A Bellow From Stage Right

“Dad?!” my teenage daughter’s face reflected a queasy mixture of surprise and instinctive revulsion. “Is it true? Are you really a . . . Republican?”

She uttered the word as if it were a deadly disease that she could catch just by naming it. “I’m a conservative,” I corrected her.

A confessed Neocon, I regret to say, but -- seemingly -- more of a mensch than most of that sect, and, who knows, he might become even more daring later.

From The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann

"With a slight effort, I can recall many things: I can restore a sequence of events, the when and the how. But for some reason, some things (days, minutes) I do not recall, but remember, as if they had a life of their own in me. They are not remarkable or important events, not even events at all, but particular moments and impressions. They have become the very fabric of my consciousness, a constant part of me. I am quite convinced that these memories are revelations (epiphanies) from deep within, contacts with the "other," the deeper and higher level of consciousness. Later, much later, one realizes that in these moments was given a kind of absolute joy. Joy about nothing concrete, but joy nonetheless; the joy of God's presence and openness to the heart. And the experience of this close contact, of this joy (which well never be taken away since it has become the deepest part of the heart) will determine the thoughts and vision of one's whole life.

"…One speaks about this when one speaks of eternity. Eternity is not the negation of time, but time's absolute wholeness, gathering and restoration. Eternal life is not what begins after temporal life; it is the eternal presence of the totality of life.

"Christianity is a blessed memory; it is really the conquering all of fragmented time; it is the experience of eternity, here and now. All the religions and spiritualities which tend to annihilate time are false religions and pseudo-spiritualities."

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I was writing an article on Quaker spirituality today, and touched on the way members of the Religious Society of Friends have always used journals as a means of seeking spiritual direction from within, and how Ira Progoff developed his Intensive Journal method of psychological and spiritual growth after extensive study of the Quaker journal collections. The best expression I could find of the act of turning to your own life in order to discern the meaning of it is in the journal of the great light of the Orthodox Church in America, a professor, as it happens, of our own seraphimsigrist. I suggest there is something here for everyone, not just those who identify themselves with what passes for Christianity these dismal days.