This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

Contradictions

I'm up early this a.m. Sofie had an earlier-than-usual early morning feeding, and I've got 25 papers and 36 final exams (with 25 more on the way) to grade, and one final seminar paper to write, so I stayed up. Gotta get the coffee brewing here soon.

I've commented on a couple of blogs recently from the position of someone who speaks as though he were an Orthodox Christian. I have also been reading--as a coping mechanism for too many end-of-term scholastic responsibilities--from the biography of one of my patron saints, Fr Seraphim (Rose) of Platina. The juxtaposition of our holy Father Seraphim's sanctity, humility and true Orthodox phronema and my academic explication and defense of Orthodoxy has me wincing at the contradiction.

Who am I to speak as though I can advocate for Orthodoxy? Who am I to speak as though I know what being Orthodox is all about? My mind has raced ahead of my living.

Father Seraphim was a brilliant, brilliant man. He was a terribly gifted linguist, who knew Mandarin and classical Chinese, taught himself Sanskrit, knew Japanese, Latin, classical Greek, and learned modern Russian and Church Slavonic. (His modern Russian was so good that many Russian emigres thought him a native Russian, and didn't know he was an American convert.) He knew how to play the piano and was trained in classical guitar, and researched musical theory. His philosophical abilities are eminently evident in his writings (particularly in his Nihilism which was actually a chapter in an unfinished project).

Yet, for all that, "knowing" Orthodoxy wasn't enough. Father Seraphim knew it must be lived. For him that meant leaving the world for the desert, and immersing his mind in the Scriptures and Church Fathers.

And here am I, bloviating on sacred Orthodoxy as though I knew something. Do I pray Morning and Evening prayers every day? Do I venerate the icons on entering and leaving the apartment? Do I read and meditate on the Scriptures daily? Do I memorize the Word of God? Am I at peace with my wife and daughter, my family, my friends? Does my work at the library, as a grad student, and as a professor reveal the life of Christ to all around me?

What an amazing self-congratulatory blowhard I am! Do I know anything about Orthodoxy? Quite clearly I don't. For Orthodoxy is not about mental information storage and retrieval. It's about repentance. And of one thing I should certainly repent: appearing the Orthodox expert.

God forgive me. Brothers and sisters, forgive me and pray for me.