“This changes everything.” It is a phrase that comes up with great regularity on my Youtube feed. It is, of course, just AI nonsense. However, it is interesting as click-bait: modernity reduced to three words.

When I was a young boy, Detroit’s auto industry changed car designs every year. I can still recognize each of the Chevrolet designs through the 50s. It created a “buzz” each year as the unveiling was anticipated. It had the added effect of making the car you bought two years before look outdated. Of course, the false message of the changes were that they were improvements. In truth, they were mostly cosmetic.

The ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, famously said, “Everything changes” (πάντα ῥεῖ) or, more completely, “Everything changes and nothing stands still.” Less philosophically, modern physics teaches us that everything is in motion – even the atoms within a rock. Quite troubling, mentally, is the notion in physics that nothing is ever quite stable, and that things are probabilities rather than stabilities.

Of course, in the mode of our daily life, rocks are quite stable, and many things seem to stay put. We also live in a culture that cultivates change and celebrates it. Our cultural myth, much like the mavens of last century’s Detroit, imagines that change is something best understood as improvement. We do not want the good – we want the better.

We do not notice that a deep switch takes place between the good and the better. The better is an inherently comparative mode of thought. As such, it participates in a calculation. Measurement, comparison, and choice largely occur in the left side of the brain, that part of our inner life best structured for analytical tasks. It builds bridges and solves equations. It picks berries and goes shopping. However, it is noetically incompetent. In seeking and choosing the “better” we obscure our perception of the world as it is and our place within it. Most especially, it can blind us to God Himself.

I do not mean to overwork the left brain/right brain distinction, but there is definitely a distinction to be made when it comes to noetic perception (the perception of the heart). Archimandrite Meletios Webber offers this description (he uses the language of “mind” versus “heart”):

The heart is quiet rather than noisy, intuitive rather than deductive, lives entirely in the present, and is, at every moment, accepting of the reality God gives in that moment. Moreover, the heart does not seek to distance or dominate anything or anyone by labeling. Rather, it begins with an awareness of its relationship with the rest of creation (and everything and everyone in it), accepting rather than rejecting, finding similarity rather than alienation and likeness rather than difference. It knows no fear, experiences no desire, and never finds the need to defend or justify itself. Unlike the mind, the heart never seeks to impose itself. It is patient and undemanding. Little wonder, then, that the mind, always impatient and very demanding, manages to dominate it so thoroughly.

Some have suggested that the modern world is particularly dominated by its analytical thought, where greater depth and health of vision would be better served by a more wholistic approach (cf. Ian McGilchrist). In theological terms, analytical thought is simply not the stuff of noetic perception. If it is “the pure in heart” who see God, it is rational analysis that seems particularly blind to Him. God is not a problem to be solved, or a thing to be weighed, measured or compared.

This makes apologetics (arguing as a defense of the faith) problematic. We cannot argue (or reason) our way into a friendship, nor do we reason our way into knowing God. It is possible to argue our way into some form of belief. But this is not our goal. Christ says, “This is eternal life – that they might know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom You have sent.” Such knowledge is a mutual in-dwelling, a knowledge that is more like a marriage than a syllogism.

This Changes Everything

There is a reason that Orthodoxy liturgizes musically. We do not read the service. We sing it. Arguments and rationality do not sing. St. Augustine declared: Cantare amantis est: “Only the lover sings.” Music is a deeply mysterious human activity, though it is something that we share with most, perhaps all,  of creation. It is a sound of the heart (nous) in action.

There is a verse sung on a number of the major feasts that declares: “And I said, ‘Now I have begun; this is the change of the right hand of the Most High’” (Ps. 77). This change is not modernity’s cosmetic progressivism. It points to a change that is the transformation of all things in their union with Christ (Eph. 1:10). It is a change that is anticipated in the perception of “Christ in our midst,” within the heart of the Liturgy.

The word, “Orthodox,” is best translated as, “right glory,” reflecting the centrality of life as worship. We never truly sing a “single” note. It is in the nature of sound that a single note produces harmonics, “sympathetic” notes that accompany primary sound. They add character to the single note. This is magnified when two or more voices sing together in harmony, making their voices into an angelic chorus of unified sound. Physics suggests that the whole of the universe “vibrates.” There is a song of all creation. Scripture tells us that God sings (Zeph. 3:17). The singing voice in worship joins the song of all creation, in union with the Song of God, in a physical, mutual communion that is already an anticipation of the union towards which all things are moving.

Our union with God in His divine life is the telos, the end or purpose, of all things. This is the “change” of the right hand of the Most High.

Sing, O heavens, for the LORD has done it!
Shout, you lower parts of the earth;
Break forth into singing, you mountains,
O forest, and every tree in it!
For the LORD has redeemed Jacob,
And glorified Himself in Israel.

Of course, music is only one means and expression of noetic perception. Silence and listening are vital, as well. The Orthodox term for a life in which such things are pre-eminent is hesychasm, from the word for stillness. Orthodoxy will not change the world around you. Practiced faithfully, and patiently, it will change you. Folded into the song of songs, everything around you will change. Filled with God, charged with His life, all of creation will echo the life of the crucified and risen Lord.

Return to the well of salvation and drink deeply. God is with us!