Holy Light

Lazarus, not Kierkegaard

This sickness is not unto death.

The True Nature of Fasting

"Our Lenten abstinence does not imply a rejection of God's creation. But, living as we do in a fallen world and suffering as we do from the consequences of sin, both original and personal, are not pure; and so we have need of fasting. Evil resides not in created things as such but in our attitude toward them, that is, in our will. The purpose of fasting, then, is not to repudiate the divine creation but to cleanse our will. During the fast we deny our bodily impulses -- for example, our spontaneous appetite for food and drink -- not because these impulses are in themselves evil, but because they have been disordered by sin and require to be purified through self-discipline. In this way, asceticism is not a fight against but for the body; the aim of fasting is to purge the body from alien defilement and to render it spiritual. By rejecting what is sinful in our will, we do not destroy the God-created body but restore it to its true balance and freedom. In Father Sergei Bulgakov's phrase, we kill the flesh in order to acquire a body . . .

Ascetic self-discipline, then, signifies a rejection of the world, only in so far as it is corrupted by the fall; of the body, only in so far as it is dominated by sinful passions. Lust excludes love: so long as we lust after other persons or other things, we cannot truly love them. By delivering us from lust, the fast renders us capable of genuine love. No longer ruled by the selfish desire to grasp and exploit, we begin to see the world with the eyes of Adam in Paradise. Our self-denial is the path that leads to self-affirmation; it is our means of entry into the cosmic liturgy whereby all things visible and invisible ascribe glory to their Creator."

Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, "The True Nature of Fasting," The Lenten Triodion.

Person

The truth is a Person
The truth is not my ego
The truth is not a moral code
The truth is not an intellectual argument
The truth is not a blog, blogging or blogger
The truth is not the Bible, but the Bible can be true
The truth is not a theology, but a theologian can be true
The truth is not a personality
The truth is a Person

Bob: he might be drunk

Abba Benjamin

As he lay dying, Abba Benjamin said to his sons, "If you observe the following, you can be saved. 'Be joyful at all times, pray without ceasing and give thanks for all things.'"

An evening in Rome

The convent/hotel we stayed at is like many buildings that I observed in Rome -- it seems to resemble a fortress/compound as much as it does a residence. There are three buildings: the convent itself, which is connected to a second building in which rooms are rented by offices and a dining room/kitchen. There is also a third building in which rooms are rented (we were staying there) that is unattached to the others with a courtyard between the three. All of this is enclosed by a 8 ft. tall iron fence with pointy ends at the top.

The third night we returned to our convent/hotel at 10:45 PM, safely ahead of the curfew at 11 PM. The only problem was that everything was already locked up. The iron gate was closed, the door about 10 ft. or so behind it was shut and everything was dark inside.

In light of some of the stressful events that we faced the first day of our trip (we had trouble pulling out money from the ATM, initially finding where we were staying and for 15 tense minutes, thought we had lost our passports), the temptation at this point to be overly negative was great. However, we resisted and remained positive. At least for about 3 minutes, maybe less (ha!) . We rang the buzzer outside the gate figuring that it would quickly wake up the sisters inside. Unfortunately, it did not wake up the sisters but did have the effect of waking up many of the folks who were renting rooms. I was feeling somewhat desperate to try to notify someone prior to 11 PM so it would be known that we arrived prior to the curfew. I went around to the side of the compound which borders on the street to see if I could jump the fence and get inside the courtyard.

I found a ledge and jumped up to try to hop over. When I got up on the fence it was very close to a window that had some renters inside. A startled woman who must have heard me trying to climb the fence came to the window. Feeling distressed, I tried to explain what was going on to her using basic English and implore her to leave her room to wake the sisters up. My frantic attempt at communication seemed to only have the effect of further alarming the woman. I could hear several women speaking inside the room and someone whom I could not see said in a very monotone voice "we don't understand." With that, the window was closed.

With frustrations mounting, I hopped over the fence and climbed into the courtyard. Inside the courtyard, I tried to yell up to the rooms in which I thought the sisters were staying, "Hello! You locked us out a little early! We need to get inside to our room! Per favore! Per favore!"

The sisters did not wake up. I pounded on windows. I tried to throw little stones up to the nuns windows. I briefly contemplated vandalism. Nothing succeeded in waking up the sisters.

Meanwhile, Olivia had been continuously ringing the buzzer this entire time. It is quite loud and rang throughout the courtyard, which of course, woke up and kept everyone up (except the sisters). Someone yelled out of their window at me in Italian. Another person said they were calling the police. I think it was to help us but it may have been in the hopes of to trying to get us to shut up and stop ringing the buzzer.

I jumped back over the fence to check on Olivia. She was in tears. At this point, it must have been over half an hour since we arrived at the convent. It seemed futile to continue to ring the buzzer and we couldn't sleep in the street. Our best option seemed to be to climb the fence, get in the courtyard and try to fall asleep on some benches that were there.

It turns out the room with the woman that I had startled earlier contained 3 middle aged Polish women. Olivia's tears were able to transcend the barrier of language and the women were moved to compassion for our plight. Once inside the courtyard, we could see the Poles scurrying about in the hallway, trying to get to the convent side of the compound. Unfortunately, it was locked and they assured us it was "impossible" for them to get to the other side.

Exhausted and resigned to our fate of a night in the courtyard, we made our way to the benches. Just as we were lying down, we heard some commotion out in the street. I hopped up onto the fence to take a look and saw that two police officers had arrived. Both Olivia and I hopped over the fence again (were were getting bruises from the iron fence each time we went over) and tried to explain what was going on, which must have taken about 15 minutes since only one of the officers spoke a little English.

In the midst of it all, an intercom connected to the fence which we had tried speaking into to no avail inexplicably burst forth with the sound of a woman speaking in Italian. The sisters were awake! Within 10 minutes we were safely in our room at about 12:40 AM.

While waiting for the sisters to open the gate, one of the officers asked us what we did for a living. I told him "counselor." When he asked what sort of counselor, I mimed the motion of smoking a cigarette and said the word "quit." He started laughing as a few minutes earlier, a dude walked out of the building across the street and randomly came directly to us to ask for a light. We told him we didn't have one and Olivia remarked that we help people quit smoking for a living but at that point the officers didn't understand what she said. They got it now.

Apparently, the officer who knew a little English was trying to quit and let us know he was reading some sort of smoking cessation book. He was trying to describe what type of book it was and Olivia remarked (I'm not sure why) something to the effect of, "As long as it isn't by Dr. Oz, you should be okay." The officer looked at us with a funny expression on his face and said, "All my friends call me Dr. Oz; it's my nickname." We were shocked he even knew who Dr. Oz was and indeed there was a resemblance. After laughing for a bit at the coincidence, the officer spoke a few sentences to his partner in Italian and in the middle of the communication, clearly said the words "Ned Flanders." Olivia quickly asked them, "Did you just say Ned Flanders?" The officer started laughing and pointing at us (by this time we were all laughing), surprised that we caught onto what he was saying. From what I could gather, the officer who did not speak any English was lucky enough to have "Ned Flanders" as a nickname (Ned Flanders is one of the characters on the TV show "The Simpsons").

As we were being let into the convent I snapped two pictures of the officers, the first of which was unposed and the second, at the officers insistence, with them posing. The officer who didn't know any English must have known a few words since as I was getting ready to snap the second shot, he said "Facebook."

The following morning, it just so happened that the 3 Polish women were in the breakfast hall with us, along with a young Italian couple that had called the police (either on us or for us). We all had a good time recalling the previous nights' events, especially when someone rang the buzzer from outside the front gate!