Cyrulla murmured “What is it, Maerion?”

Maerion answered as quietly: “I felt that I saw into the future, and knew that none of us would ever be this happy again.”

The boy raised his thoughtful eyes to the horizon outside the open door, but the gazes of Cyrulla and Perspice flew to the Balcony in the Upper Salon where mixed and remixed daily all the possibilities of the their futures.

“We’re getting old, I suppose” Perspice said. “That makes it more delightful to be down here but brings the day of going up there ever closer.”

“I hadn’t connected the two thoughts so closely” Maerion shrugged, looking aloft at last.

Hugo laughed. “I don’t understand - though my father’s explained it a thousand times - I honestly don’t understand how mature thoughtful people like us can turn into such animals as that crowd above. Do you suppose we’ll act like that?”

“My mother says it’s The Heat.” Cyrulla offered. ”When it comes, she says, everyone loses their minds and acts on some feverish instinct. Like a cat or a rat.”

Perspice shuddered, and Cyrulla caught the motion and looked at her asking, “Are you afraid? I’m not. I want to feel passion and fever.”

“They say it’s like hunger” Hugo said. “Yet I am still bewildered. When I am hungry for food, I don’t come to the table like a street-dog. I recline in some genteel attitude and pick at my food like a gentleman should, even after I’ve been riding the Desert Road all morning.”

“May the Goddess grant your wife that you approach her as delicately” said Perspice a little primly. Her three friends stared at her a moment, and then all four erupted into hilarious laughter which drew stares from the Lower Salon Guards.

After they had quietened, Maerion sighed and returned to his gazing out the doorway. “I suppose that’s what The Cage is for. It’s like training a young man or woman how to be restrained in his newly awakened appetite, and by the time one marries, it is hoped that one will be able to … approach the table like a gentleman.

Cyrulla shuddered. “Can you think of anyone for whom you would spend months inside The Cage?”

Hugo looked at her, then around the Lower Salon, and frowned. “I don’t think I’d do it for any girl” he said. “I think I’d do it because I have to in order to escape mutilation.”

Maerion turned back to the table and leaned toward Hugo. “What about Virtue?” he said. “Wouldn’t you do it for Virtue’s sake?”

“I hope I would” Hugo said. “But I just don’t understand.” He glanced again at the Upper Salon, where a very loud race was on between some of the older girls who were glad of the chance to lay aside their outer garments before such a large crowd of eligible young men.

“I’m just not convinced I’ll turn into one of those - cats or rats. I’m not sure I need a cage to preserve my virtue.”

Cyrulla stared at him, perplexed. “But no one can do it that way” she said, “unless granted a miracle by the Goddess. Isn’t that - “

But she stopped and gazed at the howling crowd above.

“Unless there’s some other reason why people act like that up there” she continued a moment later. “But that would mean everyone was wrong. Is it possible?”

“It’s happened before” Hugo said. He turned and touched Maerion on the shoulder. “I offer you a challenge” he said. “I believe we can go up there and act as rationally as we do down here.”

Then he turned to Cyrulla. “I’ll wait for you” he said. “If you don’t come up within the first five months, I’ll calmly weigh my choices and pick the next best candidate.”

Cyrulla’s eyes widened. Few proposals of marriage happened in the Lower Salon, because fortunate families such as hers viewed such activity as the province of less-learned and less refined people from the southern half of the City of Wells and Stars.

But “Don’t tell anyone” was all she said, and Hugo responded with a light reassurance.

“I’ll try it, as well” Maerion said at last. “It can hardly hurt to attempt how much rational function it is possible to preserve in the Heat. I wonder if anyone has ever looked into it before.”

He brightened. “We can write dissertations on it once we are married.”

“In that case, Cyrulla and I will make the attempt as well” Perspice announced, “and put out dissertations of our own.”

The boys laughed.

“Women writing dissertations!” Hugo said. “Who would read them?”

“We’ll submit them at the temple” Perspice said. “I believe they are rather more approving of femininity than not up there.”

Hugo laughed again, and Cyrulla, watching him with a new morbid interest, thought she noticed a crack in his voice. She shuddered. Six months a piece they had to cross one another’s path in the Balcony above.

Hugo left soon after with his father, and Cyrulla’s personal slave arrived to escort her back to the feminine wing of her father’s home. As they hugged goodbye Perspice whispered “Don’t worry, but accept whatever comes with happiness”.

As day ended, the Lower Salon became empty and lamps were extinguished there, even as others were being lit in the Upper Salon, which grew more crowded and louder. Perspice, alone now with Maerion, turned back and saw him leaning against his chair and gazing toward the balcony with a frown.

A young man shouted rudely down at him from above: “Don’t worry, baby-face, you’ll come up soon enough!”

Maerion continued to stare at the half-drunk fellow with scientific interest. Perspice walked over and stood by his side.

“Are you trying to imagine whether that young man could help what he just said?” 

He nodded.

“Yes. Also, which is the real point, whether we can possibly take what we have down here, and holding it safely, pass through that” (he gestured above) “into our next lives.”

“It’s like looking at life whole for a moment” she whispered. “What does it all mean?”

“It means we’re standing on an edge or a border between two closed places and for a moment we get to see everything.”

“I hope we come out of the two closed places into the open.”

(Mother)

“But not
to love,
who had
no thought
but love,
begot
of love?
It’s sad.”

(Holly)

“That I
who have
a heart
laid by
should salve
my smart
alone
and die
two ways
unknown?”

This high
I raise
my goal:
to hate
my life.
My soul
will mate
with strife.

And still
when all
is said,
I choose
so fine
a pain!
To lose
all mine
and gain
my fill
of All
instead!”

(Mother)

“But when
you’ve done
all this,
your All
may still
include
the men -
The One;
The Kiss;
the fall;
the thrill -
God’s good.”

Something funny.

 Here all this time I’ve been telling people we’re Orthodox Chatecumens…and then this Sunday I find out that it’s a formal ceremony you go through. The formal announcement of our “engagement” to become part of the Orthodox Church is set for two weeks from yesterday…i.e. the next time we’re at Liturgy. In our hearts we were there long ago…and so was our church, I think. What a loving vibrant place our congregation is.

 Which reminds me…there’s a lot of humor in Orthodoxy. During our meeting with dear Fr. B— last Sunday I mentioned that I loved his sense of humor.

“The first time we walked into this Church, I picked up the bulletin and read it and thought, whoever wrote this has a wonderful sense of humor. And then I met you and I knew who had written it!”

He looked down at the table silently for a moment and I wasn’t sure if I had said something too personal. But then he looked up with a glint in his eye and began telling a story about the time he was almost made an Episcopal bishop.

His nomination had been turned down because of his sense of humor. “I was having too much fun” he said “for their idea of a Bishop.”

After that he told the story about a Bretheren pastor who had lost a room full of college students by telling them that life was too serious to crack jokes about it. We shook our heads, feeling that this pastor, while seeing the seriousness of true life, was missing the ridiculousness and assymetrical protportions of this form of life that is passing away.

We laughed and then Fr. B— went on to say that he wants to write a pamphlet about our Lord’s sense of humor - a dry wit he told us. We started telling stories back and forth about the humorous images and stories we found in the gospel. We laughed a lot. And we agreed that a good joke is miles and miles removed from damnable frivolity.

Enough.

I’m through with these silly rules.

I can’t help but notice that a Short Story or Novel is composed entirely of words. I must therefore conclude that a story-writer’s methods ought not to be polluted by the methods of Screenwriters.

Admit it, friends. “Showing” vs. “Telling” has very little to do with good writing as millenia of authorship demonstrate. With which you start you story has even less. I rebel. I don’t give a flying tinker’s wingfeather about whether today’s publisher will view my work with the skeptical eye of a mass-marketer.

Therefore I am putting up the following two pages of introduction from the first draft of my 20-page story called The City of Wells and Stars. It is not perfect and no one may wish to read it. I am putting it up as a way of saying that I reserve the right to introduce my own stories by way of long, careful, and detailed introduction, with no action or dialogue whatever.

My story, in short, is no blasted film!

 (I furthermore reserve the right to intrude upon my own story in the capacity of Witty Narrator.)

***

Well-stars, that city of ancient establishment, lay (as every eight-year old geography student was required to know) to the east of a great desert and to the west of a sea. The city  was as massive as its reputation - both were solid and did not look as if they would vanish in the near future.

The city was divided into three sections. The first division was quite sharp: a Green Waste filled with fruit trees and old stone structures now uninhabited, separated the palace complex (which included the temple to the city’s Goddess) from the City of the Nobles. This Green Waste had become a preserve for the homeless, where they might sleep at night and from which they might present petitions at the temple windows even if they did not have the clothes or offerings which would permit them to enter.

The next division was more rough. About the place where the great stone wells began to appear at every street corner, servants of the city’s rich and noble met every day - or stared across a well at - the impoverished nobles; the poor, and the destitute. The wells, at least, were free to all.

The Goddess (though she kept many prostitutes in her own establishment) was very particular about the necessity of certifiable chastity before marriage, among both rich and poor. The question of how exactly this was to be accomplished she left to the parents, tutors, and governors of said youths, who managed it according to custom and financial ability.

The poor, who lived south of the Wells, did it inexpensively. According to their need at the moment, they either castrated their offspring quite young and sold them as slaves in the palace complex, or they married them off before puberty - as young as 15 years old, it was rumored in the City of the Nobles - and hoped devoutly that the young couple paired thus apart from their own volition would grow into one another. The gossip of the entire city, from palace to temple, from the City of the Nobles to beggars on the street, was always full of some young wife who had become a prostitute because she had matured two years younger than her unfortunate, baby-faced husband - or a father who was suing his son-in-law on charge of seeking solace for his burning inwards from someone else than his still in-the-bud daughter.

This method, whatever its faults, was less expensive than the complex method rigorously followed in the City of the Nobles. There, once their offspring turned seventeen, parents hired or bought guards and chaperones who could swear an oath as to the young person’s whereabouts and activities during every minute of the day or night. At that time also, when parents knew that their children could be expected to bloom in as little as a year, they introduced them to The Salon, where they could spend their days interacting with one another when not shut up in their parents’ houses or escorted about the city by guards. 

In the lower part of the Salon quiet, temperate, well-bred youths of seventeen years old and upward gathered every day to form friendships and discuss the astronomy, religion, history, geography, and philosophy which they had spent all the previous years of their lives working so hard to acquire. Their tall statures, mature expressions, and quiet pursuit of life’s more serious subjects belied their babyish voices and innocent stares. Around the edges of the room eunuch soldiers from the Goddess’ own army stared silently at them all day long for any sign of maturation.

In the upper part, guarded well by yet more eunuch soldiers, a rowdier bunch with boiling faces, hot breath, and desperation in their eyes, bid for one another’s will to marry in a race against time. From the day that each young man or woman declared himself as “out of the bud” (or was so declared by the stern-faced watchers down below) he had exactly six months to find a willing life-partner, declare his betrothal, and depart the Salon forever. Occasionally, very wealthy noblemen watched from behind a screen for a few hours and returned the next day with some desperate girl’s even more desperate father to fetch her home and expand his collection of concubines - which was respectable, if not ideal.

Across the city, from palace to streets alike, the penalty for not being married six months after coming out of the bud was castration for both male and female. Likewise anyone who reached maturation without being either married or entered in the lists of the Salon was subject to castration if the Goddess’ guards came across him. Many useful places in society were filled by such unhappy people - or happy people, in the case of over-philosophic youngsters who, appalled by the rowdy crowd in the Upper Salon, volunteered for The Quiet Life and took a station as a nurse, orator, musician, or the like without ever having felt the heat of manhood or womanhood within.

Maerion had been coming to the Lower Salon for three years when he entered one sunny day soon after his twentieth birthday. He was not likely to become a voluntary eunuch, nor was his friend Hugo. Both were known for their joyful enjoyment of all that life sent their way, and it was not unusual for the Goddess to receive petitions at nightfall from hopeful but as-yet flat-chested girls that one or the other of the boys might remain in the bud until such fortunate moment as they themselves would burst out of their long childhood into the full glories of womanliness.

Lately, Maerion and Hugo had been engaged in a delightful series of public debates (about the old myth that the city’s Wells had been planted by a Star in the shape of some famous constellation) with two willowy girls just their age. These girls, Perspice and Cyrulla by name, had only recently revealed their developing powers of wit and delivery, and while the boys may have been winning the debates in terms of pure reason, the girls were by far the favorites of all audiences. Even the Upper Crowd leaned down from their balconies to hear the entertaining repartee between the two teams. (Bets were being made as to which girl would marry which boy.)

As yet unconcerned about that question, the four sat this day about a table, engaging in friendly talk after the most recent debate. Maerion raised a toast to the Goddess, and Hugo to her worthy followers (the Goddess was known for her debating abilities) and both girls returned the compliments with fresh, uninhibited gazes.

Then in an odd moment, Maerion turned his head toward the doorway and became silent, gazing at a shaft of sunlight illuminating the mosaic floor. His three friends, in sympathy to his change of mood, fell silent as well.

“Not only does the sun shine in the saints, but they also become little suns, partaking of the nature of the fountain of their light.”  - Jonathan Edwards 

Those who “know” me on the web know that before I came to Orthodoxy I was a staunch Edwardsian Calvinist. Other Orthodox often assume that this was a bigger leap than it actually was. They feel that because Arminian or “Biblicist” people make much of the free will, while Calvinism seems to deny it, it would have been a more natural progression from Weslyanism to Orthodoxy, for Orthodoxy believes strongly in human freedom of a sort. I haven’t studied much Weslyan theology but Charles’ hymns were among my favorite. What people possibly forget is that the Wesley brothers were friends with the Edwards. What they had in common, I have long felt, transcended their formulaic differences.

I did not read Edwards’ defense of Original Sin nor many of his other works. I dwelt constantly upon the teachings of the Religious Affections and to a lesser extent upon The End for Which God Created the World, which pictures God’s glory as rays emenating from his essence or waters flowing from a secret spring. Therefore it was Edwardsian doctrine even more than Weslyan hymns that prepared me to view Orthodox theology with understanding.

The primary reason: Edwardsian Calvinism has a well-developed doctrine of Regeneration that provides a bridge to Orthodox Theosis. Other Baptists and baptistic sects confess Regeneration as a fundamental doctrine of the faith, but usually they are largely unaware of what it means or what the greatest Regenerist theologian ever to write in the English language had to say about it.

My family, for instance, at first labored under the twin beliefs that

1) Salvation equals justification by faith alone and little else. (This means that salvation is a verdict God makes as judge that takes place in a moment in time…a moment that always corresponds exactly to a persons’ act of “placing their faith in Jesus” which in turn meant that you began to try to assume that Jesus’ merit had “covered your sins.” This led to a lot of circular reasoning: how do you know he did it? Because I believe he did it!)

2) Salvation, once accomplished in this (often elusive) moment in time could never be undone.

The problem in trying to live this way was that if, after your initial conversion, you started to want something more in your spiritual life, you were left either to the necessity of seeking a new, entirely different experience or to wonder whether your first one was the real thing. In other words, salvation under this system was not all that salvific unless all you wanted to be saved from was hell. The hell within was largely left untouched.

We were of course told that at “the moment of salvation” we were given all that pertains to life and godliness - the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. How to connect to this mysterious unknown person of the Godhead who had so intangibly and without sign taken our bodies as his temple was a perplexing, and to a serious seeker, agonizing question.

For my family and me, it really seemed that Jonathan Edwards solved all this. And to a large extent I still believe he  did. As we will see, there is one important distinction within Orthodox theology that my poor dear Teacher did not appear to understand, and it is for this reason that his condemnations of free will are so devestating.

 I will try to sum up the stages of thinking he took us through.

First and most importantly, his teaching came to us as if in response to a few verses of scriptures that had become very important relative to the needs we were sensing within us. Jim Johnson,  a dear family friend, my Aunt Elaine, my parents and sister and myself and a few others, among the others in our Baptist Church, began to be occupied with the question of “finding God.” We constantly quoted to one another the verses that urge us to seek God with all our hearts and the accompanying promise that we would find him. We passed in and out of Keswick theology (which demands a second, sanctifying experience of grace distinct from justification, but which pictures such second grace as being filled with the Holy Spirit much like a pitcher of water or worse like a demon-possessed person) without being much helped by it. Thus when Jonathan Edwards came and introduced the idea that this seeking was a necessary component even in salvation, we were ready to hear it.

Jonathan Edwards, although he believed in and preached justification by faith, experienced mystical visions in the spirit that seem similar to those eccstacies which Orthodox saints in their earlier stages of theosis speak of. The language he uses to describe it…or to veil it… is strikingly similar to certain Orthodox accounts I have read. The effect in his writings is that the search for a true inward experience of God as the root of salvation takes center stage. “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, neither high profession nor low profession, neither a fair story (of initial conversion) nor a broken one, avails any thing; but a new creature.” And he was not content with an experience of God that would fade with time and leave a person no better than before. He believed in a kind of experience that would be the root of defining and permanant alteration in a person’s soul.

“All gracious affections (of which true Christianity largely consists, this work argues) arise from a spiritual understanding, in which the soul has the excellency and glory of divine things discovered to it, as was shown before. But all spiritual discoveries are also transforming. They not only make an alteration of the present exercise, sensation, and frame of the soul; but such is their power and efficacy, that they alter its very nature: “But we all with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” Such power as this, is properly divine, and is peculiar to the Spirit of the Lord…

Thus it is with those affections of which the soul is the subject in its conversion.The scriptural representations of conversion, strongly imply and signify a change of nature: such as being born again; becoming new creatures; rising from the dead; being renewed in the spirit of the mind; dying to sin, and living to righteousness; putting off the old man, and putting on the new man; being ingrafted into a new stock; having a divine seed implanted in the heart; being made partakers of the divine nature, &c.“

But it was not only in conversion, Edwards disclosed to us, that such things happen. For,

As it is with spiritual discoveries and affections given at first conversion, so it is in all subsequent illuminations and affections of that kind, they are all transforming. There is a like divine power and energy in them, as in the first discoveries: and they still reach the bottom of the heart, and affect and alter the very nature of the soul, in proportion to the degree in which they are given. And a transformation of nature is continued and carried on by them, to the end of life, until it is brought to perfection in glory. Hence the progress of the work of grace in the hearts of the saints, is represented in Scripture as a continued conversion and renovation of nature. So the apostle exhorts those that were at Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints—the subjects of God’s redeeming mercies—to be transformed by the renewing of their mind…

When I learned that the work of Grace in conversion is of the same kind as the work of Grace in what I had formerly called “sanctification” the unity of a person’s salvation appeared to me. I began to see salvation as a whole rather than as a moment in time. I did a little work on my own at this point and discovered that in the scriptures, salvation is first of all God’s work in rescuing people from any evil whatever, and secondly their experience of this work, and finally their experience of this work more specifically in regard to being dead in sins.

What was the nature, though, of this last salvation? Edwards had an answer that inflamed me with the delight of truth from the first moment that I read and understood it.

It is very true, that all grace and goodness in the hearts of the saints is entirely from God; and they are universally and immediately dependent on him for it. But yet (certain) persons are mistaken, as to the manner of God’s communicating himself and his Holy Spirit, in imparting saving grace to the soul. He gives his Spirit to be united to the faculties of the soul, and to dwell there after the manner of a principle of nature: so that the soul, in being endued with grace, is endued with a new nature: but nature is an abiding thing. All the exercises of grace are entirely from Christ: but are not from him as a living agent moves and stirs what is without life, and which yet remains lifeless. The soul has life communicated to it, so as through Christ’s power to have inherent in itself a vital nature. In the soul where Christ savingly is, there he lives. He does not merely live without it, so as violently to actuate it, but he lives in it, so that the soul also is alive. Grace in the soul is as much from Christ, as the light in a glass, held out in the sunbeams, is from the sun. But this represents the manner of the communication of grace to the soul but in part; because the glass remaining as it was, the nature of it not being at all changed, it is as much without any lightsomeness in its nature as ever. But the soul of a saint receives light from the sun of righteousness in such a manner, that its nature is changed, and it becomes properly a luminous thing. Not only does the sun shine in the saints, but they also become little suns, partaking of the nature of the fountain of their light. In this respect; the manner of their derivation of light, is like that of the lamps in the tabernacle, rather than that of a reflecting glass; which though they were lit up by fire from heaven, yet thereby became themselves burning, shining things. The saints do not only drink of the water of life, that flows from the original fountain; but this water becomes a fountain of water in them, springing up there, and flowing out of them. Grace is compared to a seed implanted, that not only is in the ground, but has hold of it; has root there, grows there, and is an abiding principle of life and nature there.

“Alive in Christ” took on a whole new meaning for me at this point. From that moment on all my searching for truth was informed by an insistence in my spirit that this was the heart of religion and that everything else I knew must be conformed to this truth. I think those Orthodox before me will understand now what I learned from Edwards and how it became a bridge to Orthodoxy.

I learned that the nature of saving Grace is nothing less than Christ through His Spirit being united to mine as a principle of life. This was the perfect bridge to grasping theosis a few years later. As I understand it after reading Lossky, grace itself is a sort of Presence of God and it is indeed in the uniting of the human nature to the divine that it becomes ours and transforms us. Where Edwards says that through the Sun (God) shining in us we would become “little suns,” Orthodoxy speaks less euphamistically and says that we become god by grace as God by Nature burns in our souls. (I wish I could compare direct quotes from Lossky but while I was writing Johnny pulled all my books off the shelf and I can’t find it.)

I spoke earlier of Edward’s misunderstanding. All these quotes have been taken from the same section in his book on the Religious Affections. The point of that section is to prove that: “Another thing, wherein gracious affections are distinguishedfrom others, is, that they are attended with a change of nature.”

Because of the centrality of this explanation, the whole weight of salvation was made to rest upon this change of nature. Edwards wrote a treatise on the will of which I read only a little. There he says that people are indeed free in a manner of speaking and bound in a manner of speaking - they are as free as it is possible to conceive of derived beings, that is, creatures, as being. (Orthodox theology, partly in agreement with the assumptions here and largely in disagreement with the conluscions, teaches that in the later stages of salvation or theosis we are supposed to take on characteristics of uncreated existance…though not by nature, only by grace.) Edwards’ explanation was comforting only in the sense that one didn’t have to feel there was any point at which the argument broke down. For the sake of the beloved truth about salvation which Edwards had taught me, I needed his formulation of soteriological questions to stand up to any challenge. However when it came to practically living these teachings, this is the point at which there was a short-circuit.

How was I to make the connection between my nature and me? Was there in fact no “me” in distinction to my nature? Or was I all and only nature? (Orthodox theology teaches that personhood, from which we have largely fallen, implies freedom in regard to nature…human nature is intended to be subjugated to the Image of God in which the human person is formed.) I did not, of course, formulate the questions so well at that time. I merely struggled with the difficulty of trying to seek salvation when I was at every moment dependant on God’s good will to provide me with an impulse of grace in my nature. Eventually this broke down to those horrible doubts about whether or not God actually has good will towards me and this is the tragedy of the Calvinist belief in election.

Upon coming to Orthodoxy I was confronted by this idea of theosis, that we must seek to become “god” or divine by grace. Father Stephen has recently put up a post in which he shows that all Christians believe the same thing when you examine the meaning of their teachings. This is certainly true of Jonathan Edwards as far as concerns the transformation of human nature in salvation. Unfortunately he was not able to make for me the distinction between nature and person and therefore was not able to speak to me on the salvation of the person. This affected his teaching on human freedom. Well he knew that “will is a function of nature” as Vladimir Lossky explains. And as nature, for Edwards, is what is directly affected by grace in salvation, any good will on our part is dependant upon our salvation. To an Edwardsian Calvinist there can be no idea of free choice leading out in the search for salvation. Free choice can only be a function of nature informed by grace and therefore it always follows after.

Now I’ve finally come full circle, I believe. I don’t understand Orthodox theology the way I thought I unerstood Edwardsian theology. However I do know that the answers are here. Freedom is something behind will, something that urges it on and sometimes even transcends it. For most of us there is a breakdown between freedom and will. I have not come to believe in the same “free will” I left behind long ago. Rather, I have come to understand that the perfection and marriage of freedom and will is something I have to look forward to when I am perfected in salvation. In the meantime whenever I become confused, there is absolutely no reason why I cannot simply sit down and do that which we were all impelled to begin over a decade ago: seek for God with all your heart and you will find him. And indeed this is another point at which Orthodoxy manifestly excells even the excellent Edwards: for it provides clearly defined steps in this seeking.

Edwards, and to an even greater extent A.W. Tozer, and I am sure other great Protestants have indeed climbed the mountain of theosis. Of Tozer it was said that when he went into his study he spent the greater part of the day lying silently on his face, “gazing on God” and would emerge with his face shining like Moses on the mountain. The difference is that in Orthodoxy those who go before us cut steps into the rock. Any Orthodox Christian, not merely the great ones, can follow in these steps: the sacraments, the icons and the whole ceremony of Church worship, the tradition of Orthodox “obedience,” but most of all the deeply explored tradition of Orthodox prayer, culminating in the Jesus Prayer.

So I thank God for Edwards and my other former teachers: For the truth they labored to rediscover that had been lost to them; for the lengths they went to in the effort to express that truth to such as me; and at last because I am sure their prayers in heaven guided me to such parts of their work as would eventually hand me over to the care of the Holy Orthodox Church.

I copied the Edwards quotations from this website.

Johnny has been eating eggs a lot lately but I’ve been worried he hasn’t been getting enough carbs. Apparently Cheerios are now too boring to eat. And I know well that trying to force a kid to eat something is the surest way to make him loathe that thing forever.

 This morning I tried a trick - whisking eggs, milk, and a little flavoring with some soft shredded bread. As I cooked it and noticed how mushy it was turning out I began to dread trying to get Johnny to eat it.

When the mixture was thoroughly cooked I sat down with it in front of Johnny’s high chair and made a great performance of eating a few bites. Then I offered it to him.

He took the bate, didn’t spit it out, and smiled. So far so good. He took another bite and another.

And then suddenly he started pushing it away.

“Would you like more eggs?” I asked politely as this has been known to do the trick…Johnny gets upset if I start shoving food in his mouth like a machine.

 He condescended to take one more bite but that was it.

Now normally at this point I would have thrown my hands up in bewildered misery, thrown the eggs-and-bread in the trash and started rummaging around for anything else I could get Johnny to eat. Today was different. We had some unexpected expenses this last week and payday is not till Sunday. What’s more I have no vehicle (this involves the aformentioned expenses) and no way to go to the store. What it comes down to is that none of the usual grapes, banannas and very little of the Smokies that are Johnny’s old standbys were available. I was saving the Smokies for lunch and for tomorrow. And I was tired. Too tired to fight with my kid and too strapped to waste a whole egg and a slice of bread.

So I just sat there. We stuck out our tongues at one another; we took turns making funny noises with our lips. A couple of times Johnny reached his hand out in that “give me some more” gesture but I just shrugged and said, “I don’t know what to do for you, Baby.”

And what a miracle, he eventually ate three more bites of egg mixture. Then he stopped eating again but I thought, hey I’m on to something. Low pressure, friendly interaction, and don’t let him know there’s any other food in the house.

I don’t know when it ocurred to me to give him some water. Maybe I was feeling thirsty myself. But I remembered he’d had nothing to drink yet this morning so I filled a small glass with water and began to help him drink it.

And miracle of miracles, after his third or fourth sip, I caught him looking at the bowl of eggs-and-bread on the table.

“Would you like more eggs?” I asked him, and tried giving him a bite. He took it. Then he looked at the water so I gave him more. Then eggs. Water. Eggs. Water. Eggs. Water. Till he’d finished the entire bowl of eggs and the entire cup of water. Now he’s happily runing around the house filling his diaper.

My nose tells me I should go.

But first I must reflect that sometimes when we have trouble getting our kids to eat, it’s because we are trying to forcre them into our own bad eating habits. My husband is always telling me I need to drink water at every meal but I usually forget. Now I was expecting my baby to do the same thing. Fortunately he has healthier desires than I do.

As I explore Orthodox Christian thinking, my ideas about children are changing. If God does not take personal offence at my every infraction or failure, as I once believed he did, then why should I take offence at my child’s infractions and failures? If he’s wrong it’s only to his own hurt and that should grieve me more than anger me. I’m trying to reserve righteous anger for those times when he is truly being stubborn even though he knows better. At this age (16 months) that doesn’t really happen when you watch closely. Ignorance, misunderstanding, blind desire, and fear drive most wrongdoing. That wrongdoing can and will become sinful and death-bringing if they become habits and last till he’s older. Well, that’s bound to happen…it’s the human condition. But the gentlest way to discourage as much of it as possible is the best kind of discipline. Sometimes when Johnny is truly frustrating me I put him in his crib with some toys until we are ready to start interacting again.

Then again, as in today’s example, sometimes it’s me who’s wrong, not him. And that should make me even slower to condemn my child’s frustrating behavior. I’m really glad I didn’t punish Johnny for not eating his eggs-and-bread this morning.

One of the informative and sometimes hilarious things about having a WordPress blog is that you get to see how people stumbled on your work.

 I get a lot of search-engine hits from people (no clue who they are) looking for tips on how to get their toddlers to eat well - apparently my veggie post is racking up some hits. I also get quite a few on learning to write, although I’m sad to see that not all of them are looking for what I have said. Too bad I couldn’t be more help.

 A little more disconcerting is people who are looking for directions about assembling some version of a platform - whether physical or political. The name of my blog has nothing to do with either of those things, alas for the poor searchers who were waylaid by siren-song of my fascinating title.

Occasionally I’ll see a search that led someone to my blog and think “how in the world did that come up?

One such was the recent search, “mean poems to say at enemies.” While I have never posted anything of the sort, I have to say that this kind of attention is not as discouraging as the platform searches. It just so happens that as a teenager I was rather adept at that particular form of raillery. Many are the poems I composed just to satisfy that itch of inferiority deposited in my heart by someone’s snubbing or mistreating me.

 None of the guys who inspired these poems (yes, all my girlhood enemies were of the male gender) ever actually saw them. However, despite never having the courage to actually repeat any of these masterpeices to their subjects’ faces, I know some of them will be just the thing for someone out there. I still treasure them as examples of how mature, how erudite, how forgiving I was as a girl. Indeed, I was a model of the judicious, temperate, and discreet interpersonal problem-solver.

 For your perusal, dear readers, I give you the “Poems for Non-Lovers”,  courtesy of the 14, 15, and 16 year old Me.

 Shane
The Pain
Down the Drain
He’s got soapsuds
In his brain.
Feed him gruel
Feed him grain
‘Cause he’s cruel
‘Cause he’s Shane.
Shane
The Pain
Down the Drain.
He’s got soapsuds
In his brain.

(As the perceptive reader can see, the above verse was composed by collecting as many rhymes as I could find for the name of the hapless Shane and turn them into negative statements of some sort or another. Brilliant, no? As I recall this particular boy’s offence was to declare my IQ equal to that of an ant’s. No doubt he has thought about my IQ every day since then, though we are long parted, and goes about telling stories about AK and her imbecility. I also recall that I was washing dishes as I composed this poem and I think the text reflects this rather nicely.)

I knew him, you see
This certain young man
And that is why I saw him
And ran.

In the plan of the ages
This tragedy is:
That I
Should be an acquaintance of his.

(This was created when I perceived the need to have an all-round rhyme for the many ill-tempered and injudicious boys surrounding me.)

(B) 

I never gave you a second look
Because one look was quite enough
For me to know that a look a day
Would be really, really tough.

(A) 

Handsome, with talents galore
He knows what he’s here for -
He thinks he was made to bring romance
To women’s lives with his every glance.
However, he never succeeds;
A fault or two is what he needs!

 (The above indicates a transition into a new type of versified insult - the “why I’m not interested in you” kind. The difference, of course, between me and my tormentors at this point was that they didn’t want me first. Everyone knows the person who started it is the real trouble-maker.)

(C) 

“Roses are red,
Violets are blue
Your hair is like french fries,
Your voice a kazoo.

(D)

“Violets are purple
Roses are pink
My dream boy wears (insert popular male scent),
While you merely stink.”

(While A and B were purely personal, I felt that I had discovered my true talent and began to create generalized verses for the use of females and males indiscriminately. C is adressed by a male to a female, D a retort to the male who had spoken C. Obviously, having reached a more sophisticated stage in my writing career, I began to turn the poems into a sort of dramatization of my own experience with the opposite gender.)

There you are, gentle reader. Or not so gentle. May they be as useful to you as they were to me, which is to say, not very.

Dearest Maggie,
This afternoon I drove into the country.
Now tell me -

From vast curves
Would you not deduce movement?
Thus the moody hills
Through which I rushed
Forward
Put me in mind of a great hand
Fluidly sculpting
Sideways.
Add against a translucent wall
Of golden sky
A swirling torrent of blackbirds
Upward;
This afternoon world
Is enough to make a girl dizzy.

***

Crime longs for accomplices,
So I looked to the clouds.

I lay in the grass,
Glad and idle,
And gazed on the heavy
Heavenly idyll.

I saw luxurious heaps -
A plump white woman at ease
Cruising a raft, a weighted slow craft
Stretching,
Swelling,
Rolling from back to belly
And back.

Ah, Maggie, let me tell you -
Her languid hand floated beside.
Silver fingertips
Brushed the tops of trembling trees…

This brushing of clouds and trees
Is a summer illusion -
For how high up,
Really,
Do the clouds billow?
Likewise, how far must they travel
Before watering the land?
Suddenly I saw the wind -
Which makes such mountains of mist
Turn over and over,
Driving them across the face of the earth -

At this point I decided to
Stand up and go do something.

Love,
AR

After some correspondance with our dear Father B— last night I’ve realized once again how lightly Christianity treads the tense wire between challenging and effortless.

Everyone has sins and failures. My own tend to be of that very obvious sort that everyone notices - which frustrates any subtle designs on my part to hide my faults and make pretense to sanctity I don’t actually possess. In fact I tend to go to the opposite extreme. As I mentioned elsewhere in blogdom, I am the type of person to whom temptation usually comes in religious garb. If it’s time to pray I’m going to choose the most demanding prayers and linger longest over those “for I have never done anything good in thy sight” phrases. 

 Those words of repentance are great phrases. And I naturally gravitate towards them, not only in a bid to feel that I have repented thoroughly enough, but also because they are wordy. And I am a person who loves words and who has an almost superstitious belief in their power.

 And therefore it’s quote appropriate (now that I think of it) that it is the Jesus Prayer - all dozen words of it - that my father in the Lord prescribed for me last night.

 Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Whisper the words without trying, born up on them as they come into the mind. Wait and then after a while whisper or think them again. This is a regimen that seems to require no effort. All burdens and desires and confusions given over to Christ in a single, simple, timeless posture: the verbal phrase (in which the only thing that is explicit is my relationship to Him and His to me) opening a door to a gesture of the heart that has probably been there for a long time, smothered in my ironic effort to “express myself” to One who knows me better than I will ever know myself.

 Just be with God and the saints; just pray Father B— told me.

I still believe that the kingdom of God is taken by force and that those who would enter must grasp swords and draw on running shoes. And I know very well that the training prayers I’m leaving aside for a time are good and beneficial and might be just the thing for someone else at any moment. But I’m less eager to try and tell anyone what any of that means right now as I find myself led by still waters.

Dear family, friends, and the curious,

Of the many reasons I could offer for our becoming Orthodox, I think the one that is most central for us, and that others  ought to respect most, is simply that we need it.

 Orthodoxy is teaching us how to pray, how to truly worship, and is giving us a plain path to follow to God. We feel that we never had knowledge before of the spiritual disciplines which purify the heart for God’s dwelling place. The Orthodox Church is teaching us to say the right thing about God; her Theology is Trinitarianism par excellence. 

 What’s more, no one need fear us now. We have not become Orthodox partisans and we are not on a crusade to convert everyone we know, although we long for those we love to share the consolation we have found. Following Orthodoxy is bringing us into fuller fellowship even with believers outside the Orthodox Church, because it is here that God is choosing to give us what we need to attain hearts of Love.

This move is not essentially a reaction against the religious teaching in our past. Because we are poor and wretched and sinful and dying: that’s why we are joinging the Orthodox Church.

If anyone is wondering about specific doctrines and practices, many of which seem alarming from a certain point of view, there is much to say - but now is not the time.

Please simply consider that it might be different than it looks from the outside, particularly if your perspective is from another tradition. It might be different: and if you know us well then you ought to have great reason to consider that it probably is.

If you have known us any length of time, please believe in us. You should know that we would not be in this Church if we were not being led to God here. We decided long ago that was what truly mattered. We would follow that anywhere: Lutheranism, Anglicanism, Catholicism, anything - whoever could tells us Who God Is and How To Know Him, that would be the true Church. Many of you, our dear friends and family members, supported us on that journey and even taught us those values. We have done our best before God to follow the ideals we shared with you and to the best of our knowledge this is Journey’s End. We are not infallible; God is our judge.

It’s as much a surprise to us as to anyone else that this is where we found what we were looking for. But now that we’ve seen what’s really here, we feel certaint that we are home.

I wish you peace.