Posts in category Faith
Depression
It was wonderful in Grenoble, I came to Delft full of energy and new ideas: and has been hit by a wave of depression in very first day. Depressive feelings are not alien to me, they are well-known but still dangerous enemy. I guess many in my environment are having depression from time to time, but do not discuss this and try to deny it. When depressed, I don’t do things scheduled and/or those I have to do. Rather, I’m busy with things completely unnecessary and sometimes even damaging for me and others. The pain from not doing things I have to do or not doing them in a proper way is sharp, overwhelming and pleasant in masochistic way, and it drives me to further depression. The feeling of miserability, despair and apathy persists. I become increasingly asocial and even rude while demanding and needing more attention from people around.
The danger of depression is easy to understand in physical terms. It arises spontaneously, like an instability, and sustains itself by a sort of negative feedback: apathy and relation damage caused by depression brings more despair and therefore more apathy and damage. If I try to compile a list of all things that would drive me to a depression, it’ll cover 80% of my working and family duties. It is especially bad to have a depression in the fasting period: yelding to despair is a sin, and the despair is a fertile soil for almost all other sins, and failure to fast does produce more and more depression. This is why the depression tries to hit us in this particular time.
Being human, I can do very little against instabilities and negative feedback loops of my tainted soul. I have to bring the topic to Him, though initially this seems both unnecessary or blasphermic. There’s an old prayer:
- O Lord and Master of my life,
the spirit of emptiness, despair (that is, depression), domination or idle talk
do not let me have it. - But give rather a spirit of purity, humility, patience and love, give me to Thy servant.
- Yea, O Lord and King,
grant me to see mine own faults and not to judge my brother,
for blessed art Thou unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Pilgrims of Brodsky
there’s a lazy sunday far from home, so I’ve found an English translation of another Brodsky’s poem. This poem I’ve first heard in the age of twenty, and given the circumstances of epouche, it was an underground song, a manifestation of forbidden culture. For Brodsky in the time of writting, the poem was most probably post-christian. Yet what’s Brodsky: he’s just a magical mirrow that shows our souls rather than faces. For me of that age, the poem was a kind of pre-christian, that drove me think of things beyond earthy world. Here it goes:
PILGRIMS
Past arenas and temples,
past churches and taverns,
past elegant graveyards,
past thundering markets,
past the world, and past sorrow,
past Rome, and past Mecca –
scorched by the sun’s blueness,
the pilgrims are trekking.
They are hunchbacked, they hobble.
They are hungry, half-noked –
with eyes full of sunset
and hearts full of sunrise.
The wastes sing behind them,
heat-lightning flares feebly,
the stars sweep above them,
birds screech to them hoarsely:
"The world has not altered."
No. It has not altered.
It is what it has been.
It is what it will be.
Its snow-crust still dazzles,
its warmth is still doubtful.
The world will be faithless
and yet everlasting.
Perhaps men can know it
and yet it is endless.
Which means there’s no meaning
in faith in oneself, or
in God; all that’s left is
the Road and the Dreaming.
Yet earth will know sunsets.
And earth will know dawnings.
Dead soldiers will loam it,
live poets affirm it.
p.s. you have noticed "noked" The second letter must be "a". Yet this blog is hosted by an educational organization, and such words are unacceptable in this blog. Seriously: nothing is more dangerous than automated stupidity.
Presentation of Jesus at the Temple
or, Meeting the Lord, is a feast I am too late to write about. It was last Monday, and, owing to Lent, has been shifted to Sunday. Anyway, I do it now since I’ve found a poem of Joseph Brodsky in English. Here it is:
When Mary first came to present the Christ Child
This translation of G.L. Kline skifully reproduces the musics of Russian tetrameter which probably renders it unreadable. In Russian, it’s really a jewel: you feel like reading the Bible, and, for a change, understanding it. Brodsky was a great Russian poet, a fine American essayist, and, as far as I know, was rather far from Chirstian faith. God lives where He pleases…
Forgiveness Sunday
is today. It is a last day before Great Lent. Since Lent implies repentance, and repentance should begin with forgiveness, Orthodox Christians use this day to ask each other of mercy to forgive their wrongdoings. There is a special Rite for this, and our priests line up to ask forgiveness and to give it. Since each individual action of that traditionally involves at least a single very deep bow, I always wonder how do they manage to do this for couple of hundreds parochians and what would happen if we had couple of thousand. Naturally enough, parochians follow the example and do the rit to each other, so both my soul and spine had to work today.
May I use this occasion, dear reader, to ask you to forgive me any offences and wrongdoings I may have done to you: either in course of off-line communications, or by writing this blog. If you show this mercy, you may wish me a good Lent.
Ted Chiang
is an American sci-fi author who writes really very little but is famous in circles since he harvests a noticeable fraction of prestigious sci-fi awards. I read most his stories, they seemed well-crafted and entertainingly bizzar but I could not say they had touched me.
Recently I have read his "Exhalation" and this get to my soul. It is a story where there is no word about God and faith while everything speaks of God and faith. I recommend it to everybody who is interested in the relation between science and religion, and …
No, you’d better read it yourself. By kind permission of the author, you can find the story at
http://www.nightshadebooks.com/Downloads/Exhalation%20-%20Ted%20Chiang.html
and it IS short.
Christmas
Glory to God in the highest, and peace to His people on Earth!
Glory to God born to dwell among us, one who has been suffering for us and saves us!
Finally Chirtsmas came to me too.
Dear reader, blessed Chirstmas to you!
Even in likely case you have already celebrated it and forgotten what you have eaten during the feast:) Tomorrow’s my turn.
Job Cohen in orthodox parish
So the rumour had it right: Job Cohen has visited our parish. There’s the official press-release:
“To begin the celebration of its 35th anniversary, on 4 Decemeber 2009 the parish of St. Nicolas of Myra in Amsterdam hosted a symposium on the role of the Russian Orthodox parish in the city of Amsterdam. Participants included Mayor Job Cohen, journalist Hubert Smeets (during part of his career he was based in Moscow), Jurjen Beumer, director of “Stem in de Stad” (Voice in the City) in Haarlem, and Archimandrite Meletious Webber, abbot of St. John of Shanghai Monastery in California, who formerly was a guest priest assisting the Amsterdam parish.”
You can find an excellent foto-set, a must-see for all PvDA’ers and Orhodox, at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/sets/72157622816245705/
The Entry of the Most Holy Mother of God into the Temple
is one of the Great Feasts in Orthodox churches. Catholics call it Presentation and have celebrated it — right you are, two weeks ago. For me, it’s more like "entry", or more specifically, "braving stairs". Imagine a little child put in front of stairs with sufficiently challenging steps.(See this) You know what will happen: the child will climb up defying
gravity, possible inconveniences and minimal action principle. Not
thinking much about being at height. Just believing it is worth
climbing. So I hope I still climbe, and hope I do it in a right
direction.
In our parish, the feast is combined
today with another event circumstances of which are not completely
clear to me. Mayor of Amsterdam Job Cohen will visit our parish:
reportedly, to give a speech. I wonder if he climbs some stairs before
that: in fact, we do have some challenging ones. I look forward to more
details.
Crux II 2
I have skipped the last meeting of our christian society. It appeared that many people have skipped that as well, and the organizers have encouraged us "to keep the flame". So I did my best to attend the meeting on November 19, despite overlapping appointments.
It was interesting. Karel Terwel told us about his parish in Delftshaven: old town being now a part of greater Rotterdam. It dwels in a neat old church (http://www.pelgrimvaderskerk.nl/). The parish life is active and flourishing, including missionary and social work in the town. It was nice to learn that the parish is growing and full with young families.
Karel is a busy person: he is a teacher at TU Delft, he is a chairman of the parish council, and, as if it is not enough, he does a PhD study. He hardly has a free evening, and feels bad about: he thinks he should do more for the parish. He got various advices. For instance, it was noted that his TU Delft activities whlist done properly, is also work for God, since He dispatched Karel to Facultly of Civil Engineering. Another advice was not to do PhD studies in the evening: right, evenings are hardly productive as far as intellectually involved work is concerned. A PhD student has compared his lifestyle with that of his Chineese (en thus unbelieving) fellow-students to conclude: they’ve more time to work, it costs time and perhaps quality of PhD thesis to be a Christian.
Well, at least for me the time spend on the meeting was not a waste on expence of my work: I was freshly recharged by seeing my friends in Christ and praying with them. Glory to God.
Florence – Firenze
This is of course my wife to decide where to go for a vacation. Yet I could not choose a better destination to investigate the links between science and faith, Firenze citta magnifica, that has been decaying mightly for last four houndred years but has not even reached the steepest moment of decay. Thereby presenting a good example to all Western civilizations.
Take Duomo. This is a multi-functional bulding. One of the main functions is kept from tourist crowds. To access it, you need to cross several barriers: some being in your soul, some in the Duomo. For the latter, you subsequenty talk to three guards. Those are responsive, although not in English. Finally, you get close to the relics, speaking scientifically, remains of human beings preserved for veneration. For us Orhodox the most important object was the head of St. John Chysostomos. The relics are difficult to see through jewelry of vessels and boxes. No board helps to recognize them. At some stage you recognize that the whole Duomo
is just a shell, an outer box to keep the boxes with relics. Heavenly perfect and humaly unperfect. Perhaps this is why the Florentians hardly cared about finishing it: its facade has been a painted piece of canvas for three centuries. On a more phylosophical note: are we not just shells to keep our faith in?
And now we want more science. Hit the Museum of History of Science, by far the eldest one: it has been started in 1562. Owing to endless restauro, you can see only a third of the collection ( so the entance fee is very scientifically reduced by a third). Still there is a large amount of old sci instruments from XVI to XIX century, much more than here in Delft. Yet no the original telescope of Galileo promiced. There is another thing missed on display. By tradition of times of relative harmony between science and faith, they keep the middle finger from the right hand of Galileo. Perhaps I should have argued with the guards that I am a professor of physics and ought to venerate the remain. I did not dare and also wanted to spare my wife. She has been alreary slightly confused about motivations of researches by an eldest exposure in the museum. That was a functional celestial globe. As a detail, it is being erected by a satyr, and the globe is not the only thing the satyr has erected.
Let me finish with better example of the harmony passed. In old sacristy of San Lorenzo, the eldest church in the town, one finds a detailed fresco that reproduces stars and planets in the sky with scientific accuracy. From the planet positions one reads the date: its Jule 4, 1442. Yet the significance of the date is not clear yet: more research is needed in this direction…