An imaginative take on the landscape by the contemporary Hungarian painter Tamás Galambos.
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Regular readers of this blog will surely have noticed the irregularity of my posting in the past few weeks. I won't make excuses, but I will offer a brief explanation.
My parents -- both in their seventies -- were visiting us from North America these past few weeks. I also attended two weddings, tended to fifteen young hens, and contended with my new, oddball rooster. On top of that, I came up with a grand idea -- constructing a seven-by-two meter fence wall out of decorative concrete blocks. Needless to say, time was short in July, but things are calming down, and I shall resume regular, daily blogging from here on in and be back on track in August. The website that the late Fr. Stephen Janos -- an Orthodox priest, Russian translator, and respected penfriend -- dedicated to Nikolai Berdyaev has been hijacked by, of all things, a Vietnamese gambling cartel.
Should you visit the site today, all you find is a picture of Berdyaev followed by a lot of gambling-related nonsense written in what I assume to be Vietnamese. Fr. Janos's son -- who has managed the site since his father passed away -- is apparently working to regain control of the property. I hope he is successful in that endeavor. Berdyaev.com was not only an excellent source of Berdyaev material, but stood as a testament to the site's creator, who invested much time and energy into translating many of Berdyaev's lesser known and/or untranslated works. The unfortunate development has forced me to remove Berdyaev.com from the blog roll, but I will return it to its rightful place the second the site returns to its rightful owners. A slightly edited version of an email I wrote to an atheist friend in Canada:
Sorry about the delay in getting back to you. As I mentioned in my previous email, things are a bit hectic for me at the moment. My parents are here visiting from Canada, and I am in the middle of building an eight-meter fence wall out of concrete blocks. Concerning Canada, I left the country when I was thirty, and with the exception of the two years I spent there around the time my son was born, I haven't lived in the "northern gulag", as you call it, for about twenty years. Still, I'm pretty up-to-date about the degeneration and decline of the nation as I speak to my father via Skype every week. All I can say is I sort of saw the writing on the wall just before I left for good. Still, I couldn't have predicted the extent of the terrible things that have transpired since. Things in Hungary are a bit better I suppose, but Hungary is a part of the European Union and the West. This means it is embroiled in the "globohomo" agenda, however reluctantly. I don't hold out much hope for Orbán. He and his government showed their true colors when they stomped on us quite hard over here during the birdemic. The propaganda and restrictions were as relentless and intense as they were anywhere else. I lost a well-paying job in Austria for refusing the peck and nearly lost my job in Hungary for the same reason. Now, the birdemic has been conveniently forgotten by most people. As if it never happened. I don't know what to tell you beyond that I see this time as a period of "things coming to a point." The evil and corruption that permeates all institutions, organizations, and, sadly, most individuals in the West has become clearer and sharper, to the point of being undeniable. In many ways, everything has become black and white. There are no grey areas left, which entails that choices need to be made regarding which side people want to be on. I am extremely pessimistic when it comes to anything involving governments, institutions, companies, organizations, etc. Though I respect your motivation to protest, I don't believe such protests will have much of an effect. The sad truth is that most people appear to welcome being enslaved by the totalitarians, and until that changes I don't hold out much hope. The only slim hope I do have is that the powers-that-should-not-be are not nearly as intelligent or competent as they make themselves out to be. With any luck, they'll mess up their totalitarianism in grand style and collapse their system into nothingness. Of course, such an outcome would likely also mean the deaths of hundreds of millions, perhaps even billions. I have found reprieve and positive motivation in the spiritual -- not in organized religion -- but within a solitary form of Christianity. I mention this because I have come to the conclusion that all of what we are experiencing now ultimately stems from negative spiritual aims emanating from the highest of places -- or lowest, depending on your perspective. Best, Frankie My son is spending a week with his grandmother at Lake Balaton, which is the go-to summer holiday spot here in Hungary. He's only been there a day, but he took the time to send me this photo he snapped yesterday evening.  A short while ago, I asked readers to help me name the new young rooster that has become a part of my flock. I requested one tough-sounding name in case the fine fellow displayed machismo and one wimpy-sounding name should he not. Although I received many excellent suggestions, I was obliged to grant the winning name to my neighbor’s four-year-old grandson, who came into my backyard to expressly inform me that the rooster already had a name – Richie. I can't say no to a four-year-old when it comes to something like that. So there it is; Richie, the rooster. Richie is a strange name because it is neither macho nor wimpy but something in-between. Oddly enough, it seems to fit the rooster quite well because his behavior has – thus far – also landed somewhere between macho and wimpy. On the one hand, Richie is incredibly wimpy, as evidenced by how the nine older hens hammer away at him and chase him around the run and the backyard. Sometimes he gets knocked around the run like a pinball, with the hens acting like flippers and bumpers. On the other hand, Richie also shows glimmers of real machismo as demonstrated by his refusal to allow the hens’ pecking to deter him from taking his desired place on the roost in the hen house at the end of the day and by his daring escapades, which have so far involved all sorts of creative fluttering up into tree branches and to the tops of fences despite his clipped wings. On his second day, he flew atop the fence separating my yard from the neighbor’s, paused for a moment, gave me a knowing look, and then dropped back into my yard, almost as if to tell me that he could escape any damn time he wanted should he choose to do so. The next day at sunset, he was nowhere to be found. Assuming Richie made good on his unspoken warning, I wrote the rooster off as gone and retired for the night. I found him perched and hidden in a plum tree in the morning. He had spent the whole night in that tree, which is a brave but stupid thing to do considering all the wood martens that prowl around the village after dark. All of that aside, one thing is for sure – with his erratic, unpredictable, and puzzling behavior, Richie qualifies as one cockamamie rooster (thank you, pun muses)! For this reason, I have decided to give him a surname that blends macho and wimpy. That surname is Retardo. Naturally, I won’t mention the surname to my four-year-old neighbor. I’ll keep it strictly between me and the rooster. So there you have it; the rooster is now officially Ritchie Retardo, which sounds very similar to the Ricky Ricardo character Dezi Arnez played on the I Love Lucy sitcom series. Come to think of it, Ritchie Retardo has a lot in common with Ricky Ricardo. If he displays less goofiness in the near future, I may drop the pejorative surname and refer to him as Ritchie Ricardo, but he’ll have to earn that. I guess he could start by giving me his rendition of Cuban Pete. There is Gnosticism, and then there is gnosis.
The two are not the same. The former is a declared heresy and is, for all intents and purposes, dead. The latter is a component of at least one orthodox Christian tradition, primarily Eastern Orthodoxy. I find Gnosticism unappealing, yet I confess that gnosis enraptures me to the core. I am not Eastern Orthodox, and I’m sure that my definition of gnosis differs from Orthodox tradition and theology. All the same, there is some overlap. The Orthodox Christian tradition describes gnosis as spiritual knowledge obtained via theosis. It is the knowledge only saints and mystics are likely to attain – the sort of knowledge that provides insights into the divine and the eternal rather than the mundane material or natural world. I have sometimes seen gnosis described as mature or developed understanding based primarily on spiritual knowledge or – more precisely – on experiential and intuitive knowing. Put another way, gnosis does not emanate from books or doctrine but from living and discernment. Gnosis is the knowledge of the mystic rather than the rational thinker. It comes not from external, supposedly authoritative sources but from inner thinking, experience, and contemplation. Gnosis is the understanding that knowledge alone cannot lead to spiritual knowledge. To know spirit is to experience spirit. The Eastern Orthodox refer to this as noetic potential. There is nothing secret or hidden about the knowledge noetic potential can access. Again, I am not Eastern Orthodox, but I admire the tradition’s inclusion of gnosis in its theology. However, I don’t believe it emphasizes gnosis enough. More to the point, I think gnosis has become a “first and necessary thing.” Christians can rebuke Gnostics all they want, but they would do well not to aim their chastisements at gnosis or declare gnosis a sign of spiritual pride. To know Christ is to experience Christ. Spiritually. Personally. Directly. All other knowledge is merely knowledge. If you have not already done so, I encourage you to read Bruce Charlton's post from today concerning negative versus positive Christians.
Though the year is only a little more than half done, I sense that this will likely be Dr. Charlton's most important post of 2023. Read it carefully. Then, when you're done, go back to the beginning and read it again. Slowly and even more thoroughly. Some key highlights:
Creation is not reaction. Reaction often feels like creation, but more often than not, it is merely an obedient response to the action of another.
Yes, obedient because the actions others utilize are usually little more than commands, incitements, enticements, and provocations. They demand a response, expect a comeback, and yearn for a backlash, all of which reaction is more than willing to supply in spades. The commanded, incited, enticed, and provoked are not genuine actors but reactors. The script they choose to follow is not their own. They speak lines penned by others and move across the stage following directions that are not theirs. If action is the pressing of a button, then reaction is the pathetic movement of the button returning to its original position after having been pressed. Every reaction to incitement, enticement, and provocation is obedience to a command. It is the admission that I have allowed my thinking, action, and conduct to depend entirely on the thinking, action, and conduct of another. A true Christian cannot allow his actions to be mere reactions; nor can he act in a way that serves only to incite, entice, and provoke others into reaction. To do either lowers him to the level of his enemy – to the mundane, average, predictable, and common ways of thinking, acting, and being. True Christian thoughts and acts are not and cannot be knee-jerk responses or compliant responses to outside forces. True Christian thoughts and actions transcend reaction and all reactive activity. They grow organically from the depths of inner being and turn the incitements, enticements, and provocations on their heads. Creation is not reaction. As such, it never feels like reaction because it obeys nothing external and rises above the actions of others – far above the reach of even the worst of incitements, enticements, or provocations. If done well enough, it also provides the inciters, enticers, and provokers the opportunity to rise above their own actions. New World Island recently posted an excellent audio "deep dive" into Romantic Christianity, featuring an essential selection of posts from the small circle of bloggers with whom I have the privilege and honor to be associated. |
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Blog posts tend to be spontaneous, unpolished, first draft entries ranging from the insightful and periodically profound to the poorly-argued and occasionally disparaging. Comments are moderated. Anonymous comments are never published (please use your name or a pseudonym). Emails welcome: f er en c ber g er (at) h otm ail (dot) co m Blogs/Sites I Read
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September 2023
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