prevail in your soul; reflect on it, et cetera.(On Ascetical Life, Second Discourse, 19, p.36-37 of the SVS Press edition)

St. Ephrem the Syrian on "Our Neighbor, Our Overlord"

A man's neighbor has become his god:

every moment he seeks to please him;

if he does wrong, he feels shame before him,

if he does him an injury, he is afraid;

or if he does him some good,

then he has spoiled that good by his thirst for praise.

Such a man has become an abject slave

in all these ways.

The Good One gave us freedom,

but we have reduced this to slavery.

May we exchange, for Your lordship,

this overlord we have made for ourselves!

(Hymns on Paradise, 7.31, p.130 of the translation by Sebastian Brock)

Retreat, and St. Isaac the Syrian

I'll be on a retreat this weekend, dear readers, so I shall not be writing posts again until Monday or Tuesday.

I leave you with an ascetical note from St. Isaac the Syrian, from his aptly-titled work On Ascetical Life, published by SVS Press (most highly recommended).

1.6: "For until the soul is intoxicated with faith in God, thus receiving a sense of its powers, the weakness of the senses will not be healed and the soul cannot trample down visible matter, whicch is a screen against what is within and not perceived."

1.12: "Anyone who is intent on honor will not lack occasions for grief."

1:26: "If a person's mind is wearied by solicitude for transitory things, discourses concerning virtue will not stir his thought to desire [virtue] ardently."

1:27: "Liberation from material impulses precedes bonds in God, as it were by essence. And though, as if by divine providence of grace, sometimes the latter precedes the former so that love surpasses love, still, in the usual order of the divine economy, common succession is different. You then observe the common order. If grace precedes you, it is for its own sake. If not, you must ascend the spiritual tower along the way everyone goes by tradition."

2:19: "The sign in the soul which reveals the onset of thick darkness of mind is this: negligence, at first in the divine office and in prayer. For unless you fall from there in the first place, a path of error cannot be opened in your soul. Then when you are deprived of God's help, which serves as a way to Him, you will fall readily into the hands of the adversary. And further! When you have no care for the things of virtue, then you will be carried off by all means to those things which are contrary. Any departure from one side is the beginning of an approach to the opposite side. Let the work of virtue prevail in your soul; reflect on it, et cetera."

2:21: "The work of the cross is twofold. And this corresponds to the duality of nature which is divided into two parts: into endurance of bodily afflictions which comes about through the energy of the irascible part of the soul and is called practice; and into the subtle work of the mind in sacred studies and constant prayer and so forth, which is done with that desiring part and is called contemplation. Practice purifies the passionate part through the power of zeal; contemplation refines that part capable of knowing by means of the energy of the love of the soul, which is its natural longing."

2:22: "Therefore whoever before discipline in the former part passes eagerly - not to say slothfully - to that second because of its sweetness, brings to pass the anger which God breathes against him. This is because before he has put to death his members that are on the earth, namely, before he has healed the sickness of his thoughts by patiently enduring the labor and shame of the cross, he has presumed to imagine in his mind the glory of the cross. And this is what was said by the saints of old: 'If the mind desires to ascend the cross before the senses cease from weakness, the anger of God will attack it.' "

A Lenten Excerpt from the Odes of Solomon

From the 2nd Century (Syrian?) Christian hymnal known as the Odes of Solomon:

From Ode 11:

My heart was pruned and its flower appeared, / then grace sprang up for it, / and it produced fruits for the Lord.

For the Most High circumcised me by his Holy Spirit, / then he uncovered my inward being toward him, /  and filled me with his love.

And his circumcising became my salvation, / and I ran in the Way in his peace, / in the Way of truth.

Theodore of Mopsuestia on Prayer and "Works" (how I am growing to hate the poverty of that word)

Here is an excerpt from the beginning of Theodore of Mopsuestia's work on the Lord's Prayer:

Our Lord also, after having said: "Go you, therefore, and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit," added: And teach them to observe all things I have commanded you." He showed in this that, alongside the doctrine of religion and the right knowledge, we should endeavour to harmonise our lives with the Divine commandments. They added to the words of the Creed the prayer which our Lord taught in short terms to His disciples, because it contains the teaching for good works, in a sufficient manner. Every prayer contains teaching of good works to any one who cares to think attentively of duty, because we wish our works to be that which we ask in our prayer that they should be. He who cares, therefore, for perfection and is anxious to do the things that are pleasing to God, will pay more attention to prayer than any other thing, and he who does not care for any virtue and is not anxious to do the things that are pleasing to God, it is clear that he will show also no interest in prayer.

As we are pleased at all times to meet, and to deal and converse with, a person whom we love most, and as we do not care to meet or to speak to people whom we do not love, so those who possess God in their mind and are very anxious to do the things that please Him are wont to make use of frequent prayers, because they believe that they work and converse with Him when they pray. He, therefore, who despises Divine things and cares for other things is not anxious to pray. This is the reason why the blessed Paul orders us to pray always so that by the frequency of prayer we should implant in us the love of God and the zeal for the things that please Him.

This is the reason why our Lord also, who was man by sight and by nature, and who put in practice this mode of life and good works, showed great zeal for prayer; and because He was busy in day-time with teaching the things that were necessary, He devoted the hours of His night to the work of prayer. He used to go to lonely places in order to teach that it is necessary for the one who prays to be free from every care, so that he might extend the sight of his soul towards God and contemplate Him, and not be drawn to any other thing. He chose His times and places so that He might attract us and save us from all the disquietude by which the soul is disturbed and agitated, and sometimes involuntarily distracted from the subject it has in mind.

Is it possible to put this better? How many things are contained in what he writes here!

St. Ephraim

Blessed is he
    for whom Paradise yearns.
Yes, Paradise yearns for the man whose goodness makes him beautiful; 
    it engulfs him at its gateway, 
it embraces him in its bosom, 
    it caresses him in its very womb; 
for it splits open and receives him 
    into its inmost parts.
But if there is someone it abhors, 
    it removes him and casts him out;
this is the gate of testing
    that belongs to Him who loves mankind. 

Response: Blessed is He who was pierced and so removed the sword from the entry to Paradise.

From Sebastian Brock's translation of St. Ephraim the Syrian, Hymns on Paradise, 2:1

Cherubic Epistemology

We cannot get outside of our own experience. That we all see the world from somewhere: that we all have an angle or a perspective is inevitable. "You are here." The appearance of things has quite a bit to do with the place we are at.

The "location" we occupy is not merely spatial, historical, cultural, or individual-historical: it is also biological. Our sensory organs are not merely windows into the world, and do not "lift" qualities off of things (even if they do give us real access to a real world "out there"). Our sensory organs are pre-set to select certain features of our environment and represent them to us in a fashion that is expedient to our body's basic biological concerns -- surviving and thriving, etc.

"...there are many kinds of eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes -- and consequently there are many kinds of "truths," and consequently there is no Truth."  -Nietzsche.

We might hear someone suggest at this point that science can deliver the Truth of reality to us (Truth, without remainder), as it is "impartial" and the scientific method requires that any theoretical model of things scientists propose be demonstrably supported by experiments whose conditions and results can be replicated by anyone following a certain procedure -- it purportedly eliminates the supplements and selectivity of the eye's optics, so to speak, and dispels illusion. No one can seriously entertain, in their lives, the idea of a world stripped of our vital interests, a world of quantity and not quality, a world of facts and not values, which is what this ideology of "scientism" should logically lead us to assent to as the Truth (even if it doesn't, and often cloaks its valuations by legitimating them in various ways). The scientific method itself requires and presupposes an observer making lots of fact-determining valuations. It is not merely the working of an impersonal algorithm, mechanically delivering truth to us. It does not bracket our experience. However, if we wish to see well, we must take advantage of the eyes engaged in this practice.

Many of us are so accustomed to thinking of truths as merely "the way the world appears from a certain perspective" that they have given up on Truth, and have accepted our own experience, our own subjectivity as something like a cage (some of these still act as though they possessed Truth, though). Many of those who have not rejected the possibility of Truth assert themselves and the narrowness of their own experience more and more strongly (and many who think well upon Truth do not assert themselves, behaving as though they accepted that "there are as many truths as there are eyes").

"First take the plank out of your own eye, then you shall be able to take the splinter out of your brother's eye." -Christ Jesus

I need my brother's eyes. Mine are not enough. I cannot see myself without the eyes of my brother.

"...that every elevation of man brings with it the overcoming of narrower interpretations; that every strengthening and augmentation of power opens up new perspectives and enjoins believing in new horizons -- this runs through my writings." -Nietzsche

An augmentation of power via Nietzsche will at best run into the glass-cieling of a less-narrow interpretation, as it is not the power of the cross. Taking up our cross is not self-mutilation; entering into the Lord's Sabbath is not friendship with death (is no necrophilia properly speaking). It is no dimunition of vital power; it does not make us small. By ascending the cross and descending into the baptismal waters, we rise to newness of life, we begin our ascent into an angelic glory.

Love never lacks the power to move as it will, and never lacks the knowledge to effect its desire, as it is the Life of the Trinity, and thus does not require a threshold of means and ends to be effectual, even if it makes use of these as it grows in its radiations. It is not force that defines things (a paraplegic's love is not without benefactions), for one can hate and reject the guillotine even as it looms above, but love, for love tends to and cares for and adorns all things, seeing each thing clearly for all its beauty and laboring to reveal it as such (that love can be rejected means not that it is impotent, but that hell is indeed locked from the inside). By moving outside of ourselves in love, we transcend the narrowness which our biology would foist upon us, we enter into the lives of those about us, and we hospitably let them enter into our own life. Thus, we gather into ourselves a host of eyes, we ourselves become Cherubic.

We cannot hold these eyes in ourselves of our own power, but only insofar as we recognize Christ Jesus as the Truth who defines our life, and thus receive the begetting of the Infinite Son in us as the One who defined us before we were born, and who is himself our destiny, and who holds the worlds together.

"The prophet [Ezekiel] was viewing the mystery of the human soul that would receive its Lord and would become his throne of glory. For the soul that is deemed to be judged worthy to participate in the light of the Holy Spirit by becoming his throne and habitation, and is covered with the beauty of ineffable glory of the Spirit, becomes all light, all face, all eye. There is no part of the soul that is not full of the spiritual eyes of light. That is to say, there is no part of the soul that is covered with darkness but is totally covered with spiritual eyes of light. For the soul has no imperfect part but is in every part on all sides facing forward and covered with the beauty of the ineffable glory of the light of Christ, who mounts and rides upon the soul." -Pseudo Macarius

Those who are Cherubic, who are angels in the flesh, are not extracted from time or situatedness. Rather, they have their brother's eyes through a God-like self-abasing self-emptying love, by which they move outside of themselves for the sake of the other, and thus into the life of the other.

They are further outfitted with more eyes through constant self-vigilance, by which they search out sin through the rebukes they are blessed with from the brethren, their friends, family and their enemies. Removing the sin which the eyes of others spy out, they are made ever more free and ever more beautiful, while the range of their vision and power of action grow. They are in time, but not entirely - as they conquer sin, or as they suffer the Spirit to conquer sin and death in them, time is in them, and space, as the incorruptible and eternal power of the Resurrection and the age to come is present in them.Their perspective is creaturely, yet, angelically participating in God's life and activity, it is no longer a hindrance, no longer a cage.

It is the Godhead who defines all things. In the maelstrom of competing interpretations and perspectives, where there is so much jockeying for a more comprehensive account and superior interpretive power (often via forceful means), it is a blessed thing to have about men and women who are Cherubic, and who can gather together what is broken. Blessed is he who can descend with the Lord in his humility, rise with him in Glory, and thus hold all things together in love. Blessed are they who know such souls and the rivers of life that flow from them. We need saints, friends. Let us strive to become worthy of our calling as "salt and light."

I have spoken here about things that are beyond my power. Forgive me.