Ideology is Death (Thoughts and Prayers, Part II)

 

For the second time in two weeks, a tragic shooting has taken place.  I do want to talk about my prior post on "Thoughts and Prayers," but I also want to discuss the thing that really killed Charlie Kirk -- ideology.

I don't mean "ideology" in the sense that we have opinions and express them, or even worldviews, and live them.  I mean "ideology" really as a replacement for theology.  Politics in place of God.  On our Mission's website, there is a quote from Father Alexander Schmemann:

"It seems to me that any ideology is bad because it is inevitably reductive and identifies other ideologies as evil, and itself with truth, whereas both truth and goodness are always transcendent."

This seems to me to be pretty well on the nose.  Though perhaps this quote is even more so:

"Principles are what people have instead of God."

Now, obviously, people can hold all sorts of ideologies and still not be murderers.  And some ideologies are infinitely better than others.  No one, I would like to think, would compare American traditional liberal values (by this, I mean the values of our Founders) on par with Naziism or Communism or any of the other various totalitarian "isms" that exist.   And certainly, even those who find sympathy with extremist ideologies might otherwise be peacable people in a generic sense.  One can say and believe awful things without desiring to hurt people.

The problem enters when the ideology becomes what Fr. Alexander says in the first quote above -- reductive and oppositional to other ideologies, especially in an existential sense.  If I think those who are on the "other side" are my enemies, and that they will destroy my freedom and well being, it's much easier to justify harming them.  But even absent such justification, when a Christian is captured by ideology, that Christian has ceased to be of Christ, and has instead joined himself to the world.  In that sense, I suppose this is also Part II of a previous post, Outrage Pornography.  If, as Fr. Alexander says, truth and goodness are always transcendent (and I believe they are), that means truth and goodness are things of God, not things we can possess of ourselves.  And that, in turn, means that, even for non-Christians, but especially for Christians, any truth or goodness we find will be located in Christ.  The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats makes this clear.  The pagan who feeds his neighbor feeds Christ.  The Christian who wishes his neighbor dead murders Christ. We, as Christians, should always act accordingly.

And this brings me to the murder of Charlie Kirk.  I am not a particular fan of Charlie's work.  I am also not a particular detractor of his work.  I know of him mainly through online reels, some heavily edited and sometimes grossly out of context, others more long form and instructive of his beliefs.  So I am aware of him, and Turning Point, USA.  But I was not his target audience, and I never spent much time delving into his material.  But I do think there are a couple of defining things about him and his life's work that are interesting in light of his becoming a target of an assassin.  The first is he is a Christian, unapologetic and outspoken in his faith.  The second is he believed deeply in free speech.  He invited those who disagree to go to the front of the line.  He loved debate.  He believed that the way to confront bad ideas is not with violence, imprisonment, or public shaming, but with good ideas.  And even if you think his ideas were bad ideas, it would be nice if we could all follow his example and confront them with better ideas instead of a rifle.

Charlie Kirk was not a soldier.  He was not violent.  He literally talked for a living.  He talked to young people and he talked about issues he cared about.  He did not exclude others, and was complimentary of others when they made what he considered to be good points.  He found value in public discourse, in the public square, and the robust exchange of ideas, all things that when I went to college in the 1990s were hallmarks of education.  Sadly, this seems to be less the case now.  I hope his murder, if nothing else good comes of it, will strengthen our national resolve to return to the days when we could disagree without being enemies.  I question sometimes whether we can all inhabit the same country given the level of venom in our public discourse.  This is not a partisan issue.  We are the problem.  We are truly getting the government we deserve.

To be clear, we do not know why Charlie was targeted.  It is entirely possible it was just another deranged lunatic with no partisan or political purpose.  It is equally possible it was someone with an ideological proclivity towards or against his views.  We don't know, and until we do, I won't speculate.  What we can deduce, however, is that this person had an ideology.  It is unlikely that someone would target Charlie Kirk in particular for assassination, and go to the extraordinary trouble of scouting the site, smuggling a hunting rifle into the site, going to the top of the building, shooting him, and then making an escape, without being motivated by some ideology.  We will find out shortly what that was.  But I think it's fair to deduce that ideology of some sort was at the core of this act.

Obviously, we do not even know the identity of the murderer yet, so we don't know if this person was a Christian or something else.  That's not important, because I am speaking to fellow Christians here.  It is also important to note, we can succomb to ideology in different ways.  The temptation to find joy in Charlie Kirk's death isn't materially different to me from the temptation to find a few examples of monstrous people rejoicing in his death and using them to paint political opposition as thinking likewise.  Thankfully, most of what I have seen in the wake of his murder has been appropriate.  Certainly from my friends. I am grateful for that -- it shows I have good friends.  But the lunatics and the opportunists who use them to tar political opposition are out there.  This is no less an embrace of ideology than any other.  We should avoid it.

For some reason, we also haven't seen the snarky version of the "thoughts and prayers" objection I mentioned in my previous post.  I'm not sure why, but I'm grateful for that too.  Because Charlie Kirk, and his family and friends, need our prayers now.  And we ought to pray for each other, to be delivered from ideology and restored to our Creator.  It is the one good thing we can do in the wake of such an act.  God grant him rest where the just repose and make his memory eternal.

Thoughts and Prayers (and why they aren't the same thing)

 

There was yet another school shooting this week, this time in Minnesota.  It has become reflexive lately for certain portions of our society to mock the concept of offering prayer at this time, usually in the form of the now-cliche "thoughts and prayers" phrase.  Without naming names (because the who doesn't matter, only the what), one such person said:

Prayer is not freaking enough. Prayers does not end school shootings. prayers do not make parents feel safe sending their kids to school. Prayer does not bring these kids back. Enough with the thoughts and prayers.

Another said, less politely:

These children were probably praying when they were shot to death at Catholic school. Don't give us your f------ thoughts and prayers.

Now, there is certainly a case to be made that more should be done, legislatively, or societally, or within institutions such as schools, to help reduce school shootings.  There is an equally valid case to be made that hard problems do not find easy solutions and using tragedy as a hobby horse for your policy preferences is dishonest (usually stated by people with opposing policy preferences).  I tend to think this is a cultural sickness, and the way out of it is to begin to cleanse the culture of the sickness, but I'm in the vast minority -- most folks seem to favor some or another policy preference.  And if we can stop mocking one another, we can sort all of that out in civil dialogue and civic engagement.  Policy isn't what I came here to discuss.  What I would like to address is this clearly faulty view of what prayer is, why we do it, and the false equivalence of "prayer" with "thoughts."

In the Orthodox Christian tradition, prayer is not merely asking for things so that God will give us what we want.  Prayer is not, that is, the same as asking mommy for a crayon or daddy for a new bike.  Additionally, prayer is not only efficacious if we receive that for which we pray.  Christians know this, because often we do not have our prayers answered in the way we would like.  We are not toddlers, and God is not a doting parent looking to spoil us by granting our every wish.

Most simply, prayer is baring our soul before God, standing in His presence and being known by Him.  In this way, as God interacts with us, we can begin to know Him.  Fr. Thomas Hopko famously said "you cannot know God, but you have to know Him to know that."  Prayer, then, is our feeble attempt, as created beings, to encounter the living God, our creator, to be known by Him, and to be loved by Him.  In that light, and only in that light, prayer then becomes the requesting of things from God in alignment with His will. That is why Our Lord taught us to pray "Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."  Often, we ask God for things He knows will not benefit us. Those prayers are still answered, only not in the way we would like.  As I have told many a catechumen over the years, "no is still an answer."

The quotes above reveal both a worldview and a conclusion.  The worldview is that prayer is designed to get us what we ask for.  The conclusion is it is incapable of doing that.  "Prayers does (sic) not end school shootings."  It's a very direct line.  1) We pray for God to end school shootings.  2) God does not end school shootings.  Ergo, 3) prayer is not effective.

But here is the thing -- it matters who prays, and who does not.  If the shooter had prayed, perhaps he would not have felt compelled to carry out this cowardly act. If others had prayed for the shooter, perhaps his heart would have been softened.  My mother likes to say "you can't stay mad at someone if you're praying for them."  You also won't wish to bully them or try to psychologically abuse or harm them.  More prayer -- not merely in the aftermath of a tragedy, but among society in general -- would do more to stop school shootings than any law on the planet or any policy you can think of.  Standing before God, baring your soul and asking Him to heal you, is a very different posture than baring your soul to the world online, "dunking" on people and "pwning" them.  It is obviously different than baring your soul in an act of violence and hatred that changes the lives of others forever.  Prayer softens the very hearts we tend to harden. And since prayer causes me to treat you better, it doesn't just soften my heart, it has the power to soften yours too, even if you don't pray.

Prayer is effective and efficacious and good for the soul, and that is why there is no such thing as "thoughts and prayers."  The phrase began as sort of a nod to civic pluralism.  Not everyone is a religious believer, so you can still send good thoughts or good vibes or whatever to someone who is suffering.  True enough, but that does not make "prayer" the equivalent of "thoughts."  Especially now that "thoughts and prayers" is basically a phrase used to mock people who disfavor certain policy positions.  

But it's obvious there is a difference.  Good thoughts ARE empty and inefficacious.  They are impotent.  They cannot accomplish anything other than making the other person feel better knowing you are thinking about them.  And that is enough in times of trouble -- by all means continue communicating good thoughts.  They are kind and helpful and loving.  But they are impotent, and the inclusion of them together with "prayers," in a pluralistic catchphrase, doesn't mean prayer is equally impotent.  

Part of the problem with people misunderstanding prayer is society has long since mainstreamed some popular, but faulty, views of religion in general and Christianity in particular.  The problem of evil is one example.  God being more like Santa Claus than -- God -- is another.  Prayer being something fools do in order to make themselves feel better about things is yet another.  Equating Christianity writ large with pop-American psych-Christianity is another.  We believe God is Santa Claus and a real God wouldn't allow such things to occur.  We believe that because that's how the dominant culture treats God.  He is a fiction, a nice thought, your invisible buddy to lean on when people are mean or times are hard.  We have mainstreamed the New Atheist version of God.

You don't have to do a survey to figure this out.  Just look at modern architecture.  Beauty is subordinated to utilitarianism.  Where might you find beautiful things?  Not at the Soviet-style courthouse with its concrete walls and very modern appointments.  Not at the government building with its austere brown walls and cheap metal furniture.  Certainly not at Wal-Mart or Home Depot.  Even Taco Bell and Pizza Hut have gone to the hyper-modern "shipping container" model of architecture for their new stores.  

But you will find beauty in a church.  You will find it on most things in the Church -- the lampstands, the icons -- even the books are ornate.  Why do we do this?  Because beauty is a recognition of the Creator.  Beauty exists because He desires it.  Beauty is a reflection of Him.  We beautify things because we wish to act as the crown of God's creation that He has appointed us to be.

You cannot recognize the full magnitude of this simply by walking into an Orthodox Church, or a Catholic Church, or even one of the old Baptist or Methodist or Episcopalian churches with their wood floors and stained glass.  You can begin to, simply by drawing a contrast between what you see in church versus what you see in the world.  But in order to appreciate true beauty, you have to pray.  Not mockingly.  Not sardonically.  You have to pray as one with a desire to know Him, and by extension to know those He has created in His image.  In Him, we are all one.  As Fr. Thomas Hopko also, less famously, said:  

Jesus didn't say, "love the image of God in that person." He didn't say "love Me in that person." He said: "Love that person, and you will be loving Me. Because I have identified with every human being on the face of the earth."

So yes, you cannot know God, but you have to know Him to know that. And one of the ways we know God is through prayer.  By opening our hearts and souls to Him in the simple acts of asking, speaking, trusting, relating.  It is not that God is impotent to help you if you don't pray. He already knows our every need.  Prayer, like most things of God, is important because of what it does for us.  It connects us to Him, and thus to each other, in a way that cannot be replicated by good thoughts or good intentions.  Prayer is not the same as well-wishes.  Prayer is an encounter with the living God.

To reduce prayer to the ineffective and vain level of "thoughts" is a failure to recognize that basic truth.  To mock it is to mock everything it stands for, including the idea that we are all one in Him.  That basic recognition, that the little children praying in Catholic school are the same as me, that we are of the same "stuff" and God loves us all equally, tempers anger, diffuses prejudice, and opens the heart to love others. 

I understand the reasoning behind the mocking.  I don't mean to demean anyone who has engaged in it -- I recognize your sincerity. But do understand that your policy preferences do not dictate our spiritual lives.  We will pray.  Those of us who share your policy preferences and those of us who have other ideas.  We will all pray, and we will always pray.  Because as Christians, there is nothing better we can do.  

What is love (baby don't hurt me)?

A discussion on an internet forum got me thinking about this topic.  The discussion on the internet forum is between Lutherans, mostly.  It began when one of them, a pastor, began bemoaning some issues they've had with homeless people.  This pastor believes that the homeless were being maliciously sent by people in his church body to mess with him, sort of a gaslighting exercise that he refers to as "mobbing."

In any event, I commented that I thought it was a shame that he let others cause him to treat the homeless poorly (he was asking them to leave the property and then throwing away their property when they were gone).  The responses surprised me.  They started along familiar lines.  Left-leaning people, politically speaking, spoke of the need for more government programs and assistance.  Right-leaning people, politically speaking, took another tack, and one I still haven't quite wrapped my head around.

What the more right-leaning people were arguing is 1) you do not need more public assistance for the homeless, because 2) private charity is sufficient to meet the need, and (here's the interesting part) 3) they shouldn't be expected to cater to the immediate material needs of the homeless because it "creates dependency" and makes them worse off instead of better off.

So if you're keeping score:

1) the government should not help the homeless

2) private charity is sufficient to help the homeless

3) private charity to help the homeless is bad because it creates dependency

This is not intended in any way to be a political post.  Mostly, I want to focus on the discordant views espoused above, not as a partisan statement, but on the merits of the claims themselves. Maybe another day we can discuss how isolated public charity is a Utopian and Pollyanaish panacea floated by people who want to claim they are helping but don't want to get their hands dirty.

Some of the homeless in Grant Park, Atlanta,
at the food barrel collected by
St. John the Wonderworker Orthodox Church

Anyway, my family and I have never been members at St. John the Wonderworker Orthodox Church in
Atlanta, but we have spent quite a lot of time there.  We have friends who were members and clergy there.  Through our attendance at the mission, we got to know their priest, Fr. Gabe, very well.  He is the rector at St. John and the priest-in-charge of our mission.  It is downtown Atlanta, right across from the Atlanta Zoo. It has been, for years, somewhat of a transitional neighborhood.  Homeless people are a constant presence there.

I had visited St. John ages ago, around 2011 or so, when Fr. Jacob Myers was the priest there.  Fr. Jacob was the sort of man who didn't follow conventions, and so he neither waited for government charity nor made excuses for not helping.  Fr. Jacob saw homeless people, so he fed them, invited them to come to liturgy, and prayed for them and asked them to pray for him.  This began by simply going to the local food bank and bringing food back to the parish to distribute.  But this could only be done once a month, so the parish began purchasing food, and the program eventually expanded to a pan-Orthodox effort, and eventually, in 2024, to one administered by a local charity organization.  From the smallest of beginnings, many have been blessed, just because Fr. Jacob and his people wanted to help.  Because they looked at the homeless and instead of seeing vagrants, or dangerous people, or people who had made mistakes and therefore brought it on themselves, they saw Jesus.  The Loaves and Fishes program feeds, clothes and assists countless members of our community today.

I happened to be at St. John the day the comments I reference above were made.  The occasion of my being there was a Mission Council meeting with the Council and Fr. Gabe, to discuss a lot of important details about our mission.  When I arrived, the doors to the parish were locked and there were several homeless men outside.  I spoke to them, asked how they were doing.  They tended to be reserved, not making eye contact, not saying much.  I would assume that long and painful experience taught them that avoidance is the safest path.  But one gentleman looked up at me briefly and said "you gotta knock," and then walked over and banged on the church door until someone came to let me inside.  That's not an isolated experience.  In probably 8 or 10 visits to St. John over the past couple of years, we usually stay for lunch, and we eat with these folks too.  They're damaged.  They're often mentally ill.  They are often drug addicted.  But they are people.  They are beloved of our Lord, God and Savior, Jesus Christ.  They are our brethren.

When Fr. Jacob passed away, and Fr. Tom took over for him, he did not stop the Loaves and Fishes program.  He did not stop them from attending services or sharing meals.  When Fr. Tom retired, Fr. Gabe did not stop those things either.  If anything, both of them leaned into the homeless ministry.  Here, people were doing good.  They ensured that continued, and Fr. Gabe continues it to the present day.

During the time where we were visiting St. John pretty frequently, my family and I were members at St. Basil Orthodox Mission in Marietta.  St. Basil helped St. John with the Loaves and Fishes ministry, and we created mercy bags for our people to put in their cars and give to the homeless and destitute.  St. Basil did not have homeless people camped out on the church steps.  Marietta is a suburb, and while she has her own homeless and destitute, the problem is not as dire as it is in the big city.  But her people nonetheless felt the need to minister to them.  Some of that starts with the priest.  Fr. Paul supported these efforts and encouraged them, telling us why it is important to help others who are in need.  Some of it starts before that, because St. Basil is a mission of St. John, and thus her people were formed also under Fr. Jacob.  And surely some of it starts at the diocesan and Archdiocesan levels.  But it isn't just that.

This duty to care for the poor is properly basic Christianity.  It has deep roots in Patristics and Scripture.  It was St. John Chrysostom who said "if you cannot find Christ in the beggar at the church door, you will not find Him in the chalice."  St. Basil the Great said this:

He who strips a man of his clothes is to be called a thief. Is not he who, when he is able, fails to clothe the naked, worthy of no other title? The bread which you do not use is the bread of the hungry; the garment hanging in your wardrobe is the garment of him who is naked; the shoes that you do not wear are the shoes of the one who is barefoot; the money that you keep locked away is the money of the poor; the acts of charity that you do not perform are so many injustices that you commit.

We do not care for the poor because we are ordered to, or because God punishes us if we do not. We care for the poor because, as St. Basil said in this same breath:

Tell me, what is your own? What did you bring into this life? From where did you receive it? It is as if someone were to take the first seat in the theater, then bar everyone else from attending, so that one person alone enjoys what is offered for the benefit of all-this is what the rich do. They first take possession of the common property, and then they keep it as their own because they were the first to take it. But if every man took only what sufficed for his own need, and left the rest to the needy, no one would be rich, no one would be poor, no one would be in need.

St. Basil is not some wild-eyed radical, out of touch with the rest of the Church.  St. Basil is on the exact same page as St. John Chrysostom.  So while the folks at our old parish were certainly following the loving lead of their priest, and the loving lead of their former priest, they were also following their patron.  We don't care for the poor out of obligation or duty, much less to seek reward.  We care for the poor because they are our poor.  These are our people.  Which is to say, they are Jesus's people.

On the website of our mission parish, we have this quote from Fr. Tom Hopko:

Jesus didn't say, "love the image of God in that person." He didn't say "love Me in that person." He said: "Love that person, and you will be loving Me. Because I have identified with every human being on the face of the earth."

This is our calling -- to love every person, because Christ loves every person. This is the lesson of the Sheep and the Goats.  It is the lesson of the Prodigal Son.  It is the lesson of the Rich Ruler.  It is the lesson that litters the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles.  Each and every homeless person you meet is an icon of the Lord.  Treat them as such. 

The Mission of Compromise

One of the interesting things we've all learned in this Mission is the frequency of compromises we are called to make.  I don't mean compromise between varying factions or positions, though we do that too.  I mean compromise between the way things are and the way they ought to be -- compromise between what we know an Orthodox Church to be, look like, and act like, and, well, reality.

Most of the photos I'm using here are taken from other OCA missions.  They show the varying ways in which missions have to make do with inadequate space, beautify space that otherwise is drab and dull, and basically work with what we can acquire in order to lead to something more beautiful down the road.  Some are better "starting points" than others, but the burden we all have in common is taking a space that was not meant to invite Christ to come into our midst, and turn it into one that is.

We've been very fortunate.  We started in the nave at St. Margaret Episcopal Church, and they were so kind to us.  We were allowed early on to pay what we could rather than having a set rent amount.  They were always gracious and kind to us. But when we got the availability of a priest, using the nave at St. Margaret became a real problem.  Turns out, they'd like to continue using it on Sunday mornings, and it belongs to them.  We explored the option of doing later services, but eventually decided we needed something we could use Sunday mornings.

St. Patrick Orthodox Mission in the nave of 
St. Margaret Episcopal Church, Father Gabe presiding

So we ended up renting space just across the street from St. Margaret, at a wellness center.  That has its own set of compromises, in that we have to basically set up and take down an entire church assembly, including icons, the altar table, all the stuff on the altar table, etc.  At St. Margaret, we could "borrow" some of the decor.  At the new location, it's 100% up to us.  St. Margaret had a fully stocked kitchen, and another at a neighboring house they owned.  Now it's crockpots and cold food.  It was always imperative that we return everything the way we found it before -- St. Margaret still uses their space, as noted above.  Now it is more essential, since this is a place of business during the week.

Fr. Deacon Stephen peering through the "deacon's doors" behind our "iconostasis"
St. Patrick Orthodox Mission, Carrollton, Georgia

As you might imagine, the building isn't exactly set up as a church.  If we owned it, we could easily modify it to suit us, but it doesn't work that way naturally.  We have been looking for our own space since before we decided to move, so that is the next logical step for us -- though we are happy where we are, we will eventually need to find our own location that is ours to do with pretty much as we please.

Though, it still really isn't, is it?  We are still hampered by space, where the builder decided to put things, and where we would like things to go.  Do we have the bathrooms up front or right behind the altar?  Can we live with that door right in that specific location?  Because it's set into a cinder block wall with metal headers and framing.  Will all our people fit here?  Can all of them park nearby?  When we have a feast that requires a procession, is there a good place to do that?

Where do we eat?  Is there a place to prepare food?  To wash dishes?  Can we cook or is it just crockpots and cold cuts?  Is there a place for kids to go play after?  Can we hold a parish council meeting while parishioners are eating or is that all the same space?  What about choir practice, catechism, committee meetings?  How long is the lease?  Will we get it just right only to have to move out in a couple of years?

What about the neighboring businesses?  Will they be a nuisance? Will we?  What are the floors made of (and what are the odds a priest, deacon or acolyte drops something flammable onto them)?  Is there a sprinkler system?  Who signs for this stuff on behalf of the Mission anyway?  What are we going to do when we need a full time priest?

One day we will have a beautiful building, on beautiful land, with beautiful adornments and beautiful people being served by a beautiful priest and his beautiful family.  Or maybe we won't.  Until we do or don't, we will simply continue to beautify the space we are able to use.  It is a compromise, but one we are blessed to be a part of.  It humbles, and humility teaches.  Glory to God.

The Choir, the Chanters and the Deacon -- the Four of Us

Tonsuring by His Grace, Bishop Nicholas, of Reader John Childs,
Reader John (Franklin) Tait, and Reader Joseph Schmitt (reading the Epistle),
pictured with Father Andrew Moore, August 19, 2018

It has been a while since we all served together at the same time.  When I became Orthodox, Joseph was already at the chanter stand, but not yet a tonsured reader.  He taught me most of what I know about how to put a service together.  He also sponsored me for my chrismation.  For whatever reason, likely mere necessity, Father Andrew asked me to be tonsured first.  On November 11, 2012, I was.  It took another six years for Joseph to be tonsured, almost exactly.  He, our friend Franklin and our friend John, were all tonsured together on August 19, 2018.  As an interesting aside, at the time all of us were "Reader John," except "Reader Joseph."  Franklin, John and I all shared a patron saint.  John and I still do, but the rest of that story is coming below.

Even before they were tonsured, we had all served together pretty regularly.  Joseph, Franklin and I served together at the chanter stand from very shortly after I was tonsured.  Franklin and I also served in the choir together, with that service preceding his arrival at the chanter stand.  John came along around 2014, and almost immediately began serving in the choir, and eventually at the chanter stand.  He was the choir director by the time he was tonsured, or at least very shortly after that.  The time runs together after this many years.  

The day of my own tonsure, November 11, 2012,
by His Grace Bishop Antoun (also pictured at the altar)

Later on, Franklin was ordained a deacon and is now Deacon Stephen.  Shortly prior to that he began serving at the altar rather than the chanter stand and choir.  That became sort of a "new normal."  His ordination to the diaconate was in December of 2021, the day after the Nativity.

About a year after his ordination some things happened, some of which I've touched on before, we all eventually got scattered from one another, and we no longer served together very much.  John and I continued to serve together once the Mission Effort was formed many months later, but for various reasons my service alongside John was more as a choir helper than as an actual reader for much of that time.  Joseph stayed on at our old parish about another year and then ended up attending a local Greek parish where he doesn't serve at all.  Deacon Stephen also stayed about another year, but ended up in flux because the Archdiocese he served delayed his request for a canonical release.  I won't go into the reasons for all of that, but I will say the Metropolitan of that Archdiocese was kind to grant him a leave of absence to serve at the same parish where John served in the choir and as a reader.  So he and John also got to serve together, albeit in different roles.  Eventually Deacon Stephen began attending the Mission, which by then had become a Mission Station, but like me, more in a "choir helper" capacity.  He was not blessed to serve as a deacon there until much later.

Ordination of Deacon Stephen Tait, December 26, 2021, 
pictured with Father Andrew Moore, His Grace, Bishop Nicholas,
Father Jacob Andoun, and Deacon Ray Ralston

Time continued to pass, and eventually this little Mission Station began serving Sunday services.  That was, as noted in a previous post, about a month ago.  Deacon Stephen had finally received his release, and once informed by Metropolitan Tikhon that his reception was formalized, was blessed by Father Gabe to serve at the Mission as well.  Joseph had also began visiting the Mission along the way, and he and I served together a few times when John was out of town.  It had been a long time since it was just me and him at the chanter stand.  But even with the four of us attending and serving disparately, all four of us did not have a chance to serve together, all at the same time.

Until yesterday.

Father Tom, the priest who serves our little mission, was unable to hold liturgy yesterday due to prior commitments.  Father Tom is a retired priest, and in addition to being kind enough to serve us every other week, he also provides coverage for other local priests when they are out of town or sick or otherwise unable to serve their parishes.  He had prior commitments before we decided to begin holding Sunday services, and so we have to serve Typicas for a few Sundays until he can return.  That left Deacon Stephen to lead the services, and John, Joseph and I to serve as readers.  It felt like the old days.  Even though Deacon Stephen was serving as a deacon and not as a reader or choir member, the intimacy of a small space with fewer people, combined with the fact that it was Deacon Stephen who coordinated the service with us, gave the entire service a closeness we had not really had in a long time.  Even though we are in a Slavic liturgical tradition now, we are an American church.  As such, we are encouraged to use the full depth and breadth of Orthodox liturgical music.  So we even did a few things we had all chanted together for well over a decade, like the Evlogitaria in Byzantine Tone 5, and some of the canon, which we did from memory in Byzantine Tone 4.  

It was the four of us again.  And while we all have continued to serve faithfully in our respective roles since the days when we shared a chanter stand, it felt like home.  For the first time in a very long time.  

The Church does not cater to our feelings of nostalgia or familiarity.  We have all learned that hard lesson over the past three years or so.  We should have known before then.  I was tonsured under a different bishop than the other three, and under a different Metropolitan.  Now, we are all serving under yet another bishop and Metropolitan, and different priests.  The Church doesn't stop to wait for our feelings.  The Church doesn't care if we feel comfortable.  We serve where we are called, and we are thankful for that calling.  Back when I was tonsured in 2012, I was the only reader in the parish, and I was ill equipped to do the basic functions of the office.  Comfort is not something God often provides to those He calls to serve His Church.  Service is often a chore, and a thankless one at times.

But it can be a joy as well, and ideally it should be.  Because that lonely service in 2012 was made less so by Joseph's patient help and teaching, and our priest's granddaughter, our friend Ruthie, who taught me literally everything I knew about Orthodox music up until the time she left for college.  Eventually I had to teach the the others how to properly do Byzantine chant, as Ruthie had so patiently taught me, and Joseph was still teaching me and began teaching them how the Typikon works, how the services are put together, and how to fulfill our service to the Church.  So it wasn't like the four of us all started together.  In a very real sense, we grew up together, simply expanding the family as more members were added.

The four of us, and Ruthie, August 19, 2018
(Joseph is wearing my cassock because his had not yet arrived)

We did so in the simplest of ways.  We loved and respected one another.  I was patient, using the lessons I learned from Ruthie and Joseph to help John and Franklin along.  Before long, they were teaching me things I didn't know, each of us using our gifts to improve the whole.  We deferred to one another, and we still do. Joseph still knows more about the Typicon than the rest of us.  He knows the rules and the parts of the service and what goes where as well as anyone I've ever met.  John knows music better than the rest of us.  We each know our part.  John knows everyone's part.  Deacon Stephen doesn't get to sing with us as much as we'd all like anymore, but we do a reader's Vespers and a reader's Matins when the priest isn't there, so there are times he gets to step in and provide us with a tenor part.  These days, the interaction is more broad, liturgically speaking.  He leads the service, so he is singing with us, but he is also the one leading us.  There is still a lot of deference, but more of it goes from us to him.

The Church is conciliar.  So, too, should our service be.  In the OCA, and in the Russian tradition generally, the choir is more the centerpiece of the service.  Readers are typically appointed to intone the Epistle or any portions of the prayer offices that need to be "read" instead of "sung."  But they are not chanting the tones.  So there is, appropriately, less conciliarity than there was when we all served as readers together.  John is our choir director, and in a choir, there can be only one head.  It is appropriate, and comforting, that he is our head.  

But a Mission Station is often chaotic.  We start services a little before 9:00 to ensure Matins is done before time for Typica or Liturgy.  Sometimes everyone isn't there.  I started Matins yesterday because John had some things to do.  Joseph and I kept the service moving while John handled the business of getting the nave and sanctuary ready for the service.  Then he came to the chanter stand and there was no need for discussion.  He stepped in and it was his to lead.  Deference and conciliarity require that those who are not the head always recognize and cede control to the one who is.  As our head, John established what he expected when we got to the Canon, and we rotated between one of us chanting the verses and the other chanting the refrain. When he needed something done differently, he let us know.  We followed his lead, and did the appropriate parts as he directed.  We didn't have to do much pointing or directing ourselves -- Joseph and I knew what to do.  Over a decade of conciliar deference had taught us that.  So too did the fact that John leads from the front, demonstrating how he wants things done rather than simply telling us. The comfort and familiarity in that was borne of many years of deferring to one another.  

As noted above, that comfort and familiarity is not a requirement for service in the Orthodox Church. If things are uncomfortable, or even hostile, it is still the Church.  I have been blessed to serve in choirs that ran very differently, but were all a great joy to serve in.  The choir director at our former parish, Matushka Gabrielle, taught me a great deal about liturgical chant and how the services go together in the OCA's tradition.  It was a joy to serve in her choir, and to learn from her. John served most recently under Matushka Rebecca, who taught him a great deal about organizing a service.  I have only served in her choir on one occasion, specifically to learn a particular set of litanies we planned to use at the Mission, but it was also a great blessing and I know John learned a lot from her.  We both served in the same choir together, sometimes with Ruthie as the head, sometimes John, and sometimes me.  Even just the three of us have very different leadership styles, but it always managed to work. Love goes a long way to ensure peace in a choir setting.  

We've learned lessons along the way.  John is very intentional about the music he selects.  As a very small Mission Station, we have a lot of people who would like to sing, but not as many who are already received into the Church.  We have some chrismations yet before we can actually have a full choir.  So a lot of the music he chooses is set for two parts.  Eventually that will change as we add people who can sing the other two parts.  We've all had to learn the intricacies of the Slavic Typikon, which in many ways is fuller than what we used before, and certainly different in some of the particulars.  But Sunday, we were together again.  It was a blessing, and it brought back a lot of very fond memories.  It won't be the last time, and for that I am thankful.

Missions and Stuff

The photo to the left is our "maiden voyage" at St. Patrick Orthodox Mission of Carrollton. Most of the people depicted are from our parent church, St. John the Wonderworker in Atlanta. The priest, Fr. Tom, is retired from and still attached to St. John. The deacon, Deacon Stephen, is blessed by St. John's rector, Fr. Gabe, to serve at St. Patrick, but he is also formally attached to St. John. The subdeacon, Subdeacon Matthew, serves at St. John. Even the adorable little communicant with her mother is visiting from St. John.

You can see half of the head of Reader John Childs just to the right of mom's headcovering.  He's all ours.

This was hardly our first service.  We've had probably close to a hundred or more of those.  But it was our first Divine Liturgy, and our first service as a mission that now serves liturgies on Sundays, and thus it was a big day for us. Interestingly, the picture doesn't really tell the story.  We are still a very young mission.  In terms of core Orthodox membership, there are three main families, some folks who visit a lot, and our core catechumens.  Only one catechuman has yet been received, but we hope that number will increase soon.  In fact, when we first started visitors outweighed "core" people who were brought up by the mission or joined after it was formed by a substantial margin.  Today, that isn't really the case.  In addition to the family shown here, we had a few other visitors, but most of our communicants were "our people."  Most of our non-communicant visitors were as well.

Little things matter when missions are young.  My wife and I took the weekend off for an anniversary trip.  That left a lot of "to do" stuff in the hands of folks who are more than competent to do it, but used to having extra hands around.  Others in our core leadership will do the same as time goes on.  Many hands make light work.  You learn to incorporate new people into that labor to divide the workload.  You observe who among your people is inclined to pitch in without being asked.  You learn to ask even if you think it is uncomfortable to do so in other settings. Responsibilities are organized and re-organized. It sometimes feels like everything is in flux, but the path to solidity is often unpaved.

Other little things matter too.  When you're a small mission started by people who have never done this before, "learning things as you go" can sometimes be more difficult.  We have been pleased at the support we have received from our leadership, especially Fr. Gabe, but also our Dean and Chancellor and, by extension, our Archbishop. A lot of grace is given to allow us to be successful. 

We've been a little surprised at the lack of updated written guidelines. There are guidelines, but they are not easily accessible on the diocesan or Archdiocesan websites. That is not a criticism of the diocese or Archdiocese by any means -- somehow it still manages to work out because the people in charge of new missions are very good at what they do. But it would have sure saved us a lot of early confusion and grief if more publicly available guidance were present.  Even if it were only a list of names to call if you would like to start a mission. We were fortunate the Chancellor of the Diocese of the South was visiting St. John the Wonderworker when two of our founders were there, and they struck up a conversation with him about starting a mission in Carrollton. But what if we were not so fortunate?  What if their priest wasn't retiring and the Chancellor had no reason to be there? But missions teach you, and they teach you that wishcasting doesn't bake any bread.  So inspired by the "DIY" spirit that permeates any young mission, it has occurred to us that we might ask a blessing to help revise and update the diocesan and Archdiocesan guidelines to assist future missions in their efforts. Don't talk about it.  Be about it.

There are challenges for sure. But there is something about being at the beginning of what we pray will be a long and enduring presence in a town that did not have an Orthodox presence before. It might tempt one to pride if it were not so humbling. Measures of our individual and collective unworthiness abound. We persist not because we wish to be seen by men, but because we know God is at work despite our failings. We have seen the fruit of His labor among us. Whatever our failings, He is using us and those He places in our path to effect His will.

I'm sure I'll have more to say as time goes on. For now, it is enough to say that we are blessed and thankful.

Outrage Pornography

 

Tim Kreider coined the phrase "outrage pornography" over 15 years ago now. Then and now, it encapsulates so much of what social media has wrought on our society.

The concept is simple.  So much of what we read, watch, and listen to in society is designed to stir up our emotions.  Not because it is a moral good, but because it increases engagement, and engagement is the lifeblood of the vampires in charge of our media and social discourse these days.

Over the past several years, I have stopped posting much about politics at all.  It isn't because I don't have opinions.  It isn't because I think those opinions aren't valid or that I'm not fit to discuss those matters publicly.  It's because somewhere around the last election, I began to realize that our political discussion tends to be warped.  People actually identify as being on a political side more than they identify with other vocations they may have.  As if it is politics that defines them.  And that ends in a reductionist worldview where if I am "this," then people who aren't "this" (or worse, people who are "that") aren't like me.

But I'm more than a set of political opinions.  I'm a musician.  I'm a Christian.  I'm a lawyer.  I'm a father, and a son, and a husband.  I'm a hunter.  I am an occasional fisherman.  I like good bourbon and good cigars. I like baseball, football and basketball.  So I figured -- rightly so it turns out -- that if I posted more about that stuff, I'd have less conflict with people who share those things in common with me, and more camaraderie.  Meaning, I'd find my neighbor again, because I'm neither putting them off by assuming their political views should match mine, nor being put off by them because their political views do not always match mine.

A lot of my friends did not do as I did.  I see political posts left and right.  I see other types of posts that aren't overtly political, but which are provocative, modern "edginess" being substituted for thoughtful discourse.  As one might expect, the more outraged one is, the higher the volume of such posts.  I don't fault my friends for this -- my choice is mine, and I don't expect others to necessarily do what I did.  But I do observe, and as I observe, I have a question:  Is this healthy? 

I tend to think it is not.  If all you ever post about is politics, I tend to tune you out.  That's not a partisan issue -- I don't like overtly political posts from people I agree with either.  But neither is it simply distaste on my part.  I actually think it's bad for the person doing the posting. Outrage is no basis for change.  Outrage is not inspiring.  Literally nobody cares about your anger, except those who are already angry alongside you.  So what may feel to you like a call to action ends up being a performative fiction, one reason the rise of the phrase "virtue signaling" came alongside the phrase "outrage pornography."  Again, this is not a partisan issue.  Everybody is mad about something these days.  The thing is, I have changed my mind on a lot of political and social issues over the years.  But I've never done it because someone I know was very, very angry that I didn't agree with them.

Two of my former priests told me, at different times, that if you want to change the world, you should be working to acquire holiness.  I cannot say that was the catalyst for me posting less about political issues on social media.  I had already begun doing that before the first one told me that.  But I can say that this encouragement strengthened my resolve to post less about that stuff.  Why?  As Father Paul put it, we should come to the Church to receive the gifts of God, and then go out into the world having received those gifts, and stay out of the way so the light of Christ can shine through us.  I tend to think, based on observation, that one way we stand in front of the light is when we place our politics and our opinions over our neighbor.  If we define our neighbor by how much or how little they agree with us, then we make ourselves and our opinions to be idols.  Instead of seeing Christ in our neighbor, we see someone opposed to Christ, because we have identified ourselves as the God-figure in this scenario, and someone else's disagreement with our politics is now apostasy instead of simply a different perspective.  

This is of greater concern as I view the Church today.  We have quite a lot of people seeking the Orthodox Church.  Some of them are seeking refuge from theological rigorism and quasi-fundamentalism.  Most are seeking refuge from relativism and antinomianism.  In either case, the Church has an answer, and a good one, but only if you seek the Church on her terms, not your own.  The Orthodox Church is not a Republican institution.  It is not a Democratic institution.  It certainly is not identified with one of the micro-parties in America, and it isn't identified with any party of any other country either.  The Orthodox Church claims allegiance to a Kingdom which is not of this world. Trying to cram your own political whims into that Kingdom is an exercise in folly.  But if you can let go of that and let the Church teach you, you will find that politics doesn't seem all that important anymore.  You will learn the meaning of "put not your trust in princes."  And you will begin, ever so slowly, to realize that government, like any other human institution, can be good or bad from a Christian perspective, but it is never overtly Christian, even when (perhaps especially when) it pretends to be.

The other danger is people who think in binary political terms tend to use their opinions as a litmus test.  I cannot say how many times I've had a conversation with someone and they interject their political opinions as if I should naturally agree with them.  And if I don't, the conversation takes an uncomfortable turn.  Which is to say, people who tend to stay outraged over politics and bond with others over sharing that outrage also tend to think that everyone else should share their outrage.  It's not enough to just not want to talk about it.  Silence is violence or some such nonsense.

We can do better.  We should do better.  My non-Christian friends can get a pass on this, even though I think they would be happier if they took the approach I suggest.  But I hope to encourage my Christian friends to consider whether overt, biased and partisan political views are consistent with what my former priests encouraged.  Is this holiness?  Or is it something else?  If it is something else, perhaps it is to be tempered instead of amplified.  We are more than our opinions.  And we ought not submit to the temptation to be outraged.  And if the culture refuses to go along with us, then perhaps we will learn what it means to be Christians.  The Church should bend the culture, not bend to it.