The Tide of Faith

Dover Beach – (Matthew Arnold, 1867)

The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

____

Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach is a mid-19th century lament for a world where faith was receding. It is the sound of secularism gradually seizing Europe and choking out Western civilization. His last line mentions the ignorant armies that were already wasting lives in senseless wars. Of course, two generations later (WWI), would see nearly 40 million casualties (military and civilian) with ignorance in continued command. The emptiness and vacuity of its aftermath gave rise to the even greater madness in the Second World War. The tide has yet to turn.

Emptiness does not build civilizations. The slow process of uncoupling mainstream culture from Christian tradition has also been the loss of its reason for existence – or, at the very least, a substitution of lesser reasons that vie with one another in the mass market of modernity. (I lost count over the past half-dozen years of how many times we were told that some political moment was an “existential crisis.”) In his book, Orthodoxy (1908), GK Chesterton wrote:

“The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered (as Christianity was shattered at the Reformation), it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.”

Orthodox Christianity, in contrast, speaks of a “fullness” (…”and of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace” Jn. 1:16). That fullness is a vision of what it means to be truly human, created in the image of God, being transformed in the image of Christ. It is that inner instinct that transformed Hellenistic and Roman civilizations into Byzantium and the West. The dignity of human beings and the integrity of creation are not imports from some foreign source – they are intrinsic to the gospel. That our present time still has strong echoes of those notions is a testament to their power. They are not intrinsic to modernity. Both are for sale to the highest bidder.

I take great encouragement that contemporary Orthodox conversation has brought beauty back into some corner of our culture (eg. The Ethics of Beauty, Patitsas; “The Experience of Beauty,” Paul Kingsnorth). Beauty is at the very heart of the ethos of Orthodoxy and is particularly seen within the Liturgy. Much of my experience as an Orthodox priest has been in the setting of missions – storefront and warehouse churches struggling to pay the rent. But, even there, as the Liturgy unfolds, the storefronts seem to melt into a larger space and become, for a time, a sacrament of Byzantine beauty, transforming both the space and the participants.

In the 19th century, there was a reaction to secular utility, particularly as expressed in the Industrial Revolution. In England, the Arts and Crafts Movement (as well as several related movements), sought a return to medieval beauty and craftmanship. Its instincts were correct, though it failed to truly ground itself in the wonder and awe of a religious vision. Apparently, you cannot build a culture on a pastiche of religious art. Plastic cannot replace wood.

It is of note that Orthodoxy does not have charge of Western culture (particularly in America). At the same time, we do not live outside the culture’s conversation. I hear echoes of this Orthodox instinct in many places. We are never the managers of history. However, the gospel is not alien to the life of human beings. At its best, the gospel finds a resonance within us, drawing us towards the good as manifest in the Incarnation of Christ.

We should never be dismissive of the inner desire for beauty, nor doubt its place within the context of our lives. I have little doubt that our culture’s frequent lack of beauty contributes greatly to our widespread experience of depression and listlessness. The desire for beauty can be seen within kindness, patience, generosity, and humility. In the presence of such things, we find ourselves nourished and strengthened.

My wife and I recently made a major move to a fast-growing city (my hometown). There have been frequent excursions to various shops as we settle into our new home. A surprise one afternoon came in a trip to a garden center. Advertised as the area’s best, we were unprepared for what we found. The center was much closer to an arboretum in its thoughtful plantings and walking spaces. The cool shade and moist air were a welcome balm. We had little incentive to leave. We bought nothing. We gained much. Some garden centers sell plants. Something far greater than money was at work there. I will go back – and soon.

The emptiness of our culture’s current path, so well described in “Dover Beach,” continues to echo across the decades. However, there is also a sound that comes from within the human breast that is not the sound of emptiness, but of a fullness that longs to be fulfilled. When Orthodoxy speaks of beauty (and much else), it speaks to that fullness in words spoken long ago, “Lazarus, come forth!”

Beauty is not mere aesthetics. It encompasses an aspect of truth that is enfleshed and breathes. Our faith is not a mass of syllogisms, no matter how well expressed. Like even the most primitive human beings, believers have reached out to blank walls to fill them with the images of the heart. It reaches out to the souls of broken men and women to bind them up. Beauty is the sound and image of love breaking on the shores all across the planet calling us to our true home.

All true beauty draws the soul towards You in powerful invocation, and makes it sing triumphantly: Alleluia!

From the Akathist Hymn – “Glory to God for All Things”

 

______

Photo: Photo by Richard Wang on Unsplash

I am informed that the photo is of the cliffs of Dover, while Dover Beach is some 70 miles to the North. My apologies to those who know!

 

 

 

 

About Fr. Stephen Freeman

Fr. Stephen is a retired Archpriest of the Orthodox Church in America. He is also author of Everywhere Present: Christianity in a One-Storey Universe, and Face to Face: Knowing God Beyond Our Shame, as well as the Glory to God podcast series on Ancient Faith Radio.



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52 responses to “The Tide of Faith”

  1. Susan Cushman Avatar

    “I take great encouragement that contemporary Orthodox conversation has brought beauty back into some corner of our culture (eg. The Ethics of Beauty, Patitsas; “The Experience of Beauty,” Paul Kingsnorth). Beauty is at the very heart of the ethos of Orthodoxy . . . .” I, too, loved Patitsas’ The Ethics of Beauty. I haven’t read Kingsnorth’s piece yet. You also say, “I have little doubt that our culture’s frequent lack of beauty contributes greatly to our widespread experience of depression and listlessness.” I have struggled with both of those emotions recently, and I wonder if I’m looking at too much violence and ugliness (i.e. the news) and need to look at more beauty . . . pay closer attention in the Divine Liturgy, as you suggest. Thanks, always, for your thoughtful words. Christ is Risen!

  2. Fr. Stephen Avatar

    Susan,
    The beauty in nature is always a healing balm for me (as is the Liturgy). Finding a calm place within my soul (or “quieting my soul like a weaned child with its mother”) is also of use. May God give you grace within a tough space to rejoice and sing of the beauty around you and within you.

  3. John Poling Avatar
    John Poling

    Beautiful and profound! Thank you.

  4. KS Avatar
    KS

    It’s rare to read anything genuinely insightful and inspiring. Books touted as best-sellers, prize-winners, or “compelling,” almost never compel. “Glory to God for All Things” consistently satisfies the need to hear a clear, honest, humane voice. Many thanks again!

  5. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    I have mixed feelings about the shattering of religion in the west brought on by the Reformation and the Enlightenment.

    I am no friend of secularism and I am not blind to the serious religious disruption in the west caused by these historical events. That said, I cannot pretend that the Church in the west didn´t need some sort of Reformation. It seems to me the road the Church was traveling down in the Middle Ages was a rather violent and oppressive one. One could argue that it was secularism which saved Europe from religious violence and destruction. I know … then came more and more conflict wars. The Church was violent and then so were the secularists who followed. Violence is everywhere at everytime carried out by nearly everyone. 🙁

    I suppose that is why the search for beauty is so valuable and good. Jesus Christ is absolute beauty, though many who know him and many who don´t, seem to not have discovered this truth. I am just discovering it little by little each day.

    Lord have mercy.

  6. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    One thing I have grown to love about our Catholic Church nearby is that it is very often open to the public. I find real beauty there especially when it is without people. It is a kind of spiritual oasis for me in the very busy city in which I live daily. Often it is only me sitting there in a pew, though sometimes there is another beautiful soul or two quietly inhabiting the same spiritual space. Truly a breath of fresh, beautiful air. 🙂

  7. Fr. Stephen Avatar

    Matthew,
    Sometimes I think that our perspective on history skews things a bit. We are constantly tempted by “management” – thoughts that “if only we had done thus and such.” It’s also skewed by our tendency to fracture history into “successful” and “unsuccessful” (a modified version of the “if only” thoughts). The fact is that history is as it is and pretty much no thanks to us (or even to our heroes). I am deeply grateful for what Orthodoxy preserved, for example, but a lot of that preservation was “accidental” in the sense that persecutions and occupation by foreign powers tended to prevent some of the sorts of things that happened in the West. Which is to say that if the situation had been reversed, the East might well have become the locus of innovation and change and the West the place of preservation.

    The tendency to violence is universal – as well as all the other sins – and they are present with us even in the present moment.

    These are all abstractions for the most part – things beyond our immediate control. What we can do is the “next good thing” as well as the daily effort of repentance and yielding ourselves to God. The sheer beauty of forgiveness is unknown to most – together with mercy and kindness.

    God give us grace in all things.

  8. Susannah Avatar
    Susannah

    Wonderful Father! As He rises, so do we, if we hold on. Thank you for your beautiful faith strengthening messages.

  9. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    Fr. Stephen said:

    “What we can do is the “next good thing” as well as the daily effort of repentance and yielding ourselves to God. The sheer beauty of forgiveness is unknown to most – together with mercy and kindness.”

    Maybe this is what the remnant which Holy Scripture talks about needs to be doing at every moment while the rest of the world … well … continues to do that which it has always done throughout history.

    Thanks so much Fr. Stephen.

  10. Fr. Stephen Avatar

    Matthew,
    I have seen this patient labor everywhere – it gets very little notice. I suspect that these small labors “hold the world together” – in the words of the elders.

  11. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    Fr. Stephen said:

    “I suspect that these small labors “hold the world together””

    🙂

  12. Dee of St Herman Avatar
    Dee of St Herman

    Dear Father,
    This article is itself beautiful. Thank you so much for this bouquet of the heart. And it is also edifying reminding us from Where and Whom Beauty comes.

  13. Fr. Stephen Avatar

    Dee, et al
    One of the delights over the years as a priest has come in the form of gifts from young children. A parent will give them some paper, some crayons (or otherwise), to draw on during the Liturgy, helping them pay attention and remain quiet. Quite commonly, I would be rewarded after the liturgy with a child’s gift of a picture (of me, or some aspect of the Liturgy). They see the beauty, and instinctively seek to depict it. I’m sure teachers have this happen in classrooms as well. May God preserve the children!

  14. Margaret Avatar
    Margaret

    Thank you for ALL of this, Fr. Stephen, your article here and your comments also and indeed “May God preserve the children!”

  15. Kh. Priscilla Farman Avatar

    Glory to God! I submitted a comment va my email link, but it hasn’t appeared. ..perhaps something didn’t work on that venue. Anyway, I shared that 3 weeks ago our Parish, Sts. Constantine and Helen in DFW, hosted our 2nd Orthodox Arts Festival featuring Jonathan Pageau, other speakers, arts worshops, vendors of Orthodox arts and crafts and amazing iconographers (as well as Middle Eastern foods and entertainment). Pageau spoke on how now is the time for Orthodox Arts. One visitor this past Sunday had only one question about Orthodoxy: what do you do for evangelism. I asked him…how did you hear about the church? He had attended the Festival…drawn by the focus on arts. I suggest that the opportunity to combine the typical ethnic festivals with the more universal Othodox focus on Beauty is a model whose time has come. We hope to repeat this model every year, God willing. It was a joyous event. Glory to God!

  16. Fr. Stephen Avatar

    Khouria Priscilla,
    Somehow the comment you referenced did not arrive for the blog. I’ve searched. Sorry. But, I truly appreciate news on the Arts Festival. I’ve attended a few of these (they had something like this as an evangelism event last year in South Carolina). Beauty is indeed a model whose time has come.

  17. Dee of St Herman Avatar
    Dee of St Herman

    Father,
    Indeed the openness, humility, love and receptivity of some children is Beauty in action. Lessons for us adults.

  18. Pierre Leppan Avatar
    Pierre Leppan

    Father Stephen , Thank you for your articles ….I cannot believe how Chesterton defined our modern day problem .. Woke is a bunch of disconnected virtues ..how amazing Chesterton is

  19. Fr. Stephen Avatar

    Pierre,
    Indeed. “Modernity” has been around for a while now, and its problems have been long identified. One current philosopher says that money is the ontology of modernity – meaning that money is what we see as the purpose, value, and being of all things. If it makes a profit – do it! Of course, making a profit is not a sin. But, as a “virtue,” it has run wild, as have the other disconnected virtues. Chesterton amazes me.

  20. Randall Avatar
    Randall

    Thanks, Father; this is just wonderful! Your vignette about the garden center says so much about our culture and its thoughtfulness, or lack thereof.

  21. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    When will the bank account of Christian virtue which the secular west continues drawing from to finance its modernist program run dry? AND … when it does run dry, how dark will the cloud hovering over our society really be??

  22. Jenny Avatar
    Jenny

    Father,

    One of the things I love to do with my dad is visit nurseries. Some of them do look like living gateways into paradise.

    I planted a red rose outside my bay window a few years ago, and it has grown up to cover half the windows.

    It’s in full bloom now, crimson blossoms cresting over the top, hidden like jewels amid the tangle of green below.

    At a certain time of the day, sunlight strikes straight down through it, and everything turns translucent gold, green and crimson, pressed right up against the window screen.

    I had a great deal of unexpected quiet this weekend, as my toddler and I could not join a planned trip and had to stay home. There was beauty at every turn.

    On Sunday evening, I was chopping up red bell pepper, meat was browning and my son was playing quietly. Outside the leaves were turning up silver green in the rain scented wind, the sky was silver blue and inside the house, all golden lights and warmth.

    All my soul was worshipping the Lord because of this wealth of beauty and goodness which was being poured out.

    Some moments in my life, I feel as if they are touching the farther shore of His Kingdom, even if it is just the edge, just as that hymn says:

    “All true beauty draws the soul towards You in powerful invocation, and makes it sing triumphantly: Alleluia!”

    Alleluia!

  23. Fr. Stephen Avatar

    Matthew,
    Goodness is not finite, I think. Every child born comes with an innate drive towards the good. Cultures can derail or distort that drive, but they never kill it. Grace is always at work, as well. By the mercies of God, we endure the consequences of our bad decisions (rarely, if ever, in their full expression). The consequences serve as wake-up calls here and there. What we don’t know – is the future. But we do know the End. And the End is joyful beyond measure – not as a result of progress, but as the result of goodness swallowing all things. Eph. 1:10

  24. Eric Kyte Avatar
    Eric Kyte

    Thank you Father Stephen
    Home – one of the most powerful words in the English language

    I wonder if simply our condition is home sickness
    I know that meditation upon the reality of coming from and returning to God is transformative for me

    You wrote
    Beauty is the sound and image of love breaking on the shores all across the planet calling us to our true home.

    That resonates with the beauty of which it speaks

    God bless you

    Kindest
    Eric

  25. Bonnie Avatar
    Bonnie

    From a hymn by F.W. Faber
    “How wonderful Creation is,
    The work that Thou didst bless;
    And O what then must Thou be like,
    Eternal Loveliness!”

  26. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    Fr. Stephen said:

    “Goodness is not finite, I think. Every child born comes with an innate drive towards the good. Cultures can derail or distort that drive, but they never kill it. Grace is always at work, as well. By the mercies of God, we endure the consequences of our bad decisions (rarely, if ever, in their full expression). The consequences serve as wake-up calls here and there. What we don’t know – is the future. But we do know the End. And the End is joyful beyond measure – not as a result of progress, but as the result of goodness swallowing all things. Eph. 1:10”

    Thanks so much for this Fr. Stephen. I interpret all this as:

    Do good. Receive grace. Be merciful. Believe in innate goodness. Trust that the end is joyful beyond measure. Do and believe all these things even as history contines to ramble on the way it always has. Do the next good thing!

  27. Michael Bauman Avatar
    Michael Bauman

    Goodness is infinite as long one’s heart strives toward Joy and repentance

  28. Dee of St Herman Avatar
    Dee of St Herman

    Thank you for your beautiful comment, Michael!! Glory to God for your continued presence in our comments!!!

  29. Michael Bauman Avatar
    Michael Bauman

    Dee, I am blessed to still have a brain that works and a heart. Jesus has been blessing me my whole life and He will continue to do so.

    Joy is His gift no matter what the other circumstances. A big part of His presence is working hard to repent. Joy bubbles forth

  30. Michael Bauman Avatar
    Michael Bauman

    I also have a wife whose faith is at least equal to mine.desotr the fact that my sicknessakee her life very difficult, her faith is a demonstration to me that I do not have to worry: Jesus will take me when the time is right and He will provide everything we need during that time.

    Everybody’s prayers are welcome. Her family needs even more help than we do: brother, John Brewer, sister-in-law Beth; grandchildren Rick, Juliana, Shawn and their families.

    My brother, Fr. Stevan, retired Orthodox priest in Indianapolis.

  31. Margaret Avatar
    Margaret

    Michael Bauman — thanks so much for your post here in comments sharing your and your wife’s strong faith in Our Lord, the Lover of Mankind! These words are so encouraging. Also thank you for your family’s names, they are on our prayer list with yours and your wife. Yours with love in Christ — Margaret

  32. Fr Serbhan Avatar
    Fr Serbhan

    Thank you for this dear Father. Beatiful as ever.

    As a matter of interest; the photo is probably of Beachy Head near the town of Eastbourne, East Sussex (unfortunately a favourite place for suicides) which is about 70 miles from Dover Beach (now a very narrow strip in the Harbour area). The actual Dover cliffs lie each side of Dover Harbour.

  33. Fr. Stephen Avatar

    Father,
    Indeed. I priest who lives there gave me a head’s up and I added this below the article:

    “I am informed that the photo is of the cliffs of Dover, while Dover Beach is some 70 miles to the North. My apologies to those who know!”

    I responded as an uninformed American. I looked at his pictures of the actual Dover Beach. It looked less than “Dover-ish” to someone who’s spent a lifetime being shown the “White Cliffs of Dover” by the UK’s ad agencies and Hollywood. It was a moment of learning for me.

    Having recently moved to my home town in South Carolina, I am responding to lots of questions and conversations who confuse it with North Carolina. North Carolina is positioned between South Carolina and Virginia. It was once known as “the valley of humility between two mountains of conceit.” Location matters. But, I’m guilty of posting a picture that said “Dover” even if it excluded the “Beach.”

    Thanks!

  34. Dean Avatar
    Dean

    Michael,
    My prayers for you and wife Merry continue daily. I had a good friend who died 4 years ago. The last time I saw him, as I was walking away, he said, “Dean, you know what I need.”
    Of course, it was prayer for this good Mennonite brother.

  35. Charles “Lou” Weissing Avatar
    Charles “Lou” Weissing

    Fr Stephen:

    This article and some of your other recent remarks put me in mind of Christ’s transcendence of time. In youth I eagerly ate up the exploits of the Time Lord Dr. Who, a being who flitted around through time and space. While seeming unbound and free, the Doctor was bound to the iron wheel of past, present and future.

    You have written about how anything touching God and Christ is not merely unique or nonesuch but fundamentally incomparable. Things gather themselves and form in a Liturgical array. Time does, too, as the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world is the Omega towards which all things tend. Like what Faulkner said but in a different way, the past is not dead, it’s not even past. It’s resurrected. So time as well as space and things and people gather round the Lord.

    We are told that God is not old, though He is the Ancient of Days. He is not found in conceits about an “Eternal Now” though His mercies are new every morning. He consented to share our temporality just as He took on our mortality. But all created things including time are His subjects and not His ruler.

    He is the Lord of Time.

  36. Michael Bauman Avatar
    Michael Bauman

    Dean, thank you.
    The communion of prayer for each other is critical in maintaining Joy.

  37. Fr. Stephen Avatar

    Charles,
    I was struck when reading St. Basil (don’t remember the exact text) but he described time as a “created thing.” It wasn’t just some abstraction – interesting.

  38. Michael Bauman Avatar
    Michael Bauman

    Created time. I am not quite sure what the implications are if that is true
    Is it on a different level/type of creation?

  39. Dee of St Herman Avatar
    Dee of St Herman

    Michael, beloved brother,
    If time is a created thing it is not only a determined natural process. Time has movement and shape. It responds to the hands of God like the potter at his wheel.

    Christ is risen from the dead at a specific point of time and yet from the beginning of time, because this is how He molds time.

    By His death he overcame death, and to us He has given eternal life, before the world, now, and forevermore. Great is His love for us, woven into all of creation, into all of the universe for all of time.

  40. Mallory Avatar
    Mallory

    Fr. Stephen,
    My older brother is visiting and we are very close, I’m fortunate that he happens to be one of the best people I have ever met—he is the type of person who is naturally humble and has an ease of “doing the next right thing” without much fuss. His heart seems to already be bent towards forgiveness of all things. Nothing like me ha. God help me!

    In any case, recently at dinner we were discussing a mutual friend with an illness, and I said something like “may God protect him” and my brother shrugged and said “God? Who’s God?” And I didn’t know how to answer. I was blank. He wasn’t saying it in a harsh way, it was very casual but his genuine first response, as if to say what does that even mean and how could God, whatever that is, have anything to do with our friend’s illness. What would you answer to that? It was a small moment but it’s stuck with me ever since—can’t shake it. Any words of wisdom I’d be grateful for. Blessings to all.

  41. Dee of St Herman Avatar
    Dee of St Herman

    Mallory,
    I think your brother raised a surprisingly good question. Too often in our secular society the question is asked, what is god—god as thing or entity. “Who” refers to a person. If you mention this, and the incarnation of Jesus, that might propel the conversation further.

    However, silence is also good. It might be difficult to believe or accept in our secular society, but our Lord God speaks when we are silent. And there is a famous Orthodox icon referred to as Holy Silence. The voice of God speaks to the willing heart, a voice that the ears do not hear.

    Like you I also remain silent when I wish to say something. But the problem is there’s just too much to say beyond just a sound bite. And unfortunately most of us lack the patience or capacity of attention beyond a sound bite.

    May our Lord give us grace for the right words or comfort us in our silence.

  42. Fr. Stephen Avatar

    Mallory,
    I think his statement is a good question. The word “God” can mean all kinds of things. It’s something of an invitation, perhaps. We don’t have to have all the answers, or to convince anyone of anything, but we can always share what we have come to know.

  43. Michael Bauman Avatar
    Michael Bauman

    God is a person, not a thing or a state of being.

    As such it critically shapes the intrarelationsips between Him and the rest of His Creation in. I have personally known Jesus, the Holy Spirit but I have yet to meet the Father in the same personal way. My loss so far. Maybe soon. It is exciting.

  44. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    About time and space …

    It was very helpful for me when we discussed this in the comment section. I think I came away with the idea that time and space are indeed created. They are necessary for the human being to make his or her way through this world with some sense of order, but they don´t have anything to do with divine eternity (at least not in the way humans experience them now).

    I´m wondering … though … if this is a correct perspective, then what does it mean for how I should live my life as a child of God in the here and now? What effect do
    time and space really have on my spiritual life if in fact they are only created (and temporary??) constructs?

  45. Mallory Avatar
    Mallory

    Thank you Dee, Fr. Stephen, and Michael!

    I think I am used to thinking of God in the way the New Age thinks of the “Universe” so a force, the creative force in all of life. But now this has changed for me and I think of Christ. I pray to be shown and to know what it means to know Jesus personally!

    Bless everyone.

  46. Fr. Stephen Avatar

    Matthew,
    FWIW (perhaps repeating myself?),
    I’ve always understood time as related to space. As in, a point in space time, is just, a point, at a particular space relative to the position of everything else in space/time. Since everything is in motion (all the time), then nothing is where it was but a moment a go. You’d have to dial the entire universe back to be at a point in space/time.

    But, we are creatures – not just thought (or some other similar notion). My life has only been lived as a space/time event. When the Logos (God the Word) “becomes flesh and dwells among us” He enters space/time bodily. He is somewhere, sometime. But He doesn’t just “become flesh” and nothing more. He is “both God and man.” So, though He is space/time/human, He is united (hypostatically) with the Godhead such that space/time simply do not apply.

    In the resurrection, it appears that some of the “rules” that we expect regarding space/time are demonstrably “broken.” But He does not cease to be space/time: He eats fish, for example. In the Ascension (and the accounts are a bit odd) we see “space/time” taken up into a union with not space/time. We can now speak (and should speak) of Christ that encompasses both – this is the faith we confess from Chalcedon forward.

    So, we eat His flesh and drink His blood – really and truly. But, in Orthodoxy we say, “broken but never divided, ever eaten yet never consumed.”

    And, our hope is that we “become by grace all that He is by nature.”

  47. Fr. Stephen Avatar

    Mallory,
    My heart leapt with joy to hear that you pray to know what it means to know Jesus personally! He will make Himself known – just as He knows you. May He preserve you by His grace!

  48. Matthew Avatar
    Matthew

    Thanks Fr. Stephen.

  49. Michael Bauman Avatar
    Michael Bauman

    Both the language and the experience alone are insufficient to give the reality. Both are necessary for the whole.

    The experience alone or the language by itself are are insufficient to really bring us into Communion with God and all of His people. It is the combination of language, experience and knowledge that are the living truth.

    It is all too easy to stop some where incomplete and assume you are complete or want to be complete.

    The Joy, the Community, the transformation, healing, all the miracles don’t happen in completeness or at all.

  50. Bonnie Ivey Avatar
    Bonnie Ivey

    Hello Fr. Freeman. The conversations on this blog are so enriching. If only we could gather in person. There are questions I would like to address to Dee, who speaks of the order and beauty of things too small to see, and how this enriched her faith. As an artist I have been awestruck by the order and beauty of the natural world, from the cellular level on up to the huge; in both organic and non-living things. Is there a way such conversations could happen without interfering with everyday communications on the blog?
    Thanks to all who participate. You are all amazing.

  51. Fr. Stephen Avatar

    Bonnie,
    I’ve given thought, from time to time, about doing some kind of Online Event – sort of a Zoom Conference. I did several of these in Australia (by Zoom) back during the pandemic, but someone else was doing the organizing. I’ll give it more thought.

  52. Cheryl Kay Hosken Avatar
    Cheryl Kay Hosken

    Thanks so much for words that cause us to despair and words that give us hope to perservere since God’s creation on earth and in our physical bodies.

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  1. Dee, did you get my email with links re Mat. Olga’s glorification this weekend?? Dana (Please forgive the interruption, Father…


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