Lent and Bright Week and feeling bad and feeling good

  • TeaThe rain is delight­ful right now. The tem­per­a­tures dropped from the unsea­son­ably high 80′s back to the jes’ fine 60′s. It’s gray and damp out now, but the show­ers let up from time to time and then a car­di­nal imme­di­ately starts singing. The lawn looks about an inch higher than yes­ter­day and the weeds are cack­ling mer­rily as they con­tem­plate their next growth spurt, so it’s just as well that it’s just too rainy out to go out and get con­trol of the yard right now (oh darn!).

    Inside, the dog can hardly be both­ered to lift her head or thump her tail when I pet her. And though I’ve already had some tea, I can’t resist brew­ing up another pot — with milk, mak­ing it a small Bright Week celebration.

    Maybe this is the blog entry I’d had in mind to do since mid-Lent. I read Erica’s obser­va­tion here about going to con­fes­sion and it feel­ing like was some­how too easy, and boy, could I relate. I don’t know what I expect some­times, but I’ve def­i­nitely had times where I thought I couldn’t be doing it right because I wasn’t awash with tears. I’ve had con­fes­sions where the priest and I actu­ally exchanged a joke or two (some years ago when I came up at the end of the long line of peo­ple who have waited until the end of Lent to con­fess, my priest feigned a shocked look as I came up and said, “Not you too!!” Then he gig­gled and said, “I’ve always wanted to say that.” I’d like to think that oth­ers won­dered what about my con­fes­sion was so funny.), and then I’ve tried to fig­ure out whether to be scan­dal­ized or not. Some­times I’ve longed to get some­thing off my chest but I haven’t got any­thing on my chest, and so I feel like I must be the blind­est sin­ner alive. Some­times I’ve wanted to just tell the priest, “I can’t be doing this right! I’m too Amer­i­can! I don’t know how to grieve like I should!”

    Which may all be true. Hope­fully, I am con­tin­u­ing to learn, as we all should be. And in a year or a decade, I hope I know a lot more about my fool­ish­ness than I do now. But it’s been very help­ful for me to also recall a story that Fr. Hopko told on him­self (in “The Word of the Cross,” I believe). He said that when he was new to sem­i­nary, he went to his father con­fes­sor and said how ter­ri­ble he was because he didn’t know the depth of his sin, he didn’t feel like the chief of sin­ners. And his spir­i­tual father was amazed and upbraided him by say­ing some­thing like, “Who do you think you are?” As Fr. Hopko says, there are great saints in the Church who spend all their lives reach­ing these states of true repen­tance. For us to think that we can waltz into that kind of knowl­edge is unbe­liev­ably naive to say the least, and down­right arro­gant to say the most.

    And how for­eign this kind of under­stand­ing is to us! We live in an age where we live like kings. Even the lowli­est of us feasts on foods we didn’t gather or hunt, dressed in cloth we didn’t weave or spin (and prob­a­bly won’t bother patch­ing), dri­ving in cars we didn’t make, using tech­nol­ogy we couldn’t pos­si­bly under­stand and going through a dizzy­ing assort­ment of per­fectly made prod­ucts imported from all over the coun­try and around the world. If we want some­thing, chances are some­body makes it and if we can pay for it, we can have it.

    This con­stant and incred­i­ble har­vest from the earth’s riches, from the labor of oth­ers, from the his­tory of inno­va­tion and knowl­edge, can be a source of con­stant and incred­i­ble thanks­giv­ing. But it’s also a con­stant dan­ger. We Ortho­dox today have all the riches of the Church Fathers at our fin­ger­tips. The writ­ings of St. Seraphim of Sarov or St. John of Kro­n­stadt or St. Theo­phan the Recluse are avail­able for less than most of us spend on our monthly cable. But in read­ing the works of these lumi­nar­ies, I can start to believe I can put on their lives like a new coat. The wis­dom of monks and her­mits comes at a tremen­dous price, and thanks be to God for those that can bring back golden apples from that par­adise that the rest of us can par­take of.

    But as for feel­ing like they do, how could I? Do I think it’s that sim­ple to turn back my life­time in a busy, noisy, nearly-godless cul­ture, even if my heart really was in the right place? And how much does it count that I may not want the fruits of real repen­tance nearly as much as I just want to feel repen­tant?

    It’s just a mat­ter for prayer, and work­ing with my spir­i­tual father. And trust, which may be the hard­est under the cir­cum­stances. I have to believe that God knows what I need and the Church is His instru­ment. The Church didn’t pre­scribe addi­tional fast­ing for those of us who are really lame. And I hope I’m not the only one who some­times has trou­ble enter­ing in to the bright­ness and vivac­ity of Pascha because I’m still pin­ing for big Lenten­ness to happen.

    But as long as I’m jeal­ous of the spirit of repen­tance that bet­ter men and women have found, I can at least con­sider that these ones also knew how and when to rejoice with tim­brel and harp, dress in fes­tal col­ors and feast. As the man said:

    Rejoice today, both you who have fasted and you who have dis­re­garded the fast. The table is full-laden; feast ye all sump­tu­ously. The calf is fat­ted; let no one go hun­gry away. Enjoy ye all the feast of faith: Receive ye all the riches of loving-kindness. Let no one bewail his poverty, for the uni­ver­sal king­dom has been reealed. Let no one weep for his iniq­ui­ties, for par­don has shone forth from the grave. Let no one fear death, for the Savior’s death has set us free.

    That sounds like some­one who knows a lot about both feast­ing and fast­ing. Today, the strong cur­rent of our cul­ture pulls us con­stantly to cel­e­brate our­selves, and so words about fast­ing seem like lit­tle shocks to our sys­tem and even­tu­ally they seem like a boon to our soul. But as we grow to appre­ci­ate a right­ful fast, it seems that we grow to appre­ci­ate a right­ful feast as well. My Bright Weeks now are less filled with over-satiated errancy than they used to be. Small por­tions turn out to be fine, and they help me not miss Lent so much.

    In the Anti­ochian arch­dio­cese, we are fast-free through­out the whole Pascha sea­son. That’s a some­what new cus­tom, and Fr. Elias told me that it still isn’t well-received by some. But it makes sense to me. Our times now are so dys­func­tional that we often can’t trust our feel­ings. And so appar­ently, we have to learn the dif­fer­ence between true repen­tance and just feel­ing bad, true joy and just feel­ing good. Some­times you fast, and some­times you don’t.


    Related posts:

    1. Bright Week do’s & don’ts
    2. As we set out
    3. Three quotes
    4. 9/11, Kat­rina and St. Euphrosynos
    5. The Daily Lives etc. Calendar

    April 29th, 2006 | Grace | 8 Comments |

8 Responses and Counting...

  • s-p 04.29.2006

    Most excel­lent post, Grace. You elo­quently said what has been nag­ging at me too. We indeed think we can waltz into true repen­tance and con­tri­tion by read­ing a cou­ple books about it and doing a cou­ple fasts…sigh. To para­phrase Mar­lon Brando in “Apoc­a­lypse Now” : “The delusion…the delusion.…..”

  • Jim N.

    You have said very well what I’ve been feel­ing but unable to nail down. Thanks, Grace.

  • Grace

    Thanks!

    We con­verts seem to have some pit­falls that cra­dle Ortho­dox don’t, and I lump them all together and call them con­ver­ti­tis. Every­day symp­toms include:
    * get­ting obsessed with fast rules
    * really, REALLY want­ing to know every­thing about all the mil­lion details
    * being hor­ri­fied at ordi­nary mis­takes in the liturgy
    * buy­ing icon mousepads, keyrings, book bags, t-shirts, note­books, fridge mag­nets, base­ball caps, paper­clip hold­ers etc. etc.

    At the extreme ends it can result in:
    * delu­sions of ordi­na­tion (reader in 5 min­utes, sub-deacon in 10, dea­con in 15 … met­ro­pol­i­tan by next Wednes­day).
    * a desire to find longer prayers, more severe fasts, more ways to stand out in pub­lic
    * mis­tak­ing one­self for a the­olo­gian
    * severe Orthodoxier-than-thou attitude

    These seri­ous cases always end up hav­ing a fight with the priest about some “extremely impor­tant” aspect of the faith, and a cou­ple weeks later they’re Buddhist.

    It’d be funny if it weren’t so common.

  • s-p

    Yeah, we were going to say some things like that on our pro­grams on “con­verts” http://www.ourlifeinchrist.com but we decided to be nice and not slap peo­ple around too hard. :) It seems we all go through the stages of being “the­olo­gians, litur­gists, spir­i­tual direc­tors, starets, God-bearing elders, want­ing to glow with uncre­ated light tomor­row morn­ing, vol­un­tar­ily fast­ing like Etheopi­ans, a vir­tual walk­ing Ortho­dox trin­ket store, need­ing to add walls in the house for more icons, need­ing a fire depart­ment smoke gear dur­ing our prayer rule, and the 4th per­son of the Holy Trin­ity.” sigh.….. But I think it all goes back to Mar­shall McLuhan: The medium is the mes­sage: in this cul­ture we mis­take the show for the real­ity. If we can build a facade that looks exactly like the real deal, why buy the real thing? It goes deeper than our faci­na­tion and accep­tance of fake rock, faux paint­ing, laser reprints, and “real­ity shows” that are staged.

  • Grace

    Prob­a­bly a smart choice not to get as smart-alecky as I did here. And by the way, I don’t mean by that a blan­ket put-down. Would to God I had some of the zeal that went with that mis­placed opti­mism. If only you could be wiser with­out being sad­der, right?

  • BJohnD

    Amen and amen, Grace. I often feel con­fes­sion, espe­cially dur­ing Lent, isn’t “hard enough.” I felt this par­tic­u­larly strongly after re-reading the Father Arseny book recently, in which spir­i­tual child after spir­i­tual child recounts her pow­er­ful expe­ri­ences dur­ing confession.

    Enjoy your 50 fast-free days! In the OCA, we’re back on the Wednesday/Friday track in just two days.

  • Mimi

    I’ve won­dered about the Anti­ochian Paschal Feast — there’s part of me who thinks it is a great idea because you truly enjoy the forty days, and then part of me who feels like after about 10 days, I’d be a mess with­out that weekly fast.

    I’m in the OCA so it’s all the­o­roet­i­cal, but good thoughts.

    Enjoy the clouds.

  • s-p

    Hi Grace, yeah, wiser and sad­der are vir­tu­ally insep­a­ra­ble. I always tell my employ­ees, “The only way human beings seem to learn is the hard way.…“
    sigh.

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