Two weeks ago we met again. The idea behind moving our society from Presvytera's home to the church hall was to set up a sewing factory. I imagined a machine or two at each eight foot table. Instead, it was humbler. I didn't break out my machine, for a second time. I'm a bit afraid to break it out and reveal my utter lack of mastery at sewing. It's a shame to own such a lovely Kenmore yet have no idea how to adjust the tension. In fact, my real skill with the machine is threading the bobbin and then threading up the foot. I can plug in the pedal and select one of the straight stitches. If I select a more complex stitch, the whole of the thread knots up on the back side of my hem, leaving a shameful and evident lump of loops. I'm just fortunate that I've surpassed the early stage, wherein I often caught the actual material deep into the lower platform- what's that called?
So Dee, who masterminded this whole 'Theotokos Threads' name and purpose, had her machine. I didn't even break out crocheting, scissors, or any other threads. Dee was transforming sheets and pillow cases into some of the loveliest sun dresses. Floral cases with striped pockets, trimmed with zigzag ribbon and tied at the shoulders with bright pink ribbon ties. Dee was sewing a couple each day all this week. I need to check back with her to find out how many of the dresses would be shipped of with the doctor who planned to take boxes of clothes to Haiti. How many would she complete to ship off to Africa? What was the name of the organization that provided the pattern and requested the dresses? She's forwarded three different web addresses with such projects now. That's how I started thinking about this women's group.
Before Dee started forwarding patterns for peace shawls and pillowcase sundresses, she'd forwarded me icons of the Annunciation. I've been pondering her a bit, especially since people keeping asking why I didn't choose her as my patron saint. We share a name after all. For me, selecting the Mother of God, seemed a bit ballsy. I'd loved her for "storing up things and pondering." She was the first 'humanized' character within Scripture that I discovered. She wasn't the lovely maiden who was made queen, or the brave prophetess who helped judge the tribes of Israel. She had an inner life. It was that glimpse that keeps me wondering at her. Dogmatically she is called the Theotokos, translated the Mother of God from the Greek. Some stories indicated she grew up in the temple and was a gifted weaver. Hence in the Annunciation icons she dropping a vivid weaving from her hand as the Angel Gabriel confronts him.
Dee is energetic. She sews quilts. She knits hats and gloves and scarves. She drives vets to their medical appointments, transforms her yard into a garden and shares the produce and generally remembers everyone's birthdays. Our church garden has its charming English style- welcoming and hiding- because of her efforts. All it's quietude on twenty-five bucks a year. I wish I had her skills. She also 'tells you like it is.' So when I'm sure my parenting has gone astray, she either agrees 'yup', I need a reality a check, or sets me straight about having the toughness to parent right.
Dee was a bit worried that we'd mix the wine with those machines. I joked that I wanted to sew my hand to a sundress before I gave up the chocolate and wine. This whole society started as "Women, Wine and Chocolate" but the announcements at the end of service were getting plenty of comments. Is that for men or women? The guys joshed. I kept having pictures of my evangelical friends, wondering why a bunch of Orthodox Christian women were getting together to get boozy. That's hardly the case. A glass or two of wine, but plenty of chocolate. Besides, with Great Lent approaching, we wanted to keep it up, but another presvytera and the young, pious, Anna wondered if we'd keep it up? Boozy, chocofied gals are hardly the icon of humility and chastity during Great Lent. Not that there aren't Lenten chocolates and wine and oil nights for celebrating. That's not the point. The point is that the society has a purpose and a pleasure. Those things have ways of binding us together. The key is to avoid the loopy, shameful bunches of thread on the underside of things. Those are bound to crop up, in spite of my best intentions, but I might as well be thoughtful enough to anticipate the snafus that arise.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
Interlude
I keep meaning to write that the ladies of the Society met again. We are now on the fourth Sunday night of each month.
There is a great wonder of things that happen as our lives are sewn together. There is also a rent in the garment yet. It's a tender piece.
More of this story will unfold.
There is a great wonder of things that happen as our lives are sewn together. There is also a rent in the garment yet. It's a tender piece.
More of this story will unfold.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Disturbing Good News
I hope my sister will forgive me for this.
She's in a spiritual quandary right now. When most of my sisters- there's a crowd of us- got together over pad thai and wine about ten days ago, I put her on the spot. The conversation turned, as they say, to a topic we've revisited many times in the past decade: the predominance of fear and guilt that came out of our early spiritual formation.We went to a church that my therapist calls 'spiritually abusive.' Ten days ago, at that conversation, I started to wonder. Just how bad was all this guilt? I'm not giving in on the dangers of the fear, for the record, but I hold Hal Lindsey and Scofield to blame for that.
I have a wonderfully developed sense of guilt. Many of my sisters do too. My daughter is developing it. I apologize so much that it annoys friends. I heap on self-abuse to keep myself disciplined and bring my deepest sins to confession, where my Father Confessor reminds me to see the love in the lives of the Saints and in our Christ. I have an abiding hope in that, but mid-conversation that recent Sunday night, I stopped and asked my sis a hard question. What did she think of all our exploring of fear and guilt? Then I apologized for missing the mark and focusing upon the negative and broken rather than the light and life of Christ.
It took her a while to answer my question and in the interim, other siblings were disturbed that I should be apologetic. I stated that I was seeing sin not as an intentional crime, but rather a kind of inadvertent wounding of souls, as Elder Porphyrios writes about in Wounded by Love. We need Christ and salvation, says I, as we need a hospital. Christ came to bring sinners to repentance, sick to healing, as the Scriptures read. So while I'm trying to cover an understanding gap in one nature of sin, I'm waiting to see how my sister will respond to the question.
She drops a kind of time bomb.
All this talk doesn't connect, since she didn't grow up in the same spiritual environment-- she's younger than us. But we seem to carry a pretty heavy sense of guilt. I guess I could interpret her words to mean 'cloud.' She does too. But her friends, the un-churched and non-religious, they don't. They seem pretty happy. What popped into my head was a bit of Scripture from Psalm 91, "Their lives are carefree."
So, I've spent ten days pondering if there is good news here. All this timing is perfect, leading up here to Forgiveness Sunday, which is all about asking more forgiveness of fellow sinners for the wounds of missing the mark. Guilt is baggage afterall and one priest, Fr. David Maroney, refers to it as the 'gift that keeps on giving.' Yet we Orthodox Christians spend a whole lot of time praying about it. Compunction we call it. Gentler terminology. So I thought there must be a difference. I went to the etymology dictionary this morning, hoping I could articulate some gospel news to my sister that all this compunction I seek and request in my prayer life, all this being hard on myself, is different from guilt. If the on-line etymology dictionary is any help, it isn't. Compunction might just be a dressed up word for guilt. Being hard on yourself then might be part of salvation. That doesn't seem very gospel. Now, I don't think that's a theological difference. In fact, I'm pretty sure we understand compunction and contrition as different from the ol' image of monastics flogging themselves or as the irredeemable sinner.
Still, there isn't as much difference as I hoped. I was wringing my hands. Where does love fit into all this then? If I'm ever praying for compunction and contrition for my sins, ever submitting myself to great self-discipline - ascesis- then where is Christ's sacrifice of love and acceptance of his healing?
The Desert Fathers believed that the compunction, the hardness on one's own self, would produce selflessness, and great 'gentleness and forbearance' for others so they too might be saved at the right time. In other words, not being nice to myself makes me more aware of others' struggle. At the right time, I get to participate with Christ in the hope that I hold to, in spite of my constant compunction. That is hope is less hope and more knowledge. I can't really rid myself of these habits. To paraphrase Kilian McDonnell, I've had it with perfection. It's not the achievement of perfection that is the end goal, it is the seeing myself as ever in need of Christ's healing and grace. Considering all the selfishness that crops up in my soul, I think I need all this contrition. I'm not saying everyone should beat themselves up, but I get the feeling I'll never purge myself fully. I just like to give up some ground, so that Christ takes up residence in every inch of space I surrender to Him. For me, that surrender is hard fought.
I want neither embracing of the status quo nor my own perfection, because as the poet goes on to say:
Okay, now that's why Christ took on human flesh, in its imperfection. Rapture no longer withered. Job done.
So then, the New York Times decides upon kismet and publishes a write up on health dangers of self-abuse. In the introduction there's a telling little kernel. People who score high on being 'supportive and understanding' also score high on being hard on themselves. We should be nicer to ourselves, more like Stuart Smalley or some variation on that. What is healthy though? Loving someone else more than myself, or loving myself? I know that all the slender attractiveness of the world, all the other stuff, is less enjoyable if kept for myself. Sacrificing for others gives me the greatest sense of satisfaction It doesn't come naturally. It takes a fight. So back to the war where I'm fighting my urges and passions, praying for sorrow for my sins and throwing myself upon the love of Christ. I'm asking Him to take over once hostile territory, that I owned for myself, and aware it's the only hope I have for sustained compassion for others. Nice to others, not to me, makes me happy. Weird paradox, right. I get love in this somehow.
This is some disturbing good news. Maybe all that guilt? I should stop apologize for having it. (Please note the rhetorical device. That is not a theological praxis I'm proclaiming.)
She's in a spiritual quandary right now. When most of my sisters- there's a crowd of us- got together over pad thai and wine about ten days ago, I put her on the spot. The conversation turned, as they say, to a topic we've revisited many times in the past decade: the predominance of fear and guilt that came out of our early spiritual formation.We went to a church that my therapist calls 'spiritually abusive.' Ten days ago, at that conversation, I started to wonder. Just how bad was all this guilt? I'm not giving in on the dangers of the fear, for the record, but I hold Hal Lindsey and Scofield to blame for that.
I have a wonderfully developed sense of guilt. Many of my sisters do too. My daughter is developing it. I apologize so much that it annoys friends. I heap on self-abuse to keep myself disciplined and bring my deepest sins to confession, where my Father Confessor reminds me to see the love in the lives of the Saints and in our Christ. I have an abiding hope in that, but mid-conversation that recent Sunday night, I stopped and asked my sis a hard question. What did she think of all our exploring of fear and guilt? Then I apologized for missing the mark and focusing upon the negative and broken rather than the light and life of Christ.
It took her a while to answer my question and in the interim, other siblings were disturbed that I should be apologetic. I stated that I was seeing sin not as an intentional crime, but rather a kind of inadvertent wounding of souls, as Elder Porphyrios writes about in Wounded by Love. We need Christ and salvation, says I, as we need a hospital. Christ came to bring sinners to repentance, sick to healing, as the Scriptures read. So while I'm trying to cover an understanding gap in one nature of sin, I'm waiting to see how my sister will respond to the question.
She drops a kind of time bomb.
All this talk doesn't connect, since she didn't grow up in the same spiritual environment-- she's younger than us. But we seem to carry a pretty heavy sense of guilt. I guess I could interpret her words to mean 'cloud.' She does too. But her friends, the un-churched and non-religious, they don't. They seem pretty happy. What popped into my head was a bit of Scripture from Psalm 91, "Their lives are carefree."
So, I've spent ten days pondering if there is good news here. All this timing is perfect, leading up here to Forgiveness Sunday, which is all about asking more forgiveness of fellow sinners for the wounds of missing the mark. Guilt is baggage afterall and one priest, Fr. David Maroney, refers to it as the 'gift that keeps on giving.' Yet we Orthodox Christians spend a whole lot of time praying about it. Compunction we call it. Gentler terminology. So I thought there must be a difference. I went to the etymology dictionary this morning, hoping I could articulate some gospel news to my sister that all this compunction I seek and request in my prayer life, all this being hard on myself, is different from guilt. If the on-line etymology dictionary is any help, it isn't. Compunction might just be a dressed up word for guilt. Being hard on yourself then might be part of salvation. That doesn't seem very gospel. Now, I don't think that's a theological difference. In fact, I'm pretty sure we understand compunction and contrition as different from the ol' image of monastics flogging themselves or as the irredeemable sinner.
Still, there isn't as much difference as I hoped. I was wringing my hands. Where does love fit into all this then? If I'm ever praying for compunction and contrition for my sins, ever submitting myself to great self-discipline - ascesis- then where is Christ's sacrifice of love and acceptance of his healing?
The Desert Fathers believed that the compunction, the hardness on one's own self, would produce selflessness, and great 'gentleness and forbearance' for others so they too might be saved at the right time. In other words, not being nice to myself makes me more aware of others' struggle. At the right time, I get to participate with Christ in the hope that I hold to, in spite of my constant compunction. That is hope is less hope and more knowledge. I can't really rid myself of these habits. To paraphrase Kilian McDonnell, I've had it with perfection. It's not the achievement of perfection that is the end goal, it is the seeing myself as ever in need of Christ's healing and grace. Considering all the selfishness that crops up in my soul, I think I need all this contrition. I'm not saying everyone should beat themselves up, but I get the feeling I'll never purge myself fully. I just like to give up some ground, so that Christ takes up residence in every inch of space I surrender to Him. For me, that surrender is hard fought.
I want neither embracing of the status quo nor my own perfection, because as the poet goes on to say:
Perfection straineth out
the quality of mercy,
withers rapture at its
birth.
Okay, now that's why Christ took on human flesh, in its imperfection. Rapture no longer withered. Job done.
So then, the New York Times decides upon kismet and publishes a write up on health dangers of self-abuse. In the introduction there's a telling little kernel. People who score high on being 'supportive and understanding' also score high on being hard on themselves. We should be nicer to ourselves, more like Stuart Smalley or some variation on that. What is healthy though? Loving someone else more than myself, or loving myself? I know that all the slender attractiveness of the world, all the other stuff, is less enjoyable if kept for myself. Sacrificing for others gives me the greatest sense of satisfaction It doesn't come naturally. It takes a fight. So back to the war where I'm fighting my urges and passions, praying for sorrow for my sins and throwing myself upon the love of Christ. I'm asking Him to take over once hostile territory, that I owned for myself, and aware it's the only hope I have for sustained compassion for others. Nice to others, not to me, makes me happy. Weird paradox, right. I get love in this somehow.
This is some disturbing good news. Maybe all that guilt? I should stop apologize for having it. (Please note the rhetorical device. That is not a theological praxis I'm proclaiming.)
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