Learning, as I dip into Orthodox practices during the season they call Great Lent, that the idea here is to keep the process simple, my usual distractions at arm’s length.

And so there is a fast from certain foods. Meat and dairy, oil and wine. Yummies we tend to use to adorn the basic grains, veggies, and fruits.

The Orthodox focus more, perhaps, on doing different than on giving up.

Which can be just as risky.

A priest with eyes that twinkle said to me the other day, “This can be a fun ride.” I’m finding in my heart some agreement.

Another little ride I’m taking involves linking to a group called The High Calling. I found them thanks to Deb Colarossi. Her lovely blog Talk at the Table as often melts the heart as intrigues the mind. Even its URL, “forsaken for lent,” carries artistry and a challenge to me to continue thinking. High calling. High church. Hm.

Then again, I feel a lot lately like a child crouched behind the lowliest shrub along a dusty path. Not really hiding. Sort of waiting. For the procession. For someone walking past, teaching a ragtag assortment of folks trying to grasp his message.

His eyes, I’m guessing, can look so sad. I’ll bet they also gleam like universes.

Old Abe’s Acceptance

Unlike Captain Mal’s story, Abraham’s tale doesn’t present a new, horrific threat to mankind. But in context, the book of Genesis to this point has spread a canvas of a ‘verse where people screw up. From the start, they rebel against their creator, and then it’s off to the killing fields, human against human, of antiquity.

The thing God asks Abraham to believe, I have come to think, initiates an overarching narrative (maybe the narrative) in the biblical texts. Abraham accepts the idea that, even though he’s old as dirt, he will have a son. This is a big deal where he lives. He’s motivated enough, perhaps, to step out blindly, trusting because it serves his heart’s longing for an heir. But his “seed” becoming a blessing to all peoples of the earth is a big deal to Abraham, too, according to the writings. The details of what that blessing means sound obscure, if poetic. There’s a bit about his descendants being as numerous as stars in the sky. What seems to count and gets mentioned even in the New Testament, is that Abraham believes God. He hasn’t yet been circumsized, he isn’t part of any known religious tradition. He’s just a guy, saying, “Okay, I’ll take your word for it.”

Abraham’s belief doesn’t get tested for a long, long time.

Captain Mal’s Decision

Serenity crew and big decisions

He believes there’s a reason to try and make a difference, to get the truth out to the ‘verse. He will be satisfied if he loses everything in service to this cause, because, perhaps, that will be a blessing to the rest of humanity.

Results in Two ‘Verses

For Abraham over time, things go up and down. Cities explode, powerful kings threaten all his possessions, his wife is infertile, a plan involving getting his slave, Hagar, pregnant brings a son but also bad consequences. From a holy man he runs into–Melchizedek, King of Salem–he learns more about this god, this promiser, who has spoken to him. Melchizedek calls this deity God Most High and has apparently been sacrificing to him for ages. Another person besides Abraham has decided being involved with God is the right thing.

And then God predicts a son for barren, ninety-year-old Sarah, and the baby is conceived and born on schedule. Isaac (meaning “laughter”) is the promised, joyful heir to both of them. Yet he’s also the son God asks Abraham to sacrifice, high on a cold mountain.

Abraham, the guy who’s been through so much with God Most High, sets out to obey. Not blithely, I’m sure, but with confidence, perhaps, born of all the years where his “ship”–his life and security–have been repeatedly shown to be about something that will make a positive difference. Reasoning that his God can raise the dead, he figures God is capable of bringing Isaac back to life. God has to, or nothing to this point in Abraham’s life will have made sense.

Abraham decides, for the umpteenth time, that following God is right. He could be wrong, but based on experience he believes he is correct about the state of things. So he raises the knife over Isaac to kill him. And that is all God wants Abraham and the rest of history to see. Things turn out better than Abraham expected them to. God says, “Whoa. That’s good. Go sacrifice that ram over there, instead.”

At the end of Mal’s story, things also turn out better than they could have. His mission accomplished, he chooses to continue journeying on in his spaceship, even though an “albatross” remains with him. He has been tested by circumstances and has seen he was right to think he could be a blessing to others in the scheme of things. Whether spelled out or not, Mal will continue to believe his belief.

Maybe that’s what Shepherd Book urged for him to do, knowing that, whatever Mal called it, Mal got the believing thing right way back when. His test proved what was already real.

I have thoughts to share on two people, one historical/biblical, and one fictional/futuristic. This will take more than one post, but I’ve written out my complete idea first, so I should be able to get the parts published in sequence this time, rather than spread out as were my first and second posts on belief, here and here. (Being all explainy ahead of time is good, right? If not, thanks for your patience.)

Abraham Called by God - portrait by Guy Rowe

Abraham, the man from Genesis who started out as Abram and became the father of the Arabs and the Jews, was a man shown something. An organic something, in my view, because this god came to him, and he understood gods.

Nothing says how this god appeared or spoke to Abraham, but Abraham, from a culture that considered gods to be behind the phenomena of their lives, recognized deity when he encountered one. Had any “other” god actually spoken to anyone? There’s no way to know, but I’m guessing they hadn’t. These gods were fables and epic stories, but their being around was accepted. What better way for the real, ultimate being to come across as plausible, than to show up and speak as a cultural god surely would, if one could?

We’re not told in Genesis whether Abraham was in general disillusioned or angry, just that he was a person. Fearfulness seems apparent in his story at some decision-making points. But there’s also his loyalty, courage, and loving care for others. He was a married man, a nomad, a rich guy after a while, and, finally, a father.

In the Bible story, Abraham somehow is given interaction with his particular deity at points in time throughout his life. He receives a summons to hope in stuff he can’t yet see. God asks him to believe, specifically, that his seed (offspring, heritage, followers-in-faith) will be a blessing to all peoples of the earth. This blessing is somehow a big deal. Not a hamburger franchise or the like. A truly significant something. And it will come, God tells him, through the lineage of his and his wife Sarah’s son, Isaac.

Capt. Mal

Malcolm Reynolds, the captain of a spaceship in Joss Whedon’s movie from the TV series Firefly, is a man shown something. A military man from a war gone wrong, he’s definitely disillusioned. Despite his anger, he comes across as a real person, loyal, courageous, caring. Trying to find his way through his ‘verse (universe) in a ship he found, with a crew who found him.

In a scene in the movie (not too different from the pivotal one for Neo in The Matrix), Mal discovers a jarring view of horror in reality that few others recognize or wish to see. This revelation happens after Mal has come across his dying Christian friend, Shepherd Book, who tells Mal, “I don’t care what you believe. Just believe it.”

I have pondered what Book is talking about. Does he want Mal to believe the horrible revelation? If so, that won’t be a challenge, because Mal’s crew will see it with him and have no reason to doubt its veracity. Or could it be that Book is summoning Mal to believe in something positive? Sort of a blessing, perhaps. In any case, I want to think that this story doesn’t hinge on the main character flexing his “belief muscles,” as Kung Fu Panda seemed to do. Because if Book merely wants Mal to believe so that reality, in its current horror, will change, then his call to Mal is merely a wish for sparkly, fake magic. If, however, there is some object, even a rational concept, for Mal to embrace, then I’m interested in what he ends up doing with his belief, same as I am with Abraham.

I will continue this thought. Soon. Thanks for reading.

Magic

My first brush with believing involved little pieces of paper. I was six. I wrote one word on each piece, torn from my wide-ruled first grade notebook. Book, bike, doll, happy, sky—I don’t really remember what I asked God for. But I wanted God to prove to me he existed, by taking all my paper pieces away, up to heaven, while I slept. That night I laid them carefully across the lower half of my bed, on the bedspread. In the morning, they were gone.

I was thrilled. Amazed. Until I got up and saw the papers on the floor, where they had fallen while I flopped around during dreams.

I guess my skepticism about God started then. It continued in what I now think was a healthy fashion. I mean, there’s testing God’s existence from the standpoint of rational thought—like a scientist experimenting, maybe—and it’s a different thing from a challenge, where the jaw is set against God and the fists are clenched. I did that later.

Through my childhood I was seeking truth, in the lopsided, ungainly way of children, but I was honest about it, at least in my heart. I believed, but if I never found evidence of God, I wasn’t going to keep believing. The magic would have to be genuine, as if the little alien, E.T., were hiding in my closet, needing to phone home and asking me for food snatched from the fridge. I needed an organic magic.

Blank Page

The part of the movie Kung Fu Panda I didn’t like involved a piece of paper with nothing on it. If you’ve seen the movie you know, and if you haven’t, this might spoil it, so beware. I need to see it again to recall just what happened. But I know there was something important that the Panda’s father believed in, or at least that he wanted the Panda to believe, and yet it never really existed. The point the movie made, if I got it, was that learning to do this thing called believing would make something appear that didn’t exist before. It would somehow change reality, this extreme belief.

The good in that idea follows one thread of truth. We’re powerful creatures. We tend to be thwarted, or to thwart ourselves, our potential, and a shot of confidence can work wonders. But there’s a difference between believing I can make it across the street to mail my latest manuscript and live with the results, and believing I can step in front of a log truck tooling down that same street without suffering harm. It would be irrational to expect a log truck to evaporate or something because I believe strongly enough that it will. On the other hand, it might be rational to believe E.T. would lift my bike over the log truck, if he had been living in my closet, and I was helping him phone home.

Next installment (when I get to it—soon, I hope), I’ll switch my similes from pandas and aliens to an alien universe and one really old, Old Testament father.

I’m struck by the beauty in Orthodox rituals – from decorous clothing to music to incense. They’re at once simple and opulent. The people regularly practice fasting, as in abstaining from meat, dairy products, olive oil, and alcohol. Right now, during Great Lent, the fast holds fast for around fifty days. And to this cloud of witnessing faithful I have lent my husband.

You might reconsider inviting us out for pizza until after Easter.

Many Protestants decide on something to give up for Lent. The reasons appear to range from wanting to achieve holiness to a remembrance of the sorrow Jesus’ disciples felt after he died. (One of the better articles I’ve read, here on Wikipedia, contrasts and compares several Lenten observances.)

I like what my daughter told me, about the purpose of the fast being preparation for the feast, for the joy to come. In such a sense I tend to look at life, because, you know, life is hard and then we die. But if one has a view of the hardness bearing eternal purpose, well, then, it might just all be worth it.

The only thing I’ve given up for Lent is shoes. I’m trying out barefoot jogging on my treadmill. Apart from blackening my soles, I’m thinking this might be okay. Better than what Asics has bestowed. I need to strengthen muscles in new ways, but first thing I lengthened my stride. Not the same texture as when striking smooth sand at the beach, but I liked it. I remember wanting to run like this while dreamily staring at fields we drove past on vacation.

For me, perhaps, the motivation has ever been freedom. Let’s give up the shackles that have bound our thinking. Let’s dance across the dunes, wind in our hair.

But I did first need to see myself stepping so intentionally onto a path that destroyed me and those around me. I hadn’t believed I could really be bad. Until I saw it, those years ago, I couldn’t mourn. And mourning was good.

It still comes to me in organic ways. When I need it, I guess. Before the feast and joyful exercise, the darker actions of blessed loss and good grief.

Tim asked if I would come with him to the Theophany service at St. John’s Tuesday morning (7:00 a.m.). I looked at loss – of writing time, of a weekly Bible study at a friend’s home where deer graze outside the windows. I told Tim I didn’t have the energy to stand for hours reciting liturgies with hunger pestering my tummy.

But I revised my answer, recognizing he wanted to take a vacation day and spend it, not only with our Orthodox daughter but also with his ever unorthodox wife. As I’ve mentioned here recently, each Sunday Tim attends two very different church services, giving to God and family in his energetic fashion. He is my draw – my happy thought – in a season when the two of us pull together more gracefully, perhaps, than in many before.

Yesterday as gloom turned to late morning gray we stood under the dome at St. John’s. Candles glimmered against the icons’ reds and golds. Our daughter’s voice chanted harmony in the choir, and when she went solo, I marveled at the quality she’s developing. Their story of this celebration gave me substance to ponder.

According to tradition (whether handed down from an apostle or supposed by an early Christian, I don’t know), the day Jesus was baptized in the Jordan, the river stopped flowing. This would have made the New Testament Messiah’s baptism mirror the event from the Torah of the Israelites crossing the Jordan on dry ground into the promised land. This consecrated the Jordan’s waters, the Orthodox believe.

And so yesterday we participated in a ceremony where the priest blessed a lot of water, some of which people then carried a few blocks away to our River Willamette. And the river was blessed with great blessings. And some people jumped in it, consecrating themselves.

I enjoyed the day. I see nothing wrong with blessing a river – and by inference the people living around it – with prayers for salvation from God. As the priest remarked yesterday, Orthodoxy calls people to plunge into a life of faith in God. To give all, withholding nothing. With this I’m in complete agreement.

The apostles called for nothing less. I think they were describing an event which happens inside me – a blessing of the waters of my mind. A total interest in and intense following after the “one thing necessary” Jesus spoke about to his friends. I see my daughter doing this joyfully, outwardly and from within.

She and Tim both refrained from a river swim yesterday, as of course did I. Watching with them on the shore, I asked from the heart of my inner life for more willingness to be part of outer actions like these.

“Figured out” is maybe a stretch, but I had made a leap in my thinking process. It’s fantasy vs. realism all over again.

From the first, our daughter, Victoria, loved fantasy stories. Through all her years she’s encouraged me to read more of them. On the other hand, while I’ve appreciated high fantasy, especially, and seen a lot of truth shining through Tolkien, Lewis, and Rowling, I don’t gravitate to the fantasy genre.

Realism’s my joy. For reading, I’ll grab a novel set in this world, thanks. I’m always after good nonfiction narratives. I wish to relate, to taste the beef jerky chewed on the mountainside while smelling the blizzard approaching and not knowing how slippery the rock face will become in snow. I don’t so much care to listen for dragon’s wings overhead or ponder the king’s edict or become invisible.

Fantasy is artistic, the mind and spirit extolling epic perhapses. Realism is less graceful, but no less imaginative. And it’s the road along which I encounter worship. Victoria and I agree we’re worshiping the same being, though she soars in ancient liturgical chanting while I embrace adding up pieces within ancient texts.

We’re after similar things through very different means. And if we’re sincere, we’ll keep evaluating what drives our differing stories. All in all, this is a more interesting endeavor than I imagined a couple of years ago, when Victoria first said, “You know, I’ve been looking into Orthodoxy…” And I thought, “Oh, no.”

After I related to Tim my morning ponderings yesterday, he left for St. John’s to do the liturgy with Victoria. Then he came to church with me later in the afternoon. As usual when it comes to him, I can’t figure out exactly how his journey’s unfolding. But you might say he’s becoming well-read.