It makes me sad. I came to Orthodoxy because I remembered my Mom teaching me that, when lost from my family in a strange place like the supermarket, to return to where we were last all together, and wait. It seems that there isn't anywhere like that. I wish we could all come home to the same place somehow. It seems we can't. I came to Orthodoxy because of David, too, although that's a little embarassing to say, like if I admitted to wearing a fedora because Indiana Jones wore one. But it's true that I came to Orthodoxy because of him, and it turns out he isn't here, not really.
Well, I like our little church and the humble sermons of our humble priest. I like our little icon corner with the icons hung low where my daughter can reach to kiss Mary and Gregory and Macrina and her "Big Lord Jesus". But more and more I feel a little deluded, foolish, childish. David's not saying I should feel like this, and I dont feel this just because of him, but I do feel it, and right now I feel it because of what he has said here. I wish there was some part of the world outside of my own home that wasn't hopelessly fractured, where I could go and belong and wait for everyone to come home together. But I wish for a lot of things, and mostly because I've failed to grow up and admit what the world really is. It turns out the best that can be expected of the world is that nothing in it will last forever.
Christ is Risen, my friend. Before any Orthodox this-or-that, I try, personally, to always repeat to myself the Paschal Troparion. In a world where genocide is the norm, in a world where people where I am from are routinely called terrorists and all manner of other horrible things, in a world where "developed" countries are full of homeless people with desperate gazes that cause us to look the other way, it is hard to remember, but I try not to forget - and act as though - Christ is Risen.
Even if that means He's under a bridge in some American metropolitan area or beneath the rubble in Gaza. And it's there that we must go to find Him, tend to Him, feed Him, and, if we must, die for Him.
It is true that we cannot become children again, but perhaps our home is not behind us. Perhaps we must be forced out and onwards again and again without yet losing the hope of our heart's desire. It may be for some that they are permitted to rest in familiar settings of liturgy and ritual while others are granted their reprieve elsewhere in this world. But where else can we be ultimately drawn to, but the one true End of all yearning?
I don't think you should feel that way at all. DBH says above that his lack of appreciation for liturgy is a limitation, not necessarily a strength.
I'm rather in between you. I fell in love with Byzantine liturgy when I first encountered it in Romania in the early 90s (the way had been paved by reading Kallistos Ware as part of a class on Russian history). I wound up becoming Catholic instead, for a bunch of complex reasons, but I still have twinges of Eastward longing. In 2019 I visited St. Vladimir's seminary near NYC and just the smell of incense (which as another Catholic in the group pointed out, is quite different from the Western kind, more sharp and piercing and less somnolescent) was like one of the twinges of Joy C. S. Lewis wrote about. But if I had become Orthodox in my youth I might well have wound up more or less where DBH is now. In 2005, in one of my two most serious bouts of considering conversion to Orthodoxy (the other one was about five years later), I attended a Sunday morning liturgy at an OCA parish in NJ and was, for the first time, a bit bored by it in the way DBH describes. And I took that as a good sign that I'd gotten over the "exoticism" appeal and was ready to consider the claims of Orthodoxy soberly. And I didn't convert. So Orthodoxy has always been for me appealing in part because of its "otherness" and if it had become something I experienced every week that might have gone away. I definitely have much more appreciation for Byzantine art and liturgy than DBH does just as a matter of aesthetic judgment, though. I think his remarks in the post about Byzantine art would be quite reprehensible if he wasn't, as he says, reacting to silly triumphalism on the part of many Orthodox.
My remarks on Byzantine art may be reactive, but they are also a sober judgment, one shared by many. Still, but for that polemic, I might have a kindlier view.
Have you seen the icons that Fr. Seraphim Aldea (or others - not sure) produce out of Mull & Iona Monasteries? They are not done at all in a typical Byzantine style (which indeed becomes dull and repetitive but, I claim, still has its moments of beauty); here is a link :) https://mullmonastery.com/shop/icons/
That all seems quite positive, I appreciate your story and perspective. I’ve never been carried away by the aesthetics of liturgy exactly. I lack a very sophisticated sense of beauty. I like the icons, that was part of it for me. More important is how Father Phillip chokes up in his sermon when he talks about love, how Father Deacon smiles at the choir when they make a mistake, or when he’s having a rough morning and scowls instead, barks a little correction, then finds his smile again so that he can apologize without interrupting the liturgy. The little mistakes and forgivenesses between these weary midwesterners doing the best they can to get through the lovely, archaic play once again. My favorite part of liturgy is the children finding ways to play quietly, the older kids growing up to help the little ones, the love we feel for them. It’s worth the niggling annoyances of Orthodoxy to stay with them. I’ve been thinking on it the last few days and I’m sad, and okay with it, and grateful for my church.
Thank you for this. It is very helpful at what I'd call a nadir point of my own specifically Christian commitments.
My experience lately is that I cycle through the same set of observations, some historical-critical, some moral, some theological, and many personal:
1.) Jesus the Jewish prophet, Torah preacher, Wisdom sage, and martyr is more compelling for me nowadays than Jesus the object of Christian dogmatics;
2.) I still believe the resurrection, but I cannot see how it differs so radically from the same kinds of exaltation that ancient Jews, Greeks, and Romans predicated of other divine men, or from the kind of transcendence other religions claim for some of their saints, and part of the sales pitch in the earliest centuries seems precisely to have been that it wasn't so different;
3.) The long history of Christianity institutionally, morally, and intellectually has some highlights worthy of praise or admiration, but on the whole it carries simply too much compromise & failure & "business as usual" to be the actual redemption of the world, even though I fully agree with your observation about the earliest community as expressing an ethics of solidarity with the poor and of interpersonal love and forgiveness that genuinely stands out, historically;
4.) All the philosophical and theological ideas that I still feel strongly committed to--panentheism, idealism, panpsychism, the immortality of the soul, pluralism, universalism--have some Christian representatives, but are actually easier to hold in traditions outside of Christianity;
5.) Like you, I find God much more in nature and every day life and art and my own disciplines (religious studies, classics) than I do in formal religious settings, but if there's any formal prayer that makes me feel genuinely animated and connected to the sacred these days, it's the Siddur, not the Liturgy of the Hours or the Book of Common Prayer that have fed me for most of my spiritual life
I don't know exactly where to go or what to do with any of that. The Christian communities that once catered to people of that sort of disposition are rapidly dying off and disappearing, and the only sort that are growing in the United States, statistically speaking, are either evangelical Non-Denoms or AOG, both in the South, and both usually aligned to conservative/far-right reactionary, Trumpian politics. And then I feel the subsequent dilemma: "Well, not all Christians are that way!" joined to "Well, but Christianity has *mostly* bought into that kind of thing across its history, really. Just ask pagans, Jews, Muslims and...well, any Christian deemed insufficiently orthodox."
Long, rambling way to say: thanks. This helps me feel less crazy about the whole thing.
I was unschooled and basically entirely unformed by any religious attitudes during childhood and adulthood (not exactly a rarity in the Bay Area, mind you). Looking back though, I consider it a blessing. Really it was thanks to this prior void, and eventually an encounter with suffering and despair at 25, that God's reality - in the raw, so to speak - was felt as a truly revelatory and salient and existential experience of salvation for me. A true "filling up" of a dark and hopeless world. Mysteriously enough, intuitions about Christ and universalism were downloaded into this transformation in an automatic and inextricable way - Christ shining forth with luminosity and appearing suddenly as the most obvious truth in the world, like the inevitable sign and display of the God of agape love coming into the world and concretizing the truth. This mix of intuitions coalesced before I stepped foot in a church or else began seriously engaging with the history and tradition of Christianity however. It is now a number of years down the line. I have read much, and explored a mix of denominations, including recently a year at the GOC, and currently a 'den-denom' in Portland, Oregon. But it's still a funny thing: everything I have since taken in - "as a Christian" and in "Christian spaces" - has always been weighed and measured against that original intuition of agape, that simple experience of God, and still to this day, I have never quite felt like I have found a perfect home for whatever 'that is' in religious Christianity. I somehow both feel absolutely unshakable in my convictions about God and Christ, yet some days, absolutely ambivalent about my Christian identity, at least in the context of others whose Christianity looks to me like almost antithetical to my own.
Also a long, rambling way to say: it's been a process of learning and unlearning, learning and unlearning. And like you, I feel like I am reaching something akin to a nadir, and I suppose we will just have to wait and see where everything leads.
Whatever the destination, you and DBH are like two GPS signals that help me navigate the confusing terrain, and I will happily continue to make my company along the path with both of you.
I have long been a reader of A Perennial Digression and I agree with most of what you are saying here. I think there are a lot of us out there, but some of us are just more conscious of it than others.
Off the top of my head, I think the most objectionable of these positions, rather than dispositions, are points 1&2; you sound a bit like Reza Aslan with residual commitment to the resurrection, if I am honest. No offense.
I would also argue that the main thrust of Christian orthodoxy is, either implicitly or explicitly, panentheistic (in the East), though perhaps I am biased towards certain saints and figures and against others.
The biggest agreement that I have is that the institutions of Christianity following the imperialization of the faith have fundamentally failed to uphold Christ's teachings; still, the moral current of Christianity could never be fully extinguished (Basiliad, for instance). Not surprising for me though - it was a confluence of various institutional forces that nailed Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God (NOT *merely* a Jewish prophet and martyr, though yes also those things), to the Cross.
I don't know; being jaded is something that has always afflicted me differently. I try personally not to take the constant betrayal of those whom Christ called His disciplines lightly. It's deeply infuriating to see, for example, Kirill behave as a war monger, and it's even more upsetting that the streets are not littered with Orthodox, Catholic, and Oriental Orthodox people (clerics and lay-men/-women alike) protesting the colonization of Palestine and genocide of Gaza (and every other horrible thing in this world, honestly), but the logic of the age being so corrupted always directs my anger towards it rather than the unceasing truths of Christ, His ministry and resurrection, and the faith of the Apostles in Him.
I am rather surprised that you find the resurrection claims en toto not much different from typical holy-man exaltation. There is very little exaltation in some of the Pauline confessions, honestly. I am, like David (the author of this piece, not you, lol), convinced by that - in part precisely because it is not laden with theological language or ornamentation, and it really did change the course of human history in ways that I think resists prosaic explanation (whether it became enmeshed with the violence of the empire or not).
David, do you live in the South? If so, what you observe about the reactionary components may be less pervasive than appears at first blush. While Asheville is a big blue dot, we have three well attended mainline Protestant, moderate to progressive churches occupying three corner lots at Church Street and Aston, downtown (Central Methodist, First Presbyterian, and my church, Trinity Episcopal). Trinity has actually been on a growth trajectory for probably 25 years. The Episcopal Diocese of Western North Carolina as a whole has also experienced modest growth some years. A lot of this is energetic and talented retirees, who I hope don't stay away because of the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. But a lot of it is also from younger folks. I get the sense that other cities (Raleigh, Charlotte, Greensboro), are also experiencing at least some of this. All that said, I recognize it is not typical, but also, we are not dying either.
"All the philosophical and theological ideas that I still feel strongly committed to --panentheism, idealism, panpsychism, the immortality of the soul, pluralism, universalism --have some Christian representatives, but are actually easier to hold in traditions outside of Christianity."
I can't say I hold all of these, but I hold enough that this is a strikingly relatable point, and something I have deeply grappled with. Half the Christian dogmas are obviously antithetical to the majority of my metaphysical commitments (especially as they have been commonly received by the tradition), and it being those commitments that wholly undergird my religiosity, it seems backward to prioritize this tradition over others on the basis of an historical anomaly, however much it seems plausible - for can it seem plausible enough to justify all that is built on it?
You should write about this all on a blog or substack or something
On 2. Any good Christian know that Pythagoras ascended straight to heaven bodily and alive
On 3 In terms of the ethical ideal sage I think the figure of universal love comes up quite a bit as well in a universal setting. Buddha,Lao tzu,Mahavira etc
Aside from the dao de Ching often reading like parables of the gospel Buddha in the nikayas is similarly presented as being above all rulers and gods miraculous abilities like levitation having disciples follow him around as he wanders and humbly asks for alms etc and speaking of “love as true wisdom” etc etc
Thank you very much for this beautiful and brave confession. It couldn't have sounded very scandalous to your regular readers, as you had expressed many of your (ir)religious sentiments plenty of times in the past. But isn’t the faith in Christ “in whom are all the hidden treasures of wisdom and of knowledge” rather than in scriptures or institutions the primary duty of every Christian anyway? I believe you would have gotten along splendidly with George MacDonald.
That said, for a variety of reasons, I am in a different place than you at this stage of my life. I really need the assurance and comfort offered by the Church, although I am by no means very observant. I love the sight of the faithful gathered in prayer under the dim light of the candles, surrounded by colorful murals and radiant icons, and the air heavy with the scent of incense. And I feel uplifted by reading apologetics such as Chesterton or C.S. Lewis, while I suspect that they no longer (if ever) have that effect on you.
And while I agree with every other aesthetic preference mentioned in your essay, I would always prefer the beauty of the greatest Gothic cathedrals and Orthodox churches to any of Frank Lloyd Wright’s works. (And not because Ayn Rand, the Wicked Witch of the Wealth, loved him.)
And you will always have my prayers, as I will forever love you and your works.
Dear DBH, it may be that your faith like mine has moved into the dispassionate at mid-life phase.
For example, I have no serious doubts, and at the same time that I have a reduced appreciation of my own powers when it comes to working things out (like theodicy) to satisfaction. "Have mercy on me, O Lord, my limitations are ever before me," etc. It can never be made otherwise, however stimulating it is to try. And I do try, because that's how I'm built.
But when it comes to my feelings about it, I can't say I'm exercised. Do I look on my beloved Italian Alps and feel awe? Not as much as I did when I was a young Werther, but there they are: big, snowy, impassive, and cruelly eternal. They will outlast me, you, and everyone else. Christ's infinite condescension to nativity and constant eucharistic presence is like those mountains: it existed before me and will exist long after me. To feel myself part of that process is ... fine, as in "so be it, amen."
When it comes to religion, all I can say is that as I've gotten older, my heart's flesh has softened. My eyes well up with tears much more easily now than they did when I was twenty, thirty, or even forty. I am sitting here in a car repair shop with other midwesterners, and I wish them all the most sincere wishes of well. I feel more often like our beloved Yeats, sitting in his cafe, slowly burning with the impulse to "bless." I wish I could bless, anyway, but even more often I feel simply that when I die, I don't want to leave a mess, that I want to leave my loved ones something that will prolong my intimacy with them, and to know that I have done some good.
I called one of my old professors on the phone as he lay dying, and told him how much of an effect his seminars had on the course of my life. "Oh, I think you had something to do with it," he laughed, however painful it was for him to laugh. He was wrong, and right, and wrong, but it didn't matter. What matters is that I know now what his modesty really meant.
We learn to write best only when we have learned to say goodbye.
Be well. Know that we are all praying for each other.
The French and Italian Alps (Cottian), where my paternal ancestors dwelt and hid from and defied the Roman Catholic Church, the Duke of Savoy, and the power of France, as in their simplicity they continued to have their own worship and practice. Tonight, I am going to a dinner to celebrate the 177th anniversary of the Edict of Emancipation issued by Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, Duke of Savoy, granting the Waldensians their civil rights. Liturgically, it is at the opposite end of Greek Orthodoxy and still quite far from my chosen immersion in the Anglican tradition. Different traditions can speak to us at different times in our lives.
About a year ago, I sent an email to a very erudite but kind of stiff youngish metropolitan, whose discussions were online, because I didn't know where to turn to. I asked him If it was ok to ask for his advice on a personal matter and, to my surprise, although literally at the other end of the world, he answered immediately that of course I could and he would be happy to be of any assistance. Subsequently, I asked him if it was ok that the only time I could find myself fervently praying and letting go to God was when I listened to classical music. He never answered back.
Appreciate your honesty. I’m coming from a radically different perspective and experience. I was raised a very secular Jew who could name every Nazi concentration camp and how many Jews they killed but couldn’t tell you what book of the Bible the Ten Commandments were in. Our holidays were like this: they tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat!
Then in 1979, at 23 years old, I was sitting in my room and working on a novel that had dominated my life for the past two and a half years when the presence of the Lord Jesus came to me in the room. I knew exactly who He was and what He wanted. Burn the novel. It was my god and, well, it had to go. So I burned it and became a believer. But in what? Had you told me I was a sinner I would have had no idea what you were talking about.
But, in a very real case of credo ut intelligam, I have over the decades built a very logical and rational foundation for my faith (your writings helping, BTW). And though I adhere to “take heed lest he who thinks he stands falls,” when once asked if I ever doubt I said, “Not really much any more, but if I do I dismiss the doubt as irrational.” That is, from the reasons I have for belief, and the experiences I have had, doubt is the most irrational thing I can do.
Anyway, thanks for the thoughts. You are always worth reading even when I disagree with you.
Thanks for this. you reminded me of an enlightenment experience I had in my twenties, although I didn't know that that is what it was because no one ever spoke about these things, and I had never read about it, even having been brought up in a very Catholic church. Lives of the Saints did not cut it. In a "primitive' 25 year-old way having been through a bunch of trauma and no longer belonging to any church, i had an unclear but dire bodily sense (not put into words) a terror that I needed to shed my past life, and I accidentally joined a Tai Chi group who studied around a master. I was not a serious student, but others were. All that to say is that something beautiful and terrible happened to me which altered everything in my life subsequently. It was and still is the greatest consolation. But like I say, I couldn't talk to anyone about it. This is hard to reconcile, "terrible" in that it seems to separate you in some way from a kind of "normal" socialization. A couple of years hence and I'm in the University library "dowsing" for books that might be relevant and opened an old volume on Buddhism to a chapter written by monks about their enlightenment experiences. And I found my own experience in there- very shockingly. wide-eyed and gobsmacked. Again, there was no one I felt I could talk to about this, because who would believe a woman in her twenties who claimed to have had this kind of experience when spiritual practictioners were all about getting "there" and I'd only had a (very) long dark night of the soul and a bit of Tai Chi meditation as preamble. So Clifford, thank you in particular for this : "....And though I adhere to “take heed lest he who thinks he stands falls,” when once asked if I ever doubt I said, “Not really much any more, but if I do I dismiss the doubt as irrational.” That is, from the reasons I have for belief, and the experiences I have had, doubt is the most irrational thing I can do..." This is very beautiful and tenderly written. And 40 years later what I didn't know I needed to hear.
I treasure this. Thirty eight years after finishing Div school, I recently affirmed that the locus of my own spiritual experience and commitment is and always has been making music. Practice is my practice, composition and improvisation my worship, creators my community. But around that I've been deeply moved by my understanding of the convertible names of God, particularly beauty. And a kind of panentheism, and insights from the Eastern fathers and 20th century Russians, Neoplatonism, and (very recently) Advaita. And the idea of the Logos taking on flesh and then doing and teaching what he did, including rising. And of an afterlife in a spiritual body. And love all around, with laughter. And nature, design, and what passes between lovers. Much of that from you. I've come to describe myself as pan-Catholic, drawing from and drawn to Roman, Anglican, and Eastern aspects, in decreasing order of experience but increasing order of affinity, respectively. And I've always nearly napped in church/mass, probably as a strategy because the escape back through the door would be rude and ruin a rare but hopeful morning spent out of bed. In the end, all of it only matters in its impact upon my sensibility when for example I walk, see my loved ones, pick up my instrument, or encounter a stranger, or dogs. I'm 65 in 3 weeks. This will have to do. It always has.
Thank you, David, for taking the time again and again to write not only here but in the books and essays you’ve written. You’ve more than once pointed the way forward to me, and those signposts have deepened my own faith immeasurably. I thank God my own father never was dogmatic about his own faith but practiced it silently and I must say mostly in his fervent love of nature. I never felt an unnecessary obligation to go to church if the choice was between that an hiking on a mountain. Currently I live in a log home in a remote part of the PNW with my dog, who maybe like your Roland, has taught me much about tenderness, playfulness, forgiveness, and joy. I do have a particularly sweet orthodox church I attend when I am overseas. My priest is a youngish man whom I love and appreciate dearly in no small part because he has such humility and joy in his little mission church that meets in the waiting room of the consulate, and who seems to revel in the outdoor life I live. I feel such peace attending liturgy there, and like you, I don’t mind at all that his brief homilies are spoken in Russian that I don’t understand. I’m not very big on the fellowship—post-liturgy coffee and lunch together—but I do like celebrating with those humble people who travel far to attend the service. I’m getting older closing in on 70, and know my end is coming sooner rather than later, nevertheless, like you I have no idea what awaits me on the other side except the belief in the enduring love of Christ and a merciful Father. And I’m one who needs that mercy. Thank you again for pouring your mind out in words that have been so helpful to me.
This is giving me a touch of the scandals. A wee bit of the ol’ scandal shakes, let’s say. Especially the part where you describe the figures in most icons as unearthly chrysalises in a landscape of non-Euclidean horror, maddeningly drenched in the light of a gibbous moon while the unimaginable insects inside begin to slough them off, in a nightmare sarabande of fantastic terror, as they climb out of halo-like hatches in the tops of the unspeakable heads!
Thank you so much for this, David. As with many of your writings, it lands very close to where my heart and mind is temperamentally disposed. I am sure you would be surprised (but then again, not) by how many find themselves believing in ways akin to you. You have my prayers. Although the phrase ‘holding you in the Light’ (from the Quakers, but surely also Eastern Orthodoxy) feels so much a better way of putting it. You have endured a great deal of suffering health-wise. I pray you consolation and joy in all the things which bring you close to beauty, truth, goodness, faith, hope, justice, peace, and above all, Love. Greetings and gratitude from Edinburgh.
Thank you for this uplifting article. You warned us of impending scandal, but I found your confession to be rather innocuous. Your prayer habits are similar to my own. I have always found more conventional modes of prayer onerous, but I "got on with it" for years out of a sense of obligation. Eventually—after a series of personal hardships and ecclesial disenchantments—such prayer became impossible. Thankfully in that same period of turmoil I discovered the contemplative tradition. Now I pray by simply listening, attending to my Father's mysterious yet loving presence and to his beauty in creation, offering up silent adoration and gratitude (as well as pained confusion and the occasional fiery complaint), pleading help in trying circumstances, and lacing it all with a few select and especially affecting verses of scripture.
Surely this beauty is meant to be lived out together, and once you have a large-ish community some hiearchy becomes inevitable as well. And these communities are a source of great beauty - both artisanal and the beauty of well-lived lives - themselves.
Church. Can't live with it, can't live without it.
In general I agree. As it happens, although I rarely go to church, I enjoy liturgy and I like the communities that form around parish churches here in Greece. For many ordinary people this is the centre of a higher life. But the landscape of the human condition is vast, there are many ways to God, and DBH is a very rare case.
This would be my point of agreement to the both of you. I've spent my life Anglican, but see no inherent necessity, loyalty or beauty in the Church of England beyond the importance of safety and community. Even then, it has completely failed at both on many occasions. But, now, I am part of an Anglican church that excels at community and safety, and that nurtures doubts, questions, faith and belief in a positive environment. In a similar and different way to David's writings that I've found so helpful and challenging over the last few years!
I often find my training in classical music to rage against the corporate worship of my own church, and my confusion and disagreement rages at decisions, sermons or liturgy. But there is a distinct beauty in our equally hopeful and hopeless attempts to follow in the footsteps of Christ. In community. For others. And, if Christ is God, perfect in love and beauty, is that not the best way to live?
Anyhow, where organised religion fails is at the point I agree most with in David's humble and illuminating piece: that Jesus plays in 10,000 places. We are all human, and attempts to conform *all* to a set traditions and behaviours so often straying beyond the central tenets of Jesus' teaching (i.e. every strand of Christianity and other religions that I'm aware of), can be futile and damaging. Structures and routines can be hugely supportive and beneficial (David gives the example of his brothers), but they can also be wholly repellent, exhausting and repressive.
We continue on, as our forefathers and mothers, brothers and sisters have done. In equal hopeful faith in and hopeless following of our exquisite Christ.
I for one am very grateful for your faith, exactly as it is, and your ability to articulate it. And yes, it should please those who are more adept at religious sentiment than you are to know that there are believers like you. It gives a real boost of confidence to know that 1) someone with your knowledge and intelligence thinks the resurrection is believable and 2) if it were different, you would have no inclination to pretend otherwise.
I'll always be grateful for your writings (the ones that don't go over my head entirely). I was raised Calvinist, all penal substitutionary atonement and no real understanding of Incarnation to speak of; luckily in an otherwise very functional and loving family, but I still got away as soon as I could make my own choice in the matter. I only very gradually found out about other corners of Christianity that did occasionally inspire me (it wouldn't have happened without religious music) and found my way back to some very vague kind of Christian-inspired spiritual curiosity, when your book The Experience of God convinced me overnight that I could be a theist without embarrassment. I was for a while attracted to beautiful Liturgies, perhaps because I grew up without any. And the closest I have come to an experience of the risen Christ was in the Eucharist. But then again, if one can encounter Christ in a rather tasteless cracker, that precisely does go to show that Christ plays in ten thousand places. On the whole though, while I have become comfortable self-identifying as a Christian, I'm no less uncomfortable with large portions of Christianity, and I have a sense that it's mostly the ugly parts of Christianity that are currently growing.
This piece is helpful in other ways as well. I grew up in a church that really believed in itself as the One True Church, and while that always seemed obviously ridiculous, I realize now that in some ways I have been hoping to find the One True Church somewhere else. And, growing up as I did with the Heidelberg Catechism and the Canons of Dort, I was also hoping that one day I would possess different but definitive answers to the big questions, which I could put down, perhaps in a similar question/answer-format. It must be a lingering calvinistic mental habit, to long for a clear cut knowledge of ultimate truth and to have it printed black on white. Now I'm starting to be grateful for my growing realization that Christ will be always greater, and every institution always more limited than I imagine.
In the early part of this essay, or confession, or whatever DBH would have us call it, I noted the denial of the allegation that he is a theologian. That brought to mind something I stumbled across within the last year or so: (1) The claim that DBH is the smartest theologian alive on the planet today; and (2) The observation that he has never denied that claim. Here, then, do we see the seeds of an implied denial - "How could I be the smartest theologian alive on the planet today, if I am not a theologian at all?" Now THAT would be a worthy discussion!
Secondly, and more seriously, I appreciate particularly how the resurrection event (with the inexplicable continuation of the followers if it had not actually happened) and the ethos of unconditional love, especially when considering the marginalized, lie at the heart of the Christian faith. In some less articulate ways, I, too, have held those two notions closely. And perhaps when more traditional apologists help clear away the clutter of insubstantial and even serious objections and barriers to faith, and leave us with a blank canvass on which to let the light shine now that the darkness has receded, it might just be that the resurrection, and the love of God for all, become the simple figures revealing the heart of Christianity.
This hit home more than I expected it would. I have worked as a priest (“Lutheran” by historical accident, so don’t judge me to harshly) for long enough that I had started to forget I did not get into this out of a love for communal worship or ritual, but in part because of my aversion to them. I see their value, but they do not come natural to me, so I knew that the only way I could stick to it was as an occupation. The theology and the pastoral work are enough to keep me fulfilled, but the Liturgy can get a bit tedious. I do find the occasional joy and beauty in it, but for the most part I too find spiritual nourishment from sources that are not overtly religious; the fiords and mountains of Hardanger, Telemark and Jotunheimen, and the forests and seaside villages of Vestfold; the music of Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson (among others) and the Faerie realms and Dream-worlds of MacDonald, Carrol and Tolkien. As a reluctantly religious priest, I, for one, am grateful for your confession.
Well, I won’t apologize for being part of a Lutheran church of today, but I have mixed feelings about Luther himself, and much of traditional Lutheran theology (I'm a synergist and a universalist, among other things.) The young Luther was idealistic, hopeful and conciliatory with reasonable criticisms of the corruption of the Catholic Church, but the older Luther became bitter and perverse. The picture of God espoused by his On the Bondage of the Will is just monstrous, perhaps more so than the worst of Calvin, and his hatred of the Jews that later came to fuel the rhetoric of the Third Reich is just unspeakable, even by the standards of his time. So, no, I only consider myself “Lutheran” in the sense that I belong to a church that trace its history back to his reformation. Luther himself did not want any church named after him. Like many Anglicans, I consider myself Catholic in the wider sense of that word.
From the comments, I think it’s safe to venture that this confession is not so peculiar. It seems that we were made to feel peculiar when, in fact, we were not.
David, I think this is lovely. I will put a quote ("If the claim of anyone’s resurrection by the power of the Spirit should seem not so much outlandish as simply fitting, it is that of this first century Jewish prophet—this one who loved the excluded, the forgotten, the oppressed, the poor, and the despised with a love the world could not give.") from you in the Easter bulletin this year and weave it into my homily somehow. I think your simple, human faith is much less dangerous, more honest, and more humble than all the religious sentiment, pomp, and men in gold lame. As Rev. Dawn Hutchings (woke ELCA lesbian Canadian pastor) once told me, any hymn, any practice, any part of worship that prevents you from seeing the face of Christ in the least of these, needs to be thrown out.
If you ever come to Seattle, please come to our "People's Mass" the second Sunday of the month, where we share a meal together and pass the elements around the table as we listen to (and discuss) the readings. It's just what you describe in this essay as something you might like.
You are such an inspiration to me, and even though you say you don't like writing theology, you're my favorite theologian. Thank you again for writing this.
It makes me sad. I came to Orthodoxy because I remembered my Mom teaching me that, when lost from my family in a strange place like the supermarket, to return to where we were last all together, and wait. It seems that there isn't anywhere like that. I wish we could all come home to the same place somehow. It seems we can't. I came to Orthodoxy because of David, too, although that's a little embarassing to say, like if I admitted to wearing a fedora because Indiana Jones wore one. But it's true that I came to Orthodoxy because of him, and it turns out he isn't here, not really.
Well, I like our little church and the humble sermons of our humble priest. I like our little icon corner with the icons hung low where my daughter can reach to kiss Mary and Gregory and Macrina and her "Big Lord Jesus". But more and more I feel a little deluded, foolish, childish. David's not saying I should feel like this, and I dont feel this just because of him, but I do feel it, and right now I feel it because of what he has said here. I wish there was some part of the world outside of my own home that wasn't hopelessly fractured, where I could go and belong and wait for everyone to come home together. But I wish for a lot of things, and mostly because I've failed to grow up and admit what the world really is. It turns out the best that can be expected of the world is that nothing in it will last forever.
I’m still there too, from time to time. But time takes us where we didn’t expect to go.
Thanks for saying so.
Christ is Risen, my friend. Before any Orthodox this-or-that, I try, personally, to always repeat to myself the Paschal Troparion. In a world where genocide is the norm, in a world where people where I am from are routinely called terrorists and all manner of other horrible things, in a world where "developed" countries are full of homeless people with desperate gazes that cause us to look the other way, it is hard to remember, but I try not to forget - and act as though - Christ is Risen.
Even if that means He's under a bridge in some American metropolitan area or beneath the rubble in Gaza. And it's there that we must go to find Him, tend to Him, feed Him, and, if we must, die for Him.
That to me is Christianity's orthodoxy.
Just some thoughts :)
It is true that we cannot become children again, but perhaps our home is not behind us. Perhaps we must be forced out and onwards again and again without yet losing the hope of our heart's desire. It may be for some that they are permitted to rest in familiar settings of liturgy and ritual while others are granted their reprieve elsewhere in this world. But where else can we be ultimately drawn to, but the one true End of all yearning?
A very nice thought, and well put. I'm glad you feel that way. I should probably be comforted by it, and I wish that I was.
I don't think you should feel that way at all. DBH says above that his lack of appreciation for liturgy is a limitation, not necessarily a strength.
I'm rather in between you. I fell in love with Byzantine liturgy when I first encountered it in Romania in the early 90s (the way had been paved by reading Kallistos Ware as part of a class on Russian history). I wound up becoming Catholic instead, for a bunch of complex reasons, but I still have twinges of Eastward longing. In 2019 I visited St. Vladimir's seminary near NYC and just the smell of incense (which as another Catholic in the group pointed out, is quite different from the Western kind, more sharp and piercing and less somnolescent) was like one of the twinges of Joy C. S. Lewis wrote about. But if I had become Orthodox in my youth I might well have wound up more or less where DBH is now. In 2005, in one of my two most serious bouts of considering conversion to Orthodoxy (the other one was about five years later), I attended a Sunday morning liturgy at an OCA parish in NJ and was, for the first time, a bit bored by it in the way DBH describes. And I took that as a good sign that I'd gotten over the "exoticism" appeal and was ready to consider the claims of Orthodoxy soberly. And I didn't convert. So Orthodoxy has always been for me appealing in part because of its "otherness" and if it had become something I experienced every week that might have gone away. I definitely have much more appreciation for Byzantine art and liturgy than DBH does just as a matter of aesthetic judgment, though. I think his remarks in the post about Byzantine art would be quite reprehensible if he wasn't, as he says, reacting to silly triumphalism on the part of many Orthodox.
My remarks on Byzantine art may be reactive, but they are also a sober judgment, one shared by many. Still, but for that polemic, I might have a kindlier view.
Have you seen the icons that Fr. Seraphim Aldea (or others - not sure) produce out of Mull & Iona Monasteries? They are not done at all in a typical Byzantine style (which indeed becomes dull and repetitive but, I claim, still has its moments of beauty); here is a link :) https://mullmonastery.com/shop/icons/
That all seems quite positive, I appreciate your story and perspective. I’ve never been carried away by the aesthetics of liturgy exactly. I lack a very sophisticated sense of beauty. I like the icons, that was part of it for me. More important is how Father Phillip chokes up in his sermon when he talks about love, how Father Deacon smiles at the choir when they make a mistake, or when he’s having a rough morning and scowls instead, barks a little correction, then finds his smile again so that he can apologize without interrupting the liturgy. The little mistakes and forgivenesses between these weary midwesterners doing the best they can to get through the lovely, archaic play once again. My favorite part of liturgy is the children finding ways to play quietly, the older kids growing up to help the little ones, the love we feel for them. It’s worth the niggling annoyances of Orthodoxy to stay with them. I’ve been thinking on it the last few days and I’m sad, and okay with it, and grateful for my church.
Thank you for this. It is very helpful at what I'd call a nadir point of my own specifically Christian commitments.
My experience lately is that I cycle through the same set of observations, some historical-critical, some moral, some theological, and many personal:
1.) Jesus the Jewish prophet, Torah preacher, Wisdom sage, and martyr is more compelling for me nowadays than Jesus the object of Christian dogmatics;
2.) I still believe the resurrection, but I cannot see how it differs so radically from the same kinds of exaltation that ancient Jews, Greeks, and Romans predicated of other divine men, or from the kind of transcendence other religions claim for some of their saints, and part of the sales pitch in the earliest centuries seems precisely to have been that it wasn't so different;
3.) The long history of Christianity institutionally, morally, and intellectually has some highlights worthy of praise or admiration, but on the whole it carries simply too much compromise & failure & "business as usual" to be the actual redemption of the world, even though I fully agree with your observation about the earliest community as expressing an ethics of solidarity with the poor and of interpersonal love and forgiveness that genuinely stands out, historically;
4.) All the philosophical and theological ideas that I still feel strongly committed to--panentheism, idealism, panpsychism, the immortality of the soul, pluralism, universalism--have some Christian representatives, but are actually easier to hold in traditions outside of Christianity;
5.) Like you, I find God much more in nature and every day life and art and my own disciplines (religious studies, classics) than I do in formal religious settings, but if there's any formal prayer that makes me feel genuinely animated and connected to the sacred these days, it's the Siddur, not the Liturgy of the Hours or the Book of Common Prayer that have fed me for most of my spiritual life
I don't know exactly where to go or what to do with any of that. The Christian communities that once catered to people of that sort of disposition are rapidly dying off and disappearing, and the only sort that are growing in the United States, statistically speaking, are either evangelical Non-Denoms or AOG, both in the South, and both usually aligned to conservative/far-right reactionary, Trumpian politics. And then I feel the subsequent dilemma: "Well, not all Christians are that way!" joined to "Well, but Christianity has *mostly* bought into that kind of thing across its history, really. Just ask pagans, Jews, Muslims and...well, any Christian deemed insufficiently orthodox."
Long, rambling way to say: thanks. This helps me feel less crazy about the whole thing.
I was unschooled and basically entirely unformed by any religious attitudes during childhood and adulthood (not exactly a rarity in the Bay Area, mind you). Looking back though, I consider it a blessing. Really it was thanks to this prior void, and eventually an encounter with suffering and despair at 25, that God's reality - in the raw, so to speak - was felt as a truly revelatory and salient and existential experience of salvation for me. A true "filling up" of a dark and hopeless world. Mysteriously enough, intuitions about Christ and universalism were downloaded into this transformation in an automatic and inextricable way - Christ shining forth with luminosity and appearing suddenly as the most obvious truth in the world, like the inevitable sign and display of the God of agape love coming into the world and concretizing the truth. This mix of intuitions coalesced before I stepped foot in a church or else began seriously engaging with the history and tradition of Christianity however. It is now a number of years down the line. I have read much, and explored a mix of denominations, including recently a year at the GOC, and currently a 'den-denom' in Portland, Oregon. But it's still a funny thing: everything I have since taken in - "as a Christian" and in "Christian spaces" - has always been weighed and measured against that original intuition of agape, that simple experience of God, and still to this day, I have never quite felt like I have found a perfect home for whatever 'that is' in religious Christianity. I somehow both feel absolutely unshakable in my convictions about God and Christ, yet some days, absolutely ambivalent about my Christian identity, at least in the context of others whose Christianity looks to me like almost antithetical to my own.
Also a long, rambling way to say: it's been a process of learning and unlearning, learning and unlearning. And like you, I feel like I am reaching something akin to a nadir, and I suppose we will just have to wait and see where everything leads.
Whatever the destination, you and DBH are like two GPS signals that help me navigate the confusing terrain, and I will happily continue to make my company along the path with both of you.
I have long been a reader of A Perennial Digression and I agree with most of what you are saying here. I think there are a lot of us out there, but some of us are just more conscious of it than others.
You're a faithful pen pal.
Off the top of my head, I think the most objectionable of these positions, rather than dispositions, are points 1&2; you sound a bit like Reza Aslan with residual commitment to the resurrection, if I am honest. No offense.
I would also argue that the main thrust of Christian orthodoxy is, either implicitly or explicitly, panentheistic (in the East), though perhaps I am biased towards certain saints and figures and against others.
The biggest agreement that I have is that the institutions of Christianity following the imperialization of the faith have fundamentally failed to uphold Christ's teachings; still, the moral current of Christianity could never be fully extinguished (Basiliad, for instance). Not surprising for me though - it was a confluence of various institutional forces that nailed Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God (NOT *merely* a Jewish prophet and martyr, though yes also those things), to the Cross.
I don't know; being jaded is something that has always afflicted me differently. I try personally not to take the constant betrayal of those whom Christ called His disciplines lightly. It's deeply infuriating to see, for example, Kirill behave as a war monger, and it's even more upsetting that the streets are not littered with Orthodox, Catholic, and Oriental Orthodox people (clerics and lay-men/-women alike) protesting the colonization of Palestine and genocide of Gaza (and every other horrible thing in this world, honestly), but the logic of the age being so corrupted always directs my anger towards it rather than the unceasing truths of Christ, His ministry and resurrection, and the faith of the Apostles in Him.
I am rather surprised that you find the resurrection claims en toto not much different from typical holy-man exaltation. There is very little exaltation in some of the Pauline confessions, honestly. I am, like David (the author of this piece, not you, lol), convinced by that - in part precisely because it is not laden with theological language or ornamentation, and it really did change the course of human history in ways that I think resists prosaic explanation (whether it became enmeshed with the violence of the empire or not).
Maybe I'm young and overly idealistic, though.
Just my thoughts.
David, do you live in the South? If so, what you observe about the reactionary components may be less pervasive than appears at first blush. While Asheville is a big blue dot, we have three well attended mainline Protestant, moderate to progressive churches occupying three corner lots at Church Street and Aston, downtown (Central Methodist, First Presbyterian, and my church, Trinity Episcopal). Trinity has actually been on a growth trajectory for probably 25 years. The Episcopal Diocese of Western North Carolina as a whole has also experienced modest growth some years. A lot of this is energetic and talented retirees, who I hope don't stay away because of the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. But a lot of it is also from younger folks. I get the sense that other cities (Raleigh, Charlotte, Greensboro), are also experiencing at least some of this. All that said, I recognize it is not typical, but also, we are not dying either.
"All the philosophical and theological ideas that I still feel strongly committed to --panentheism, idealism, panpsychism, the immortality of the soul, pluralism, universalism --have some Christian representatives, but are actually easier to hold in traditions outside of Christianity."
I can't say I hold all of these, but I hold enough that this is a strikingly relatable point, and something I have deeply grappled with. Half the Christian dogmas are obviously antithetical to the majority of my metaphysical commitments (especially as they have been commonly received by the tradition), and it being those commitments that wholly undergird my religiosity, it seems backward to prioritize this tradition over others on the basis of an historical anomaly, however much it seems plausible - for can it seem plausible enough to justify all that is built on it?
Thank you for the writing you do.
You should write about this all on a blog or substack or something
On 2. Any good Christian know that Pythagoras ascended straight to heaven bodily and alive
On 3 In terms of the ethical ideal sage I think the figure of universal love comes up quite a bit as well in a universal setting. Buddha,Lao tzu,Mahavira etc
Aside from the dao de Ching often reading like parables of the gospel Buddha in the nikayas is similarly presented as being above all rulers and gods miraculous abilities like levitation having disciples follow him around as he wanders and humbly asks for alms etc and speaking of “love as true wisdom” etc etc
Thank you very much for this beautiful and brave confession. It couldn't have sounded very scandalous to your regular readers, as you had expressed many of your (ir)religious sentiments plenty of times in the past. But isn’t the faith in Christ “in whom are all the hidden treasures of wisdom and of knowledge” rather than in scriptures or institutions the primary duty of every Christian anyway? I believe you would have gotten along splendidly with George MacDonald.
That said, for a variety of reasons, I am in a different place than you at this stage of my life. I really need the assurance and comfort offered by the Church, although I am by no means very observant. I love the sight of the faithful gathered in prayer under the dim light of the candles, surrounded by colorful murals and radiant icons, and the air heavy with the scent of incense. And I feel uplifted by reading apologetics such as Chesterton or C.S. Lewis, while I suspect that they no longer (if ever) have that effect on you.
And while I agree with every other aesthetic preference mentioned in your essay, I would always prefer the beauty of the greatest Gothic cathedrals and Orthodox churches to any of Frank Lloyd Wright’s works. (And not because Ayn Rand, the Wicked Witch of the Wealth, loved him.)
And you will always have my prayers, as I will forever love you and your works.
Dear DBH, it may be that your faith like mine has moved into the dispassionate at mid-life phase.
For example, I have no serious doubts, and at the same time that I have a reduced appreciation of my own powers when it comes to working things out (like theodicy) to satisfaction. "Have mercy on me, O Lord, my limitations are ever before me," etc. It can never be made otherwise, however stimulating it is to try. And I do try, because that's how I'm built.
But when it comes to my feelings about it, I can't say I'm exercised. Do I look on my beloved Italian Alps and feel awe? Not as much as I did when I was a young Werther, but there they are: big, snowy, impassive, and cruelly eternal. They will outlast me, you, and everyone else. Christ's infinite condescension to nativity and constant eucharistic presence is like those mountains: it existed before me and will exist long after me. To feel myself part of that process is ... fine, as in "so be it, amen."
When it comes to religion, all I can say is that as I've gotten older, my heart's flesh has softened. My eyes well up with tears much more easily now than they did when I was twenty, thirty, or even forty. I am sitting here in a car repair shop with other midwesterners, and I wish them all the most sincere wishes of well. I feel more often like our beloved Yeats, sitting in his cafe, slowly burning with the impulse to "bless." I wish I could bless, anyway, but even more often I feel simply that when I die, I don't want to leave a mess, that I want to leave my loved ones something that will prolong my intimacy with them, and to know that I have done some good.
I called one of my old professors on the phone as he lay dying, and told him how much of an effect his seminars had on the course of my life. "Oh, I think you had something to do with it," he laughed, however painful it was for him to laugh. He was wrong, and right, and wrong, but it didn't matter. What matters is that I know now what his modesty really meant.
We learn to write best only when we have learned to say goodbye.
Be well. Know that we are all praying for each other.
The French and Italian Alps (Cottian), where my paternal ancestors dwelt and hid from and defied the Roman Catholic Church, the Duke of Savoy, and the power of France, as in their simplicity they continued to have their own worship and practice. Tonight, I am going to a dinner to celebrate the 177th anniversary of the Edict of Emancipation issued by Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, Duke of Savoy, granting the Waldensians their civil rights. Liturgically, it is at the opposite end of Greek Orthodoxy and still quite far from my chosen immersion in the Anglican tradition. Different traditions can speak to us at different times in our lives.
Beautifully put
Dear Dr. Hart,
About a year ago, I sent an email to a very erudite but kind of stiff youngish metropolitan, whose discussions were online, because I didn't know where to turn to. I asked him If it was ok to ask for his advice on a personal matter and, to my surprise, although literally at the other end of the world, he answered immediately that of course I could and he would be happy to be of any assistance. Subsequently, I asked him if it was ok that the only time I could find myself fervently praying and letting go to God was when I listened to classical music. He never answered back.
It has long been ever since that I know it is ok.
Thank you.
Appreciate your honesty. I’m coming from a radically different perspective and experience. I was raised a very secular Jew who could name every Nazi concentration camp and how many Jews they killed but couldn’t tell you what book of the Bible the Ten Commandments were in. Our holidays were like this: they tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat!
Then in 1979, at 23 years old, I was sitting in my room and working on a novel that had dominated my life for the past two and a half years when the presence of the Lord Jesus came to me in the room. I knew exactly who He was and what He wanted. Burn the novel. It was my god and, well, it had to go. So I burned it and became a believer. But in what? Had you told me I was a sinner I would have had no idea what you were talking about.
But, in a very real case of credo ut intelligam, I have over the decades built a very logical and rational foundation for my faith (your writings helping, BTW). And though I adhere to “take heed lest he who thinks he stands falls,” when once asked if I ever doubt I said, “Not really much any more, but if I do I dismiss the doubt as irrational.” That is, from the reasons I have for belief, and the experiences I have had, doubt is the most irrational thing I can do.
Anyway, thanks for the thoughts. You are always worth reading even when I disagree with you.
Thanks for this. you reminded me of an enlightenment experience I had in my twenties, although I didn't know that that is what it was because no one ever spoke about these things, and I had never read about it, even having been brought up in a very Catholic church. Lives of the Saints did not cut it. In a "primitive' 25 year-old way having been through a bunch of trauma and no longer belonging to any church, i had an unclear but dire bodily sense (not put into words) a terror that I needed to shed my past life, and I accidentally joined a Tai Chi group who studied around a master. I was not a serious student, but others were. All that to say is that something beautiful and terrible happened to me which altered everything in my life subsequently. It was and still is the greatest consolation. But like I say, I couldn't talk to anyone about it. This is hard to reconcile, "terrible" in that it seems to separate you in some way from a kind of "normal" socialization. A couple of years hence and I'm in the University library "dowsing" for books that might be relevant and opened an old volume on Buddhism to a chapter written by monks about their enlightenment experiences. And I found my own experience in there- very shockingly. wide-eyed and gobsmacked. Again, there was no one I felt I could talk to about this, because who would believe a woman in her twenties who claimed to have had this kind of experience when spiritual practictioners were all about getting "there" and I'd only had a (very) long dark night of the soul and a bit of Tai Chi meditation as preamble. So Clifford, thank you in particular for this : "....And though I adhere to “take heed lest he who thinks he stands falls,” when once asked if I ever doubt I said, “Not really much any more, but if I do I dismiss the doubt as irrational.” That is, from the reasons I have for belief, and the experiences I have had, doubt is the most irrational thing I can do..." This is very beautiful and tenderly written. And 40 years later what I didn't know I needed to hear.
I treasure this. Thirty eight years after finishing Div school, I recently affirmed that the locus of my own spiritual experience and commitment is and always has been making music. Practice is my practice, composition and improvisation my worship, creators my community. But around that I've been deeply moved by my understanding of the convertible names of God, particularly beauty. And a kind of panentheism, and insights from the Eastern fathers and 20th century Russians, Neoplatonism, and (very recently) Advaita. And the idea of the Logos taking on flesh and then doing and teaching what he did, including rising. And of an afterlife in a spiritual body. And love all around, with laughter. And nature, design, and what passes between lovers. Much of that from you. I've come to describe myself as pan-Catholic, drawing from and drawn to Roman, Anglican, and Eastern aspects, in decreasing order of experience but increasing order of affinity, respectively. And I've always nearly napped in church/mass, probably as a strategy because the escape back through the door would be rude and ruin a rare but hopeful morning spent out of bed. In the end, all of it only matters in its impact upon my sensibility when for example I walk, see my loved ones, pick up my instrument, or encounter a stranger, or dogs. I'm 65 in 3 weeks. This will have to do. It always has.
Thank you, David, for taking the time again and again to write not only here but in the books and essays you’ve written. You’ve more than once pointed the way forward to me, and those signposts have deepened my own faith immeasurably. I thank God my own father never was dogmatic about his own faith but practiced it silently and I must say mostly in his fervent love of nature. I never felt an unnecessary obligation to go to church if the choice was between that an hiking on a mountain. Currently I live in a log home in a remote part of the PNW with my dog, who maybe like your Roland, has taught me much about tenderness, playfulness, forgiveness, and joy. I do have a particularly sweet orthodox church I attend when I am overseas. My priest is a youngish man whom I love and appreciate dearly in no small part because he has such humility and joy in his little mission church that meets in the waiting room of the consulate, and who seems to revel in the outdoor life I live. I feel such peace attending liturgy there, and like you, I don’t mind at all that his brief homilies are spoken in Russian that I don’t understand. I’m not very big on the fellowship—post-liturgy coffee and lunch together—but I do like celebrating with those humble people who travel far to attend the service. I’m getting older closing in on 70, and know my end is coming sooner rather than later, nevertheless, like you I have no idea what awaits me on the other side except the belief in the enduring love of Christ and a merciful Father. And I’m one who needs that mercy. Thank you again for pouring your mind out in words that have been so helpful to me.
This is giving me a touch of the scandals. A wee bit of the ol’ scandal shakes, let’s say. Especially the part where you describe the figures in most icons as unearthly chrysalises in a landscape of non-Euclidean horror, maddeningly drenched in the light of a gibbous moon while the unimaginable insects inside begin to slough them off, in a nightmare sarabande of fantastic terror, as they climb out of halo-like hatches in the tops of the unspeakable heads!
Oh, HP, say it ain’t so.
His friend call him Little Howie.
I found that part oddly reassuring.
The saints live in flat world much closer to the monad plane
Kafkaesque imagery with Faulkneresque non-punctuation?
Thank you so much for this, David. As with many of your writings, it lands very close to where my heart and mind is temperamentally disposed. I am sure you would be surprised (but then again, not) by how many find themselves believing in ways akin to you. You have my prayers. Although the phrase ‘holding you in the Light’ (from the Quakers, but surely also Eastern Orthodoxy) feels so much a better way of putting it. You have endured a great deal of suffering health-wise. I pray you consolation and joy in all the things which bring you close to beauty, truth, goodness, faith, hope, justice, peace, and above all, Love. Greetings and gratitude from Edinburgh.
Thank you for this uplifting article. You warned us of impending scandal, but I found your confession to be rather innocuous. Your prayer habits are similar to my own. I have always found more conventional modes of prayer onerous, but I "got on with it" for years out of a sense of obligation. Eventually—after a series of personal hardships and ecclesial disenchantments—such prayer became impossible. Thankfully in that same period of turmoil I discovered the contemplative tradition. Now I pray by simply listening, attending to my Father's mysterious yet loving presence and to his beauty in creation, offering up silent adoration and gratitude (as well as pained confusion and the occasional fiery complaint), pleading help in trying circumstances, and lacing it all with a few select and especially affecting verses of scripture.
God is beauty. I don't understand what religious structures of power have to do with him.
Surely this beauty is meant to be lived out together, and once you have a large-ish community some hiearchy becomes inevitable as well. And these communities are a source of great beauty - both artisanal and the beauty of well-lived lives - themselves.
Church. Can't live with it, can't live without it.
In general I agree. As it happens, although I rarely go to church, I enjoy liturgy and I like the communities that form around parish churches here in Greece. For many ordinary people this is the centre of a higher life. But the landscape of the human condition is vast, there are many ways to God, and DBH is a very rare case.
This would be my point of agreement to the both of you. I've spent my life Anglican, but see no inherent necessity, loyalty or beauty in the Church of England beyond the importance of safety and community. Even then, it has completely failed at both on many occasions. But, now, I am part of an Anglican church that excels at community and safety, and that nurtures doubts, questions, faith and belief in a positive environment. In a similar and different way to David's writings that I've found so helpful and challenging over the last few years!
I often find my training in classical music to rage against the corporate worship of my own church, and my confusion and disagreement rages at decisions, sermons or liturgy. But there is a distinct beauty in our equally hopeful and hopeless attempts to follow in the footsteps of Christ. In community. For others. And, if Christ is God, perfect in love and beauty, is that not the best way to live?
Anyhow, where organised religion fails is at the point I agree most with in David's humble and illuminating piece: that Jesus plays in 10,000 places. We are all human, and attempts to conform *all* to a set traditions and behaviours so often straying beyond the central tenets of Jesus' teaching (i.e. every strand of Christianity and other religions that I'm aware of), can be futile and damaging. Structures and routines can be hugely supportive and beneficial (David gives the example of his brothers), but they can also be wholly repellent, exhausting and repressive.
We continue on, as our forefathers and mothers, brothers and sisters have done. In equal hopeful faith in and hopeless following of our exquisite Christ.
I for one am very grateful for your faith, exactly as it is, and your ability to articulate it. And yes, it should please those who are more adept at religious sentiment than you are to know that there are believers like you. It gives a real boost of confidence to know that 1) someone with your knowledge and intelligence thinks the resurrection is believable and 2) if it were different, you would have no inclination to pretend otherwise.
I'll always be grateful for your writings (the ones that don't go over my head entirely). I was raised Calvinist, all penal substitutionary atonement and no real understanding of Incarnation to speak of; luckily in an otherwise very functional and loving family, but I still got away as soon as I could make my own choice in the matter. I only very gradually found out about other corners of Christianity that did occasionally inspire me (it wouldn't have happened without religious music) and found my way back to some very vague kind of Christian-inspired spiritual curiosity, when your book The Experience of God convinced me overnight that I could be a theist without embarrassment. I was for a while attracted to beautiful Liturgies, perhaps because I grew up without any. And the closest I have come to an experience of the risen Christ was in the Eucharist. But then again, if one can encounter Christ in a rather tasteless cracker, that precisely does go to show that Christ plays in ten thousand places. On the whole though, while I have become comfortable self-identifying as a Christian, I'm no less uncomfortable with large portions of Christianity, and I have a sense that it's mostly the ugly parts of Christianity that are currently growing.
This piece is helpful in other ways as well. I grew up in a church that really believed in itself as the One True Church, and while that always seemed obviously ridiculous, I realize now that in some ways I have been hoping to find the One True Church somewhere else. And, growing up as I did with the Heidelberg Catechism and the Canons of Dort, I was also hoping that one day I would possess different but definitive answers to the big questions, which I could put down, perhaps in a similar question/answer-format. It must be a lingering calvinistic mental habit, to long for a clear cut knowledge of ultimate truth and to have it printed black on white. Now I'm starting to be grateful for my growing realization that Christ will be always greater, and every institution always more limited than I imagine.
Thank you for everything.
In the early part of this essay, or confession, or whatever DBH would have us call it, I noted the denial of the allegation that he is a theologian. That brought to mind something I stumbled across within the last year or so: (1) The claim that DBH is the smartest theologian alive on the planet today; and (2) The observation that he has never denied that claim. Here, then, do we see the seeds of an implied denial - "How could I be the smartest theologian alive on the planet today, if I am not a theologian at all?" Now THAT would be a worthy discussion!
Secondly, and more seriously, I appreciate particularly how the resurrection event (with the inexplicable continuation of the followers if it had not actually happened) and the ethos of unconditional love, especially when considering the marginalized, lie at the heart of the Christian faith. In some less articulate ways, I, too, have held those two notions closely. And perhaps when more traditional apologists help clear away the clutter of insubstantial and even serious objections and barriers to faith, and leave us with a blank canvass on which to let the light shine now that the darkness has receded, it might just be that the resurrection, and the love of God for all, become the simple figures revealing the heart of Christianity.
Works for me.
This hit home more than I expected it would. I have worked as a priest (“Lutheran” by historical accident, so don’t judge me to harshly) for long enough that I had started to forget I did not get into this out of a love for communal worship or ritual, but in part because of my aversion to them. I see their value, but they do not come natural to me, so I knew that the only way I could stick to it was as an occupation. The theology and the pastoral work are enough to keep me fulfilled, but the Liturgy can get a bit tedious. I do find the occasional joy and beauty in it, but for the most part I too find spiritual nourishment from sources that are not overtly religious; the fiords and mountains of Hardanger, Telemark and Jotunheimen, and the forests and seaside villages of Vestfold; the music of Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson (among others) and the Faerie realms and Dream-worlds of MacDonald, Carrol and Tolkien. As a reluctantly religious priest, I, for one, am grateful for your confession.
Hey, don't apologize for being Lutheran! We all gotta be something, right?
Well, I won’t apologize for being part of a Lutheran church of today, but I have mixed feelings about Luther himself, and much of traditional Lutheran theology (I'm a synergist and a universalist, among other things.) The young Luther was idealistic, hopeful and conciliatory with reasonable criticisms of the corruption of the Catholic Church, but the older Luther became bitter and perverse. The picture of God espoused by his On the Bondage of the Will is just monstrous, perhaps more so than the worst of Calvin, and his hatred of the Jews that later came to fuel the rhetoric of the Third Reich is just unspeakable, even by the standards of his time. So, no, I only consider myself “Lutheran” in the sense that I belong to a church that trace its history back to his reformation. Luther himself did not want any church named after him. Like many Anglicans, I consider myself Catholic in the wider sense of that word.
From the comments, I think it’s safe to venture that this confession is not so peculiar. It seems that we were made to feel peculiar when, in fact, we were not.
David, I think this is lovely. I will put a quote ("If the claim of anyone’s resurrection by the power of the Spirit should seem not so much outlandish as simply fitting, it is that of this first century Jewish prophet—this one who loved the excluded, the forgotten, the oppressed, the poor, and the despised with a love the world could not give.") from you in the Easter bulletin this year and weave it into my homily somehow. I think your simple, human faith is much less dangerous, more honest, and more humble than all the religious sentiment, pomp, and men in gold lame. As Rev. Dawn Hutchings (woke ELCA lesbian Canadian pastor) once told me, any hymn, any practice, any part of worship that prevents you from seeing the face of Christ in the least of these, needs to be thrown out.
If you ever come to Seattle, please come to our "People's Mass" the second Sunday of the month, where we share a meal together and pass the elements around the table as we listen to (and discuss) the readings. It's just what you describe in this essay as something you might like.
You are such an inspiration to me, and even though you say you don't like writing theology, you're my favorite theologian. Thank you again for writing this.