Friday, July 31, 2015

Hatred or Healing?



Given the intense nature of the debate surrounding same-sex marriage (and similar cultural issues), it seems good to call back to mind that when the Orthodox Church criticizes same-sex attractions, she does so not out of hatred for those people, but out of a desire that they be healed of a passion that will lead them away from the path of salvation.  Everyone has these corrupted passions:  reading too much, talking too much, eating too little or too much, a desire for more than one wife or more than one husband (polygamy/manywedhood), and on and on.  We all are in need of healing; let us all run to the Church where we may receive it.

Mr Nathan Duffy at the On Behalf of All web site has a post on this subject (much better than these few poor words).  Head on over and read it for some good insights.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Individualism



American society continues its slide into the darkness of Hell, but few Americans are willing to turn away from one of main causes of their downward fall.  Ræther, they tend to praise it:  individualism.

To be sure, one must avoid the other extreme of collectivism, in which the person is destroyed for the sake of the whole.  But in the extreme of Western individualism there is also the destruction of the person.  Metropolitan John Zizioulas writes, ‘Death is . . . the sealing of hypostasis [person--W.G.] as individuality’ (Being As Communion, Crestwood, Ny.: St Vladimir’s, 1985, p. 51).  The fewer loving connections we have with one another, the less of a soð (true) person we become, and more like the demons.  Fr Dumitru Staniloae of Romania says of this,

The man who is no longer completely human has become inhuman because he has become, in part, impersonal and this nature of his is no longer completely consistent, which means that it is no longer in full communion with the nature found in other persons.  Personalized nature feels in itself the power that comes to it from full relation to the nature found in other persons because it can thereby be continually both source and continuous recipient of new acts and thoughts that are generous, good, and at the same time original, for in every person nature finds an original expression of itself while remaining simultaneously in communion with all other persons.  By its openness and the reciprocal enrichment it receives in these positive relationships between persons, nature understood in this way is profoundly human and creative. 

When, in every case, nature had fallen into this condition of unfulfilled personalization, it broke up into fragments that do not communicate fully among themselves, and into individuals who shut each other out and, instead of enriching one another, remain within a selfish poverty, sinking deeper and deeper while each strives to annex the other to himself so as to enrich himself with what the other has, against the other’s will.  This tendency in the one provokes the same tendency in the others, and a general struggle ensues among them, and consequently, a general weakening of nature.  In the highest degree, this condition belongs to the demons also.  They co-exist because they need to torment one another and to fight against those who are good.  This co-existence of battle has become for them a necessity and attests to the fact that no one can live totally cut off from those who possess the same nature.  “Thus, the unique nature has been cut up into countless particles, and we who possess the same nature devour each other as the reptiles and the beasts do.”  Evil is violent not in order to build up existence, but so as to diminish and destroy it; this is the violence of those who are impotent to strengthen themselves in existence, the violence of those greedy to wax fat at the expense of others.   It is the avalanche set off by a reality that seeks its enrichment wrongly and so hurtles down towards nothingness; it is the violence of a reality that wishes to hold itself in existence without God, the source of existence, and without the voluntary and loving contribution of others, which because of pride, it does not seek.  Yet the avalanche has its cause in free will and is sustained by it (The Experience of God: Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, Vol. 2, The World: Creation and Deification, Ionita and Barringer, trans., Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross, 2000 [1978], pgs. 152-4).

One may see very close likenesses between the actions of the de-personalized individuals and demons described by Fr Dumitru above and the actions of dedicated Republicans and Democrats (or between other unChristian interest groups) towards one another in America:  They seek ways on a daily basis to torment one another, to tear one another to pieces, but will never let these enemies of theirs sunder themselves from them.  For then they would have lost their only way of keeping themselves somewhat human and alive.  Thus, also, the South must always remain in the American Empire, Greece cannot leave the European Union, and so on, no matter how much the Elite of the synthetic super-nations say they despise the lazy, backwards Southrons, Greeks, etc.

St Paisios of Mt Athos once said that so long as the qualities of the devil remain in us - things like ‘Rationalism, contradiction (arguing), stubbornness, wilfulness, disobedience, impudence’ - so long will we be ‘vulnerable to external demonic influence’ (Spiritual Counsels, Vol. I, Tsakiridou and Spanou, trans., Thessaloniki, Greece:  Evangelist John the Theologian Monastery, 2011 [1996], p. 54).  However, if we have humility, then we have ‘kinship with God’, and the devil and the demons will be powerless to harm us (p. 65).

But in order to regain our full personhood, we must go farther.  We must strive to know what the saints have known:  ‘the existence and the destiny of the human race are not alien to’ us.  Each of us must unite himself with all other men through pure prayer, must make all other men ‘the content of [our] hypostatic existence’, must see as St Silouan the Athonite ‘that “our brother is our life”’ (Archimandrite Zacharias, The Enlargement of the Heart, 2nd ed., Dalton, Penn.: Mt Thabor, 2012 [2006], p. 126).

Our mindset should be like that of the monk described by Archimandrite Zacharias:  ‘Once a monk came to confess to me; he was crying and I thought, “Kyrie eleison!  What happened to him?”  I became afraid.  Do you know what he told me?  --  “I am looking into my heart, searching into it, and one of the brethren is absent, and I am not happy.”  He was weeping because he had grown a little cold towards one of the brethren’ (p. 126).

It will seem impossible to some, but the Old South, through her experience with slavery, had developed a sense of this ‘ontological unity of all men’ (p. 126).  It may be seen in this wording-share from Mr George Fitzhugh’s book Sociology for the South (p. 69):

Say the Abolitionists - "Man ought not to have property in man." What a dreary, cold, bleak, inhospitable world this would be with such a doctrine carried into practice. Men living to themselves, like owls and wolves and lions and birds and beasts of prey? No: "Love thy neighbor as thyself." [Fr Zacharias also saw the hypostatic prayer mentioned above as fulfilling this commandment (ibid., p. 126)--W.G.] And this can't be done till he has a property in your services as well as a place in your heart. Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto! ['Nothing that is human is alien to me!' - Terrence--W.G.] This, the noblest sentiment ever uttered by uninspired man, recognises the great truth which lies at the foundation of all society - that every man has property in his fellow-man! (© This work is the property of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  1998 [1854].  http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/fitzhughsoc/fitzhugh.html)

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why our Lord allowed slavery to grow up in the South:  as a sign, a warning, to the rest of Western European society that there was indeed a better way of living than in the bleakness of pure individualism.

Howsobeit, the token was not heeded, the Confederacy fell, and the black of the demonic night darkens all around us.  But we may yet dispel it through repentance, through uniting with Christ’s one true Body, the Orthodox Church, and thus with all our Holy Mothers and Fathers and our other departed brothers and sisters of the First Europe, Orthodox Europe (and of Orthodox Africa), before the Great Schism of Rome and the Germanic Reformations (further schisms) that followed.  We may yet dispel it by building an organic, hierarchic theod (nation) centered on the Church and the family, that recognizes the ġe-bondedness of all mankind, that develops the true personhood of each man, woman, and child by imitating the oneness and manyness of the Three Persons of the All Holy Trinity Who live a life of self-emptying love for One Another.

Friday, July 24, 2015

‘Ballad of a Rebel Soldier’



A haunting ballad sung for his beloved Southland.  May we all love our homelands as he did.


Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Good Guys or Bad Guys? - II



The Papacy, aside from some questionable characters in the long ago, is generally seen as working good in the world.  But under Pope Francis I, as Dr Joseph Farrell shows, the Vatican is returning to its true form - an earthly institution thirsting for worldwide rule.  Thus Pope Francis’s calls for global government, etc.:

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Good Guys or Bad Guys?



If one drinks a steady stream of corporate-owned media (CNN, Fox News, Wall Street Journal, Rush Limbaugh, Washington Post, et al.), one will get a picture of the world that is a hair skewed.  Here are a few stories to help balance the picture a little, so to speak.

-America is the best ensample of a Christian nation the world has ever, or will ever, see.  It is the most outstanding Good Guy.  So goes the usual thinking there.

Then why are LGTB ‘rights’ trampling down all opposition there?  Why have its leaders like Sec of State Kerry sworn to fight for these ‘rights’ in other countries where they are not now recognized?



-Next to America, Israel is the other theod (nation) whose righteousness is supposedly beyond reproach.  But why do her officials continue to tear down Christian churches?


-The Russian leod (people) are frequently smeared as some sort of closet Communists who can’t wait to unleash cultural and political Revolution upon the world again, ‘to re-establish the old Soviet Union,’ as Rush Limbaugh likes to say.  They are seemingly among the outstanding Bad Guys of the world today.

Why, then, are they opposed to the unnatural sexual unions that America is fighting for?


Why are they striving so hard, in Church and government, against child-slaying in their country?



-The South likewise is spoken of as a place full of hatred, but the remnants of the Orthodox Faith that have survived here in her Old Time, evangelical Christianity have at least goaded her to undermine the culture of child-killing forced on her by Washington City as best she can in some of her States.



-Soþlice (Truly), it is time for real media diversity.


Thursday, July 16, 2015

‘Mr President, break up this union!’



Forever praised by admirers of Ronald Reagan (President, New World Order, 1981-89) is his outcry, ‘Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!’  There has been and continues to be a great need for a liberator for the South and the other captive sections of the American Empire (the restored Holy Tsar in Russia?), who will likewise thunder fearlessly, ‘Mr President, break up this union!’

Nigel Farage gave us a forelook at this event in his speech to the E. U. Parliament on Greece.  If not for some of the names of people and places, it could have passed for a speech about New England and the Souþ.  It is our hope that Southerners, when they hear it, will listen to it in just such a way.


Monday, July 13, 2015

A Clear-Eyed Look at the Old South



Now that a third Reconstruction is very much underway in the South, it is more needful than ever to know and understand her history and her ways of living.  Thankfully, Mrs Elizabeth Allston Pringle, a South Carolina plantation owner and rice planter (1845-1921), has left us a valuable guidebook for doing such things in her written account of her family’s life in South Carolina, Chronicles of Chicora Wood (Atlanta, Ga.: Cherokee Publishing Company, 1950 [1976 reprint]).  As the plantation class was the ideal most in the Old South aspired to, the views of Mrs Pringle and her family may be taken more or less for those of Southerners as a whole at that time.

Since it is foremost on the minds of many right now in the debate over Confederate symbols, let us first mention slavery.  Mrs Pringle also brings up this subject early on in her narrative, saying,

Now that slavery is a thing of the past, the younger
generation in our Southland really know nothing
about the actual working of it, and they should
know to understand and see the past in its true
light. Slavery was in many ways a terrible mis-
fortune, but we know that in the ancient world it
was universal, and no doubt the great Ruler of
the world, "that great First Cause, least under-
stood," allowed it to exist for some reason of His
own.

The colony of North and South Carolina, then
one, entreated the mother country to send no
more slaves. "We want cattle, horses, sheep,
swine, we don't want Africans." But the Afri-
cans continued to come. The Northeastern States
were the first to get rid of the objectionable human
property when conscientious scruples arose as to
the owning of slaves — in some instances by free-
ing them, but in many more instances by selling
them in the Southern States. There is no doubt
that in the colder climate slave labor was not
profitable. When the Civil War came, the South-
ern planters were reduced from wealth to poverty
by the seizure of their property which they held
under the then existing laws of the country. It
is a long and tangled story — and I do not pretend
to judge of its rights and wrongs. I have no
doubt that the Great Father's time for allowing
slavery was at an end. I myself am truly thank-
ful that slavery is a thing of the past, and that I
did not have to take up the burden of the owner-
ship of the one hundred people my father left me
in his will (all mentioned by name), with a pretty
rice-plantation called Exchange two miles north
of Chicora Wood. I much prefer to have had to
make my own living, as I have had to do, except
for the short six years of my married life, than to
have had to assume the care and responsibility of
those hundred negroes, soul and body. I have
had a happy life, in spite of great sorrow and con-
tinued work and strain, but I am quite sure that
with my sensitive temperament and fierce Hugue-
not conscience I never could have had a happy
life under the burden of that ownership (pgs. 7-8).

One will notice that the institution of slavery was no great joy to the slave owners, but rather a burden that they were glad to be rid of when the day came.  There is also something else that will seem extraordinary in our day:  The slave owner knew that he was responsible for not only the bodies but also for the souls of his slaves (Mrs Pringle’s Aunt Blythe said of the slave owner’s life, ‘It is the life of a missionary, really . . .’ (p. 77)).  And he took great care to see that they were instructed in the Christian faith.  What a difference between him and the typical corporate CEO, who treats his ‘employees’ as if they were a body only, with no soul.

For their part, the slaves were none too pleased with the new order that developed after the South was defeated by the North in the War.  Mrs Pringle writes of her mother and one of her former slaves Daddy Aleck,

Yesterday she called Daddy Aleck
and told him she had not the money to pay his
wages and he would have to find another place.
He was very indignant. "Miss, I don' want no
wagis ! Aint I wuk fu yu sence I bin man grown,
aint my fadder wuk fu Maussa fadder! En my
grandfadder de same ! Aint yu feed me on de
bes' ! An' clothes me in de bes'. Aint I drive
yo', de Guvna's lady all de time Maussa bin
Guv'na, en now yu tink I gwine lef yu, en lef de
hosses. 'Tis true I got but a po' pair, jes' wat
dem Yankee lef, but I kin manige wid dem, en I
wont lef dem en yu to dat triflin niggah boy, no
ma'am, not Aleck Pa'ka, e aint mean enuf fu
dat!"

It was a distressing scene. Mamma was much
moved, but she was firm, and when Daddy Aleck
realized that she would not be persuaded, the tears
rolled down his shiny black face and I, in my cor-
ner pretending to write, ignominiously sobbed (pgs. 283-4).

There was much love and loyalty between blacks and whites in the South before the social engineers in Washington City came in 1865 and began implementing their utopian visions.  If the outsiders would leave us alone, it may well be this way again, and this time without the troublesome institution of slavery.

The peculiar institution aside, there are other characteristic Southern features to be seen in Mrs Pringle’s book.  Christianity, for instance.  (Mostly of the Protestant kind, but they were doing the best they could at the time, with little to no knowledge of the Orthodox Church.)  Time and again it is seen in the life of the Old South:  Sunday church services; daily family prayers (which included the slaves); the three-day long Christmas celebration; the reading of the Bible for Mrs Pringle’s father as he lay in bed dying, to comfort him; the work songs of the slaves; the adoration of God for the beauty of his creation. 

Closely connected with this is the appreciation of beautiful art.  Again, from Mrs Pringle:

My father's love of art, and of music, and of all
beauty was very great. It made all the difference
in the world to us, his children, growing up in the
country, so far from picture-galleries and concerts
and every kind of music. At the sale of the Bona-
parte collection of pictures in Baltimore my father
commissioned the artist, Sully, to attend the sale
and select and buy for him six pictures. Papa
was much pleased with Mr. Sully's selection.
They included:

"A Turk's Head," by Rembrandt.

"The Supper at Emmaus," by Gherardo del
Notte.

"The Holy Family," a very beautiful Gobelin
tapestry. For this picture Mr. Sully was
offered double the price he paid before it
left the gallery.

"Io," whom Juno in jealous rage had trans
formed into a white heifer. A very large
and beautiful canvas, a landscape with
the heifer ruminating in the foreground,
watched by Cerberus, while on a mountain
side Mercury sits playing on his flute, try-
ing to lull him to sleep. (I still own this
painting.)

"St. Paul on the Island of Melita," a very large
canvas representing a group of shipwrecked
mariners around a fire of sticks; in the
midst stands the figure of St. Paul just
shaking from his finger a viper, into the
fire, very dramatic.

"St. Peter in Prison," awakened by the angel
while his keepers sleep.

This is the match picture to the above and the
same size.

These works of art on the walls of our country
home awoke in us all an appreciation and recogni-
tion of fine paintings for which we can never be
sufficiently grateful.

This great love for art and his confidence in its
elevating influence is shown by his buying and
having placed in the grounds of the State capitol
a replica of Houdon's statue of Washington (pgs. 20-2).

Also related to these latter traits is the more than utilitarian heed for the creation, that it is more than just a means to making a profit, as may be seen in these stories from Mrs Pringle:

Then the family got into the rowboat
and were rowed down the Pee Dee, then
through Squirrel Creek, with vines tangled above
them and water-lilies and flags and wild roses and
scarlet lobelia all along the banks, and every now
and then the hands would stop their song a
moment to call out: "Missy, a alligator!" And
there on the reeds and marsh in some sunny cove
lay a great alligator basking in the sun, fast asleep.
As soon as the sound of the oars reached him, he
would plunge into the water, making great waves
on which the boat rose and fell in a way suggestive
of the ocean itself. The way was teeming with
life; birds of every hue and note flew from tree to
tree on the banks; here and there on top of a tall
cypress a mother hawk could be seen sitting on
her nest, looking down with anxious eye, while
around, in ever-narrowing circles, flew her fierce
mate, with shrill cries, threatening death to the
intruder. No one who has not rowed through
these creeks in the late spring or early summer
can imagine the abundance and variety of life
everywhere. On every log floating down the
stream or lodged along the shore, on such a sum-
mer day rows of little turtles can be seen fast
asleep, just as many as the log will hold, ranging
from the size of a dinner-plate to a dessert-plate,
only longer than they are broad — the darkies
call them "cooters" (they make a most delicious
soup or stew) — so many it is hard to count the
number one sees in one trip. Besides all this,
there is the less-pleasing sight of snakes on the
banks and sometimes on the tree overhanging
the water, also basking in the sun so trying to
human beings at midday (pgs. 68-9).

 . . .

One day, when my father returned from a visit
to the upper part of the State, he called me and
said: "My little Bessie, I have brought a pony to
be all your own; his name is Rabbit and he is
very gentle, so that now you need not be afraid
to ride, and you can go with Adele instead of
waiting until she comes home, for your ride."

Of course I appeared overjoyed and thanked
him with enthusiasm, but in my heart I was ter-
ribly dismayed; go to ride with Della, who went
fast all the time ! No, indeed, I could not do
that, but after Rabbit arrived, a little, dark-brown
horse with kind eyes and slow ways, I was put on
his back, weeping, every afternoon, and started
off with Della; but Typee went so fast that I
begged her to go on and leave Rabbit and me to
our own devices, which she always did, so we
ambled along comfortably, he having a very nice
pace which suited me better than a canter or a
gallop. Della took her long, rapid ride and, re
turning, picked me up, so we came home demurely
together. It was supposed that I was becoming a
great horsewoman, and I really was getting over
my fear and ceased to weep as I was mounted.
Those quiet rambles along the beautiful, smooth
beach, where nothing could hurt you, — with the
great, beautiful sea, rolling in with its dashing
waves just beside me, but limited by its great
Creator — very soon became the greatest delight
and joy to me. I loved to be alone with this
wonderful companion, and would ride along about
a mile and then turn and come slowly back, so
that Della could reach me before we got home (pgs. 120-1).

This view of the creation leads naturally to wholesome foodways, again quite far from the chemical soaked, genetically engineered ‘food’ raised on today’s industrial farms:

But milk and butter and
cream were abundant, also poultry and eggs; and
the Pedee furnished most delicious fish — bream
and Virginia perch and trout. There were figs in
abundance and also peaches, but the latter were
small and a good deal troubled with cuculio.
They were, however, very good stewed, and my
mother made quantities of delicious preserves
from them.

Around the house at Chicora grew luxuriant
orangetrees, only the bitter-sweet; but these
oranges make the nicest marmalade, so mamma
put up quantities of that for winter use. Her vege-
table-garden was always full of delicious things —
cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant, and okra; and,
as my father killed beef and mutton every week
for use on the plantation, she had the very best
soups and steaks; and there were always wild
ducks to be had. Also, after August 1, there was
venison in the house, for my father was devoted
to deer-hunting. At the time the negroes under-
stood preserving the venison in the hottest weather
by exposing it to the broiling sun. I do not know
what else they did, for it is now a lost art; but it
was called "jerked venison" and was a delicious
breakfast dish, when shaved very thin and broiled.
They also preserved fish in the same way — called
"corned fish" — it was a great breakfast dish
broiled. Besides all this, about the end of August
the rice-birds began to swarm over the rice, suck-
ing out all the grain when in the milk stage. This
necessitated the putting out of bird-minders in
great numbers, who shot the little birds as they
rose in clouds from the rice at the least noise.
These rice-birds are the most delicious morsels;
smaller than any other bird that is used for food,
I think, so that a man with a good appetite can
eat a dozen, and I, myself, have eaten six. When
they go out at the end of harvest, another delicious
little bird comes in, called locally a coot, but really
the rail or soarer of Maryland. All these things
made living easy and abundant, for they came in
great quantities (pgs. 88-90).

The War, as one might expect, receives its share of attention, especially Sherman’s March.  The death and maiming of family and friends; the deprivation of food and clothing (Mrs Pringle recounts how she and her fellow classmates at the boarding school in Charleston subsisted on ‘very dry corn-dodgers’ and water for quite some time during the War (p. 178)); the vile behavior of the Yankee soldiers - their wanton killing of animals and their breaking to pieces of anything of value that could not be stolen - Mrs Pringle recounts all this and more.    

And yet with all this hardship, there is nevertheless the characteristic Southern good humor:

Our kind and generous neighbor, Mrs. Wm.
Evans, was a very, very thin, tall woman, but
when I ran over to see her during these days of
anxiety and she came out into the piazza to meet
me, I could not believe my eyes. She seemed to
be an enormously stout woman ! I looked so
startled that she said:

"My dear Bessie, they say these brutes take
everything but what you have on and burn it be-
fore your eyes. So I have bags of supplies, rice
and wheat flour and sugar and what little coffee
we had, hung round my waist, and then I have on
all the clothes I can possibly stand, three dresses
for one item." And then we both laughed until
we nearly fell from exhaustion. And when I ran
home and told mamma we had another great laugh,
and oh, it was such a mercy to have a good hearty
laugh in those days of gloom and anxiety (pgs. 224-5).

In that world, when neighbors still knew one another, before the collapse of the authority of the Western churches and the family, the rise of Leviathan government, and the atomization of men and women, the leading men in the neighborhood took care of many of the ‘social services’ now dispensed by various faceless and nameless bureaucrats.  Mr Robert Allston, for ensample, Mrs Pringle’s father, organized work crews to maintain the roads in his region; sought to educate the promising children of the poor farmers; and gave to the sick and needy in his family, even those quite a distance from him (like his cousin Washington Allston in New York).

All was not perfect, of course.  Death and disease from the swampy climate and lack of medical knowledge were still common (though now we have gone too far in the opposite direction, so that we are ruled by a scientific, technocratic elite); sometimes the slaves grumbled over their work; and some of the farmers of the backwoods barely eeked out a living for themselves and their families.

Like the Old Souð whose life it tells, Mrs Pringle’s book is not perfect, either.  It wanes near the end, being mostly journal entries from a younger, more childish Elizabeth Allston Pringle.  Yet throughout it burns with a light-giving fire of which most modern history books are bereft.

Mrs Pringle opens her book by tracing the lineage of her forefathers and foremothers, the Old English Allstons and the French Petigrus and Giberts, and recounting some of the important events from their lives.  Such self-sacrificing reverence for one’s ancient forebears, rather than a selfish sentimentalism for one’s nearest kin only, is also a mark distinctive of the Old South.  We ought also to keep faith with our Southern ancestors in this ascetic spirit.  Studying books like Mrs Pringle’s Chronicles of Chicora Wood is one way to do that. 

Read this book (only a fraction of its goodness has been told here), and so honor your Southern fathers and mothers.  Keep their good traditions alive, and pass them on to your children and to your children’s children, that it may go well with us in the land the Lord our God hath given us.  For they were good people who built well:  Their society was not perfect, but it was at least better than the money-worshipping, unbeweren (dehumanizing) wasteland that has arisen in so much of the South since the Confederacy’s downfall.