“Distinctions Stiffened into Contradictions”

The most brilliant encapsulation of the East-West ecumenical situation I’ve yet to come across:

The very problem of Christian reconciliation is not that of a correlation of parallel traditions, but precisely that of the reintegration of a distorted tradition.  The two traditions may seem quite irreconcilable, when they are compared and confronted, as they are at the present.  Yet their differences themselves are, to a great extent, simply the results of disintegration: they are, as it were, distinctions stiffened into contradictions.

Fr. Georges Florovsky, “The Ethos of the Orthodox Church” (an address to the World Council of Churches given in 1960); emphasis in original

Scenes from A Malaysian Life

• Two Taoist nuns, heads shaved and in full gray habit, standing in front of a pawn shop.  They’re waiting for a bus.
• On the bus, three men in their 70’s, one of whom is the bus-driver, engaging in a loud and lively conversation about the effects of the oil price hike.  One of them notes that his neighbors have gone back to planting vegetables in their garden because groceries are so expensive these days.  Later, he comments on how bride prices and dowries have doubled in recent years across ethnic groups.
• At an Indian restaurant, I eat rice served on a large piece of banana leaf instead of a plate.  My friend Nathaniel teaches me to order murumolehai—hot peppers first soaked in yogurt and then deep fried.
• At a newfangled mall called The Curve, I feel strangely thrown into a saturation of the latest and the hottest of the modern West.  “Sometimes I feel as though I’ve come back to a foreign country instead of my home,” I say to my sister.  Sensing the tone of lament in my voice, she asks, “But don’t you think it’s a good thing that we’ve progressed?”  I try to remember the name of the French Enlightenment philosopher who wrote about progress even as he rotted in jail, but can’t.
• At The Bavarian Bierhaus in the aforementioned newfangled mall, my dad, my sister and I sit down to a taste treat of crispy pork knuckle, German sausages of some kind, and pork roast.  And beer, of course.
• Posters of European models at the window of every clothing store, in newspaper ads, in magazines, on TV commercials. When the models are in fact Malaysian, they are usually of mixed heritage, i.e. of some European descent.  An exercise in post-colonial Malaysian self-hatred.
• At dinner one night, the following conversation in Cantonese:

Erinn: My gums hurt.  It hurts to chew anything.
Dad: There’s probably too much “heat” in your body.  You should drink more water and eat more fruits.
Erinn: I have been.
Me: Dad just bought some longan ["dragon eye" fruit] today.  They’re in the fridge.  Have some of that after dinner.
Dad: No, she shouldn’t eat that.  Longan is “hot” [i.e. contains yang energy].
Me: I thought all fruits were supposed to be “cold” [i.e. contain yin energy].
Dad: No, not longan.
Erinn: Yeah, longan has “wet heat” [i.e. appears to be predominantly yin but is actually predominantly yang].
Me: “Wet heat”?
Erinn: Yes, wet heat.

• On my way to the train station, the azan fills the air through speakers on a nearby minaret.  Time for solat Asar.
• Heavy rain in the late mornings.
• I dodge garlands of bright-colored flowers hanging from strings along the sidewalks of Jalan Tun Sambanthan.  To the black smoke from cars and buses are added scents of jasmine, chrysanthemum and incense.

Nothing Harsh, Nothing Burdensome

Therefore we intend to establish a school for the Lord’s service. In drawing up its regulations, we hope to set down nothing harsh, nothing burdensome. The good of all concerned, however, may prompt us to a little strictness in order to amend faults and to safeguard love. Do not be daunted immediately by fear and run away from the road that leads to salvation. It is bound to be narrow at the outset. But as we progress in this way of life and in faith, we shall run on the path of God’s commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love. Never swerving from his instructions, then, but faithfully observing his teaching in the monastery until death, we shall through patience share in the sufferings of Christ that we may deserve also to share in his kingdom. Amen.

The Rule of St. Benedict, Prologue 45-50

I left my copy of the Rule in Denver during my hurried move, so I don’t have it with me now.  I do, however, remember highlighting this passage when I last read it over a year ago.

A Trappist hermit whom I met many years ago (and with whom I ate a Christmas lunch of tomato soup and bread, but that’s another story) once told me, “The more I live this life, the more I realize that no one understands human nature better than St. Benedict.”

I didn’t understand what she meant at that time, but her words stayed in the recesses of my mind.  Years later, it was only the third or fourth of my very distracted readings of the Rule that I recalled what she had said.  This was the portion of the Rule that brought back that memory.

“Nothing harsh, nothing burdensome.”

During one season of my life I subscribed to a kind of white-knuckled ascetic spirituality.  Some of you might know it.  It’s the school in Catholicism that has for its maxim, “If you’re not in pain, you ain’t carryin’ your cross right.”  The more one was tortured by the sweet agony of crosses (yes, they had to be in the plural), the more “spiritual” one was thought to be, because there was more to “offer up”.

St. Benedict didn’t think that the Christian life would be a field trip to the candy factory.  He knew far too much about crosses to be so deceived.  (He did, after all, have to suffer at least one assassination attempt by his “spiritual sons”.)  But there is something about the way in which the Rule opens that leads its recipient into a calm harbor.  It is the voice of experience and calmness that is not perturbed by the novice’s weakness, anxiety or overzealousness.

Yes, the journey will be difficult, and especially so at the beginning.  “Bound to be narrow at the outset,” he says.  But it will, we are told, get easier somehow.  There will come a day when we shall “run on the path of God’s commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love”.  The way of discipleship isn’t just one long trudge through the valley of the shadow of death.  It is about learning “the spiritual craft”, he says another place (Chapter 4, v. 75). If discipleship is a craft, then we will, as do apprentices of any craft, get better with practice.

If discipleship is a craft, then it must, like all other forms of craft, have rules and practices designed to produce freedom.  No piano student likes to practice scales and no young poet likes to practice writing in stipulated closed forms, but these disciplines are essential if an artist is to be born.  I was once asked to read a 16-word poem repeatedly and pore over it until I learned to “see” it.  It seemed tiresome and pointless until I “got it”, and it has affected the way I think about poetry every since. Learning a craft always takes time, and most of the time it demands something of us and stretches us.

“Nothing harsh, nothing burdensome.”  Because in the end, it will lead to running, overflowing hearts and joy—or rather, “the inexpressible delight of love”.

Your goal is freedom, but freedom may only be achieved through discipline. In the studio you learn to conform, to submit yourself to the demands of your craft so that you may finally be free.

Martha Graham

A blessed feast day to Sr. Macrina, her community, and all other sons and daughters of the Holy Father Benedict!

*****

For those who are interested, the text of the Rule and helpful commentary can be found at the website of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert in Abiquiu, New Mexico. The Prior of the its sister monastery, the Monastery of the Holy Cross in Chicago, Illinois, also has a blog on which he writes insightful commentaries on the Rule and Scripture.

Like the Parable, with a Few Changes

“I am so glad that I have found her. The last eight years of my life have been miserable.”

Karthik Kesarao

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The Star, Thursday July 10, 2008

Father-daughter reunion

By SARBAN SINGH

REMBAU: “It is the most meaningful day of my life.” This was all K. Naga Jothi could say when she was reunited with her father yesterday. She was 10 when she ran away from home.

Now a young woman of 18, she was in tears when she saw G. Karthik Kesarao who had come from Johor Baru to the private Vivekenanda Home near here to take her home.

Naga, who said she ran away because of problems with her stepmother (her parents divorced when she was a year-old), spent the last eight years at various government children’s homes.

“I am so glad that I have found her. The last eight years of my life have been miserable,” said Karthik.

Also present at the reunion were Karthik’s wife K. Gunavathi 36, and son Mageswaran, nine.

Karthik said he had sought the help of various bomoh and mediums to look for his daughter.

“All they told me was that she was alive. Deep down, I knew that I would be reunited with her one day,” he said, adding that he did not lodge a report as Naga had run away from home several times before.

Karthik said he would enrol Naga for skills classes so that she could apply for a job later. However, the first thing he would do when they got back to Johor Baru was to get her an identity card.

The One Where I Call Myself A Zoghbyite

There is little that I can say about the double communion advocated by Archbishop Elias, that has not been said with greater sophistication or nuance elsewhere.  After all, I am only a Christian whose opinions about this are consequential for no one other than himself. Furthermore, I am not a member of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, and cannot address in any meaningful way its relationship to the Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch.

There are, however, a few things I am able to say, and which I think readers of this weblog deserve to know about its author’s mind.  I’m generally irritated by authors who refuse to state their views and allegiances openly but nevertheless attempt to surreptitiously persuade their readers by means of sheathed arguments.  I hope to spare you all of the sensation of being duped over to my dark side.

I am in agreement with Archbishop Elias’ theological views expressed in the writings which I’ve posted here on this site.  I have in mind, first, of all, his acceptance of only the first seven ecumenical councils as being truly ecumenical.  Here, it seems to me, the matter is one mostly of ecclesiological “logic”.  If the Orthodox Churches are true Churches, then how can we consider ecumenical (universal) any council that did not involve them?  If the “two lung” metaphor advocated by the late Pope John Paul II in any way approximates the reality of what the Church is, then I don’t see how it is possible for “one-lunged” councils to be regarded as ecumenical, regardless of how one understands the term oikumene and its derivative.

I’m not saying that councils can only be ecumenical if attended by a “threshold” number of Eastern bishops.  I’m simply pointing out that the synods after the Schism (let’s accept, for now, the textbook date of 1054) failed to be received by four of the five major Patriarchates of the ancient Church.  That the East was left out of these, it seems to me, is quite plain for all to see (no pun intended).  This view, as Archbishop Elias repeatedly points out in his works, is reflected in Pope Paul VI’s speech on the occasion of the seventh centenary of the Second Council of Lyons (1274), in which he referred to the Council as “the sixth of the general synods held in the West” rather than an ecumenical council.  Now, I don’t think Paul VI’s words constitute the point on which Archbishop Elias’ reasoning stands or falls, but I do think that they point to a can of worms which Catholics have yet to fully reckon with.

Archbishop Elias also states several times that the prerogatives and privileges of the Pope of Rome as understood in contemporary Catholicism must not constitute a wall of division between East and West.  Of course, he cannot say this without arguing that the Roman understanding of the papacy must for now be held loosely and re-examined at a council convened by the reunited Churches East and West.  On this matter the Archbishop has the support of no less of a Catholic theologian than Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who, at least in 1982, argued more or less the same position in his Principles of Catholic Theology.  Ratzinger noted that, in the same “bull” by which the Roman delegates excommunicated the Patriarch of Constantinople in 1054, the Emperor and the people of Constantinople were affirmed as “very Christian and orthodox”, even though—here is Ratzinger’s pivotal point—their view of papal primacy was significantly “lower” than that which developed in the West during the second millennium of Christianity, especially that which was set forth by the First Vatican Council in 1870.  This fact of history means that

… Rome must not require more from the East with respect to the doctrine of primacy than had been formulated and was lived in the first millennium. When the Patriarch Athenagoras, on July 25, 1967, on the occasion of the Pope’s visit to Phanar, designated him as the successor of St. Peter, as the most esteemed among us, as one who presides in charity, this great Church leader was expressing the essential content of the doctrine of primacy as it was known in the first millennium.  Rome need not ask for more.  (p. 199)

There is evidence that Ratzinger has since moved away from this position—a change reflected in various documents issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith during his tenure as its Prefect.  Still, insofar as a theologian’s argument can stand on its own merit, later shifts in his thought notwithstanding, I find myself in full agreement with “early Ratzinger”.

The two theses above, in my opinion, open up tremendous possibilities in the dialogue between the East and the West, and afford us a way out of the present theological stalemate with respect to Petrine primacy.  No doubt, my adherence to these positions is largely driven by my own sense of being caught between two sides in the Schism that has lasted far too long.  It seems to me that Archbishop Elias felt the same way.  If that makes me a “Zoghbyite”, I suppose I’ll have to own up as one.  But at least now you know.