It's an odd thing isn't it that we were forbidden from going to church while we kept the alcohol stores open and the lottery tickets printing. How we closed the AA meetings but left Target open. How some states forbid buying seeds but considered men circling restaurants in foam outfits shaped like pizza slices, ice cream cones, and cheeseburgers to be essential workers. And now, how churches still can't be trusted to pray together, but somehow thousands of people can march together shoulder-to-shoulder without any restrictions. How can it be that many of you have to fill out web forms to make a "reservation" for church this Sunday, while outside people stream past that same building chanting and yelling and more while the police sit impotently or join in themselves? Has the virus gone away? If not, how do we explain the startling juxtaposition?
Tuesday, June 9, 2020
Our treatment speaks volumes about our imputed value
It all points to an image of the Church as a luxury. It points to the Church given the consideration of an amateur club while corporations peopled with unskilled labor were trusted to continue selling chimichangas, hot dogs, and General Tso's chicken. It declares that two thousand years of unbroken anamnesis is nothing compared to a "movement" where silence is violence.
We as a people didn't stand up for ourselves. During the time of confusion about exactly what we were facing we let functionaries and pipsqueak potentates wield an iron fist while our faith leaders largely had hands wrung in obsequious confusion. And if they were confused, we were outraged. For some outraged if you objected, as you obviously didn't care about peoples' lives. And others outraged if you obeyed, because you obviously didn't believe in the omnipotence of God. Neither side was happy. Neither side is happy now as we transition back to normalcy.
Many of us are also embarrassed about how we responded to this whole thing, how it revealed our weaknesses, how we fought each other, how we shut things down and left people shut out, how we let Krispy Kreme leave the "Fresh Donuts" light on while we locked our narthex doors and our bells sat silent. When we didn't know if corona passed through the air, or on everything we touched, or raced along the waves of 5G we as a society made quick decisions about what was essential. In the same way a parent rushes out of a burning home with pictures and letters and social security cards, we declared what we needed to go on while we flattened the curve, and what a rogues' gallery we selected.
I wonder if we are going to look back on this period and prepare for the next time some invisible scourge assails us. Are we going to have a plan? Are we going to be prepared to say we are as requisite as gas stations? Are we going to belabor the topic of spoon types and numbers and cleaning solutions yet again? Are we going to fast forward to the "good parts" of the Liturgy from the comfort of our couches with coffee mugs in hand? Or are we instead going to try and forget this time like a bad loss for our favorite football team? I wonder. And I fear that ten years from now we'll only vaguely recollect sweatpants and economy-sized toilet paper rolls.
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Greetings Father -
ReplyDeleteWe are where we are, unfortunately. The question I and many other Orthodox have is - what is it going to take to get back to normal?
https://orthodoxreflections.com/letter-to-the-metropolitan-of-atlanta-and-greek-archbishop-of-america/
Have you had the chance to ask any hierarchs what the plan is, and have any of them volunteered how we get back to the practice of the faith?
Obviously COVID causes zombie like brain damage. I mean some folks seem to be running around looking for brains to eat while others have clearly had them eaten.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this reflection, points to ponder.
ReplyDeleteElection years are always nasty business, the CV19 narrative got the ball rolling but now we’ve switched to the race war narrative so CV19 has to take the backseat for a while. “Public gatherings of 12 are safe, unless its a protest, then gatherings of 100 are safe” “As public health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings (mass protests) as risky for COVID-19 transmission... This should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings, particularly protests against stay-home orders” 1200 of our finest health professionals ladies and gentlemen, who knew science was so political? I thought it was strange when CV19 started shooting people (homicides being listed as CV19 deaths) but the fact that it only spreads in certain protests is fascinating.
ReplyDeleteSadly I’m sure the CV19 narrative will take over again once the riots go away.
In the mean time I just pray the bishops find the will and the wisdom to defend the faith and guide the Church through all of this.
No, there won’t be any planning for the future at my parish, to my utter disappointment and disgust. Our priest won’t even think about further reopening plans beyond next Sunday and the ‘reservations’ invite has gone out. Frankly, if I and the Warden hadn’t fleshed out the reopening plan, we still wouldn’t have one. The lack of ecclesiastical leadership is staggering. I cannot even begin to articulate how angry, frustrated and impotent I feel.
ReplyDelete"... I cannot even begin to articulate how angry, frustrated and impotent I feel..."
DeleteWhile the first two are passions, they are "caused" by the last. You are impotent. All of us are. We are thrown into this world and we are thrown out of it, sustained not by ourselves and our passionate "feelings" about the way things should be by a God who remains fundamentally mysterious to us in the face of all our pleading, praying, moralistic posturing, and our "Christianity" and its liturgies and life.
Personally, I wonder if we are not start there - at the reality of our immense impotency...
You could look at it another way, and say that BLM marchers are willing to risk COVID (and tear gas and billy clubs) to participate in demonstrations that they naively imagine will change the world and rout the forces of evil, but we Christians were not willing to risk COVID (and in a few places government disapproval unlikely to have involved physical force)to go to church.
ReplyDeleteDionysius Redington
Lubbock, Texas
If the numbers go down, then you can take satisfaction in knowing that you did your part. And if they go up, then you can take some comfort in knowing that it wasn't your fault. No one can know the future. No rules can be perfectly fair. But we can do our duty to the best of our ability, regardless of what others do.
ReplyDeleteWell stated. The essay by our host is in the end an expression of frustration at our smallness...thing is, Christianity is supposed to be an *embracing* of our smallness.
DeleteIt's no such thing. It's a commentary on our poor initial reaction, poor continued response, and probable poor recollection of what to do next time. It has nothing to do with any supposed smallness or humility we should have as Christians living in the world. It has everything to do with falling into a false dichotomy and only occasionally meekly calling for help while the rest of the world has already crawled out and picked up a megaphone.
DeleteOur initial reaction was *humble* - we did not claim omniscience nor magical "Temple's are places where microbes are transubstantiated" - at least most of us didn't. Instead, we listened to those whose domain of knowledge is microbes, epidemics, etc. and the duly appointed governmental authorities who listened to them. Our continued response is likewise humble. I agree with you that memories will be poor but that is a given, only secularized modern thinkers believes humanity "learns from history" and makes progress.
DeleteWhat's new about our "imputed value"? The history of western civ since at least "the Enlightenment" has been the reduction of Christianity to the 'private' and the psychological internal. However, the dichotomy you draw is in error, because the Church did not draw the line on a political "essentiality" and desire to be a player in the public square and societal concsiousness, on the contrary she drew the line on her Doctrine, namely love of neighbor and the *spiritual* purpose of her liturgical practice. Central to that purpose is rejection of Idols - the opposite of this rush to make the very Sacraments themselves things-in-themselves, which is to say to make them Idols that we sacrifice our neighbors to.
The world has always had the megaphone - even in the heart of Christendom itself, but Christendom itself is dead. We don't counter the world with claims of Transubatiated Temples and heroic denial of microbes - we counter the world with the truth of Christ and part of His truth is a world of microbes.
This is the wrong hill to die on - this one is without a Cross...
I suspect that one thing on the hierarchs' minds was the possibility of ruinous lawsuits by "faithful" who get sick.
ReplyDeleteWhat a *passionate* reflection, hinged on the condensed symbol of "essentiality".
ReplyDeleteEven if I agreed with the substance of this complaint (I don't), I would note that all Christianity today, including this Imperial Church of the East, has the source *spirit* within her walls already and has for a long time. Secularism IS the praxis/life of the faithful...
I have no idea what any of this means.
DeleteThank you for these reflections.
ReplyDeleteThe Catholics, mainline Protestants, and Oriental Orthodox have all cooperated with lockdown restrictions, apparently without complaint. The most strident resistance has come from the Protestant fundamentalists, Evangelicals, and mega-churches. And how does the general respond? Do outsiders say "oh, their faith must be very strong"? More likely, we roll our eyes and think of them as idiots--especially when one of their churches becomes the center of an outbreak, as often happens. I am sorry to say that this has also happened in some Orthodox churches (in Ukraine, for example), but for the most part the bishops have kept these tendencies under control.
ReplyDeleteGod is truly present in the cup, but He is hardly limited by the cup. How often we receive it is largely a matter of practicality. If we insist that we must receive it every day, that doesn't make us any holier. Nor is once a week "better" than once a month. It depends.
If the public is asked to make sacrifices, then Christians ought to be among the first to volunteer. I often find myself thinking of Fr. Themi Adams, the Greek-Australian missionary priest to Sierra Leone who, when Ebola broke out, remained at his post rather than allow himself to be evacuated. He risked himself, not anybody else, and it was for the good purpose of caring for others.
https://pravoslavie.ru/72826.html
Some churches have been sending volunteers to do things like buy groceries for the elderly (who are most at risk from the virus). This strikes me as an ideal Christian response.
Hmmm. The collective mind of the Church seems to be to ascent to the restrictions. We are not protestors after all. I can pray, fast, venerate icons and love my neighbor still. But do I do those things? Not well or consistently. God forgive me a sinner.
ReplyDeleteMaybe we have achieved that so elusive goal: Orthodox unity.
ReplyDelete