Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Christmas morning

I grew up in the USA, that means for me, Christmas has always been on December 25th, or rather December 25th on the Gregorian calendar. I believe I am going to celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7th(of the new year), that would be December 25th of the Julian calendar. This screws up a lot of stuff and it does not mean that I intend to correct everyone that wishes me a merry Christmas or deny all presents until Jan. 7th. My Church, in the temporal sense, celebrates the nativity of Christ on Jan. 7th. I am not a member yet, nor have I been baptized, but I feel right there and I feel proud to celebrate Christ's life, teachings, resurrection and ascension in that community. I feel at home there and I feel like this is the Church I have always searched for. I had glimpses of this Church(the eternal one), in the Bible, in truly blessed services, in reading about the early Church. I feel proud to celebrate Christ at the same time as those who have gone before me.

On another note, I just watched the midnight mass televised from St. Peter's basilica. I enjoyed it, though I must admit that I didn't feel enthralled with it the way I am with services at Holy Resurrection. I really feel like while watching on TV might be nice, it does not substitute for being in service. God flows through people and He desires that we would interact with others. I also thought as I watched the service, about the office of the Pope. I heard the narrator refer to Peter as the "Prince of the Apostles". I feel like the hierarchy of the Catholic church is not very Christian. I see no evidence in the Gospels that Peter was in authority over the other Apostles, but that seems to be what Catholicism claims. Peter also was not the most prolific of the Apostles. Paul clearly wrote much more and his credentials are given to him post resurrection. The papal claim seems to be something which has been generated through historical happenstance, not divine appointment. In Orthodox history it was common to defer to the Church in Rome not because of Peter's authority but because it was the seat of the empire. When the seat of the empire moved to Constantinople that deference was also shifted. In fact, there were decrees that Rome was where the emperor was, so if the emperor was in Constantinople then that was Rome. It would seem that it serves the Catholic West to assume Papal authority in order to legitimize the denigration of those Churches that believe that Church authority is centered in Christ, not the Pope, and that on earth we confer with other believers to make decisions about the Church and its actions. That process was in place long before the split and it generated such revered treasures as the Nicean Creed and the Doctrine of the Trinity. It was the opinion of the united Church that while one mans hand might be flawed, a synod of the Holy Apostolic Church was infallible. So as I watch Pope Benedict escort the baby Jesus to his place in the crib scene, I watch him be treated like a pop star. Heads of state, nuns, preists, random people, throwing there arms out to touch him. I see him celebrated as an Icon of the One True God, and I think it is wrong. Many of these people celebrate this man, not what he professes. I think Peter would find that sort of adoration apalling and with zeal he would reject the people who would fawn over him so that he could direct them towards Christ. Christ humbled Peter because Peter believed he was best, and Christ showed him that every man can fail, every man hides. However, with Christ's Spirit inside him, he came to profess the gospel of the Lord, that God became Man so that man, lost in the world could be turned toward God and God might perfect humanity in the way he originally intended. Perhaps our dear Pope was tired, but I think it would have been appropriate for him to stop and yell at the crowd something like "Why do you look at me, Why? You are hear to seek God, turn your eyes inward." I might just ask too much.

Friday, December 21, 2007

Reflecting on the life of a man

Yesterday, my wife and I attended the funeral of Charlie Sposato. I found out he passed this last Monday and I had a lot of mixed feelings. Charlie was a devout Christian and Catholic by practice. He was one of the few people I know who was always sincere and humble, even when he was telling you that he was more handsome than yourself.

By vocation Charlie was a teacher. I actually met him when I worked at the MATCH School where he was the principal. By the time I knew him he already had a long fruitful career that I only barely knew of even after working with him for 5 years. I pieced together the breadth of his impact through conversations and seeing some of the newspaper clippings he used to keep in his office. As a colleague attested to recently in an email about him, he had an amazing repertoire of knowledge, both academic, and human. He had a truly God-given gift of connecting with people and teaching them in a way that they understood and appreciated.

**I feel like I need to qualify the words "teaching" and "teacher" here. Charlie was everyone's teacher, and he was everyone's pupil. I never sat in on a class with him, but I felt like every time I talked to him, there was something to learn from the interaction. He was a teacher in the specific sense that he taught classes for a long time, but he was a teacher in a more profound sense -- he taught everyone.

Charlie was dedicated to making a difference in the lives of his students better. He gave every student the benefit of the doubt, he was always their friend and always their mentor. He exuded the qualities that I believe are exemplary of Christian life. If there was anyone that I could point to and say, "That man knows God!" it would be Charlie. I say that, not because he was constantly preaching - which he didn't do, but because he truly cared for everyone he met. He did not seem to waste a single moment in his life, constantly trying to help others. He was not a proud man either, he had no illusions of being better than anyone else which prompted him to work incessantly to correct his own faults so that they would not hinder others. Perhaps Ayn Rand would call his self-sacrifice selfish in some way, but I don't think it matters. Even if someone wants to say that he did those things so he would feel better about himself, he still did them and that is more than I can often say for myself. Is it wrong to do good things if you enjoy them? I think not, I think it should be a joy to do the will of God, and for Charlie it was.

I like to think that he is with his Maker now. I hope that he can see how much we all appreciated his presence on this earth. We will miss you Charlie and in this moment I hope sincerely there is an afterlife just so I can give you a hug and you can say I have a big nose.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

I drove in to work today. The commute was not bad, hopefully parking will be as easy when I get back.

As I drove down Mass. Ave. I looked forward to see a beautiful blue sky. It slowly graduated from a rich deep sky blue to a lighter milky blue as it intersected with the crisp lines of the buildings surrounding me. Seeing that sky reminded me of reading a science book my parents gave me when I was young. The book had all sorts of things in it, like experiments with bubbles and water tension, how to suspend an egg in a glass of water by putting in the right amount of salt. I remembered as I looked at that milky blue about the book explaining light diffraction in the atmosphere and it had an experiment involving a flashlight and a glass of water with some milk in it to demonstrate how the light is affected when it goes through a medium with particulates in it. That reminded me of how young children always ask "Why?"

My point is that children ask "Why?", and we train them to ask "How?". If you think about it science is designed to describe causal events, or document phenomena, but that does not involve causation or intentionality. For centuries science has reformulated "Why?" into "How?" some times there is little that is lost, but often, the essence of the answer sought is completely ignored. There is no purpose found in scientific inquiry. What then can tell us "Why?" Why is the sky blue? What is the answer to a question like that?

Let me approach this from a different perspective. Let's say I stack two books on top of each other, the book on the bottom is authored by Newton, and the book on the top by Marquez. Another person comes along and asks "Why did you stack these books this way?" I can answer a multitude of ways, either "they are alphabetical by author" or "I had not particular reason" or even "so that you might ask why I did it that way." The point of this example is that I could give intentionality to that act. The question "Why?" could be answered properly because I as the one who stacked them could give insight as to the reasoning I used when stacking the books. I may also have had some future purpose for having the books stacked which I could enlighten the observer about. Understand, science is not designed to ask the one who caused an action about it's purpose. A scientific inquiry as to why the books are stacked in such a way would work something like this:

Observation: The books are stacked
Hypothesis: They may have fallen into place as such
Observation: The book by Newton happens to be heavier than the book by Marquez
Hypothesis: If the books fell from a significant distance then air resistance might disproportionately affect the book by Marquez making it more likely to land on top of the book by Newton.
Observation: The author of the lower book is Newton and the upper book is Marquez
Observation: Newton comes after Marquez in the alphabet
Hypothesis: The books were intentionally stack in an order
Problem: Since there are two books, the order of their placement is not significant to prove intent.

Now a scientist may make the hypothesis that the books were stacked intentionally, but that is not a provable hypothesis. How can they prove intent without access to the one who exercised intent initially. Furthermore, science is fundamentally focused on experimental verification. A scientist can take those two books and drop them multiple times and record the results to see if the falling on each other hypothesis would work.

I think that much the way Plato used the structure of his dialogues to illustrate that often people are speaking at cross purposes, we still today answer things like "Why?" with "How?" And why shouldn't we, science, and the exploration of how to do things had been enormously successful. Or has it? What is fundamentally different about Humans now versus 1000 years ago? On average we live longer? Okay, but do we live better? We can't tell, that is a qualitative question which is not answerable. I would contend that since we still read the ancient books and find value in them, that we are not so different now. We still love, live, eat, cry, die, etc. So has focusing on answering "How?" instead of "Why?" helped us appreciably?

I don't know. Socrates said that the only thing he knew was that he knew nothing. Every day that I live I feel those words. I think of how true they are. But Socrates meant them in a specific way I believe.

Aristotle was the great systematizer. In the West he was often called "The Philosopher"(I take offense at that title). I don't remember who said it, but once Aristotle was referred to as Plato's worst student. Why? Clearly, Aristotle's mental fortitude was amazing. I think the problem with Aristotle is that he was too willing to give up on the "Why?" and try to explain the "How?". Have you read about his idea of a First Cause? That is an elegant solution to the issue of how a dynamic system begins. I mean it is essentially the Ancient Greek philosophical version of the Big Bang. There is one problem though,(in both theories), the problem is "Why?" Why did the first cause need to start, and the corresponding question, why does a super symmetric unmeasurable speck of nothing need to burst into a universe? The scientific inquiry can move no further. Once you move all the way back to a singularity, there is no prior evidence to consider, every thing you can examine is after that "First Cause" or "Singularity" and so the inquiry stops. At that moment the conversation is nothing but guesses, but that is hardly science. It is however, religion, in a way.

I remember reading Kierkegaard for an ethics class in college. The book we were reading was "Fear and Trembling". The book is largely an examination of the scene in the Old Testament, or Torah where Abraham is told by God to sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham prepares for the sacrifice, and climbs the mountain with Isaac to go to where they sacrifice to God. Remember, at this point, Isaac is old enough to ask questions and he asks of his father something like "Where is the sacrifice?" Abraham's response is that God will provide the sacrifice. Abraham had his son gather together the branches to make the fire, he then binds his son(If I were Isaac I would be freaking out) and places him on the brush on the altar. The knife is raised and the angel of the Lord stops Abraham, an animal is provided and they sacrifice that instead.

Abraham knew what was right, and it was not something which would be condoned by ANY ethical code. Abraham knew, by faith, that God would not ask him to do something wrong. In this instance I don't even feel qualified to say what right and wrong are. The point is that Kierkegaard wants you to understand that ethics is not limited to reasonable action, or sentimental action codified through rational inquiry. There are actions which are right for wholly inexplicable reasons, and in those moments we just know they are right. In Abraham's case he knew what was right was what God had asked him to do.

By the way, if I were Isaac, I don't think I would like God much at that point. I also question a lot about how Abraham never told people that Sarah was his wife, and this always got him in sticky situations which God essentially finagled him out of. God didn't seem too happy about the whole calling Sarah his sister thing, but still Abraham did it. So why is it that Abraham who does not have the guts to tell people Sarah is his wife, is fine with sacrificing the child promised to him by God Himself.

Anyway, I went a little farther with this that I had planned. Time to turn in for the night.

Monday, December 17, 2007

First Thought

Today on the train, I was reading a book about the Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church(specifically, the Eastern Orthodox Church). I have really been taking my time reading this book, I checked it out last spring and here it is December and I am only halfway through.

The book is dense and sometimes I need to reread passages, this may have something to do with being translated from Russian. That is not the reason I have been slow to read it though. Really, I have just been putting it off. The book itself amazes me every time I pick it up. I find something that confirms my beliefs about God and humanity whenever I read it. It is really making me more fond of Orthodoxy as a whole.

I was raised in a Presbyterian church, until my parents divorced. Then I don't remember going to services again until I was about 15, well after we had moved to Washington State from Texas. That was the summer after 9th grade. I had broken into a neighbor's house during my 9th grade year and I was eventually caught. The guilt of having done what I did was too great and I confessed when I was brought in to the police station. My "friend" who committed these crimes with me, did his best to not be incriminated. I remember him coming to me in the hall at school and talking about how his dad was going to hire some lawyer and I should just not say anything else to the cops. I don't remember what I said, but I remember feeling like we were already caught, we should just face the consequences of our actions. I was freaking pissed at him for wanting to try to continue to get away with our crime and in reality that was probably where our friendship ended.

Anyway, maybe I was motivated by guilt or maybe I just needed guidance, or maybe I was divinely inspired(who knows, it is possible), but I did seek out a church that summer. My mom and I had recently moved, largely because my mom's boyfriend at that time said something like "I don't want that f'ing thief in my home", and we lived near a few churches. I originally went to the Presbyterian church about two blocks away and tried to talk to some one in the office, I think I scared the woman there to death and I got a bad read off the situation. She couldn't speak English well and my general impression of the place was that it was dead. Not really dead, but empty -- for me at least. At that moment the faith I was raised with was lost to me, and I had to find my own(oh, the drama!!! ;-).

On my way back I walked by a church which I will call by it's acronym, KCC, it was an Assemblies of God church and I will get into what that means at some other time. There was a college student named Chris K. changing the sign and I remember asking to speak to the Reverend(being from the south and going to a Presbyterian church I was not familiar with the term Pastor). He introduced me to the youth pastor at the church, Mark. Mark was friendly, full of energy and had a moment to talk. As a result I felt good about the place and I started going to KCC pretty regularly, at least once a week but more often twice a week.

That was my church all through high school, it was one of the few places I felt like I belonged when I was that age and I felt good being there. If anything it kept me out of a lot of trouble and I think I learned a lot while attending service there.

When I came to Boston for school, I tried attending the AG college group and even tried going to a couple of churches, but they were never right. I always felt like I was not in sync with them and I didn't belong. As a result I stopped going to service. I also started to do a lot of soul searching which along with some other soul scouring events in my life, left me a long way from church, and only marginally on a path leading to God.

My Junior year I dated a girl named Kat. She was "interesting", we have not talked in years and I have plenty of memories both good and bad. I loved her at the time however and I am grateful for at least one thing she gave me. When we were dating she brought me to her church in Allston. It is a Bulgarian Orthodox Church, though there are not many Bulgarians and the service is usually in English. The name of the church is Holy Resurrection and it's website is www.hrocboston.org. I attended services and functions there sporadically for a year or so, until I felt like I should convert or leave. I still felt pretty scarred religiously from the extended time I had taken away from church and I didn't know if I felt right embracing Christianity so fervently again. I had a lot of doubts and let questions and confusion get in the way of me pursuing God. I left the church and lived a while without thinking too much about it.

Recently, I have been wanting to be involved in church again, probably because of my new son. It is funny how having a child makes you want to do things like go to church. Anyway, while my wife was pregnant I reacquainted myself with Holy Resurrection in Allston. I came to realize that many of the issues I had were not actually problems, they were just issues I had with other churches. I also have a different perspective on religion now and I have been working out my issues with the acquisition of knowledge by faith and being able to believe in something despite doubt.

There is my first thought. I will hopefully have many more which may or may not be correct, or interesting. I thought on the train today as I was reading, "if more people stopped and thought about God, maybe they wouldn't have time to fight in His name".