anglomedved

I do not particularly like Vladimir Putin, nor indeed do most of my more educated Russian friends, both here and in Russia. Nor do I especially like Moscow, with its unpleasant mixture of Soviet pomp and post-Soviet shopping malls, which suggest that the only thing Muscovites have learned to do in the last 20 years is to get hold of money (I hesitate to use the word ‘earning’ in every case) and spend it. I have a love-hate relationship with the Russian Orthodox Church, in constant danger of getting caught in a quagmire in which institution takes precedence over spirit. I am sick of the nationalistic propaganda on the Russian subways, the constant reference back to a war which ended nearly 70 years ago, and the cheap anti-gay lobby. And I am mighty glad that, living all my adult life in continental Europe, I have got to age 65, earned a decent amount of money and bought a house without every yet having to pay anyone a bribe.

Yet something instinctively tells me, in the present US-(Europe)-(Ukraine) -Russia stand-off, not to be too harsh on the Russian side. In the battle of cultures (American vs- Russian), which is what Ukraine seems to me about (even if we Europeans are going to end up paying most of the bill), my sympathies are still weighted Russia-wards, even though the Russian-speakers in Donetz and Lugansk are not a very sympathetic group, and Russian mercenaries and ‘volunteered’ regular soldiers are pretty uninviting.

I admit I have not had a good run with the USA. My university years were the days of Vietnam. After this I worked eight years with a US bank in Germany (1974-82), including two spells in the US (1974 and 1976-77) in Chicago. I fear that what I saw in Chicago was not democracy, but power: keeping a wealthy caste in place and making sure that the underclass did not threaten it.  And an incredible inability to think in any other mould than the US one, even with the dollar in free fall against the German mark. I also have a pretty wide exposure to American Christianity, which at least in its majority Protestant form, fails to persuade or assuage me. All this – and my Russian girlfriend and now wife – explains why I have been 15 times to Russia and just twice to the USA, the last time over 35 years ago.

But a deeper reason for this relatively pro-Russian stance lies, I think, in what, for lack of a better word, I would call my ‘soul-hunger’ or ‘soul-thirst’. There is something in Russia, at its best, which I sense can meet this hunger better than America, and at least as well as Europe. This is horribly sweeping, I know. It is instinct rather than logic. It is something I felt strongly in Russia last summer, when I finally got away from Moscow and St Petersburg right up north, to the northern edges of the forest belt, 200 km south of Archangelsk. (But not in Russian Orthodoxy in Belgium, which has left me soul-starved.) In Europe I have been fortunate to be able to drink deeply, largely because I know where the better wells are hidden, and been able to change wells when one runs dry.

I think that it is this soul-hunger and sense of ‘soul-depth’ that makes many Russians highly uncomfortable with things American. This discomfort is couched in perhaps awkward terms: the dislike of gay marriages and marches, or the way human and gender rights are pushed. But I suspect it is something deeper: there is a sense of something missing in much of US, and a certain extent European culture, a very primitive sense of depth, not least a sense that societies obey very deep down laws, deeper certainly than popular democracy and gender equality, which you do not tinker with superficially.

But if indeed, as Putin accused it yesterday in a very outspoken speech, the US decided at the end of the Cold War “to reshape the world to suit its own needs and interests”; I hope with him that it does not succeed. This would really be “gaining the world and losing its soul”.

It was another England I was in yesterday, just for 12 hours.

As LJ friends know, my request to change from the Moscow Patriarchate to the Ecumenical Patriarchate was refused by my local bishop. The only way out, I have been told, is by laicization.

I am biding my time, reducing my appearance in church as far as I can just to the Sunday liturgy, avoiding in particular the ‘nonsense’ services – those which do little or nothing to spread the Christian gospel and improve the Christian life of the faithful.

It is a pretty painful process. But what it is forcing me to do is to find my Christian identity solely in Christ, and not in any clergy function. I insist that the only real identity one should have in the Church is as a Christian. All the rest – bishop, priest, deacon, acolyte, churchwarden – is service to one another, helping each other along the Christian way.

The bitter lesson I have learned over the past four years since being ordained is just how dangerous it is when Church becomes part of a man’s identity kit. Once this happens, if position in the Church increases his sense of identity (and worse – the loss or questioning of it threatens his very being), he will start to use others to maintain this identity. Or will seek position to gain status.The free communication of people jointly serving a single master is jeopardized. The freedom of the Gospel life is blocked. Church in the full sense of the term cannot happen.

Put at its crudest: nobody's role in the Church is to be players in other people’s psychodramas, or to fulfil needs for identity, sense of importance or belonging which ought to be fulfilled elsewhere, or the need for which should be surpassed by being rooted in Christ. I have had too much of this in the past and am happy to retreat.

Since my boys have grown up and can travel independently, I am an infrequent visitor to England, where I was born. In fact, as we set off for a 4-day visit last Wednesday, occasioned by an invitation to my wife to give a lecture on iconography, we realized my previous visit had been very nearly two years before.

The talk was to a mini-conference on Eastern and Western church cultures organized by Benedictine sisters at the St Mildred’s Priory, in Thanet, just half an hour up the road from Dover, the main southern port of entry to England from NW Europe by car.

It was a pleasant time, surrounded by committed and intelligent Christians, in a language I fully understand. Irina, well coached, made a very creditable job of her first-ever lecture in English, and the ensuing discussion was good. The good experience here rather made up for the more difficult one at Bose earlier this month (see earlier posting).

The priory is a re-foundation in 1937 of a monastery that had existed from the early 7th century through to the Reformation, with the existing buildings incorporating a lot of 11th century walling, in a superb garden in a typical Kentish village.

We inevitably went off to Canterbury, under 20 miles away. Irina loved it, and there will no doubt be a whole row of postings. For me it was memories of visiting the cathedral several times in my early teens, now more than 50 years ago, fascinated by medieval architecture and moving towards what seemed then a vocation to the priesthood.

That being said, apart from the cathedral, there is precious little else to see there in the city. Very obvious also on the streets, in clothing, language and general demeanour, is the social split here (and throughout much of south-east England) between the wealthier bourgeoisie, including the pupils at the fee-paying King’s School, which provides the cathedral choir, and the lower class, cheaply dressed and much more noticibly on bad diets (lots of overweight women in particular) than in Belgium.

At the abbey itself, the morning masses were said by a French monk-priest who had started at the same French abbey I spent two years in thirty years ago and is now in another foundation of the same congregation. The monastery we started in is floundering, and could well not survive into the next generation.

I admit that as an Orthodox, I am jealous of the Catholics (and Anglicans) for their short weekday masses, which have a simplicity and brevity (35 minutes) which we Orthodox cannot match.

Bose did not work this year and we both left rather unhappy.

For those not in the know, Bose is a Roman Catholic monastery in northern Italy, in the foothills of the western Alps, founded thirty years ago by its present abbot, Enzo Bianchi, and a key place of Roman-Catholic – Orthodox dialogue. Every year in early September they do a four-day conference on Orthodox spirituality, with a different theme.

Every year they invite representatives from every Orthodox Church, and anyone else is free to come. This was my fourth visit.

The ‘every Orthodox church’ was part of the problem. To (be seen to) visit Bose has become one of the things to do for every Orthodox (and ‘near’-Orthodox) church. Apart from having to politely listen to and clap greetings from every Patriarch and his brother, all saying essentially the same thing, it means that, at least for the first couple of days, the place is flooded with bishops. If they were outgoing it would not be a problem, but since they are mostly bad linguists and huddle together among themselves and with their retinues, and for a humble deacon like me the implicit rule is ‘don’t speak until you are spoken to’, one feels something of a second-class citizen.

This links into something else, which is becoming increasingly clear and I am beginning to find words for. In my mind, the main differences between Orthodoxy and Catholicism, are not directly theological (with a sharp mind you can break down just about every theological barrier  - filioque, papal infallibility, the Immaculate conception that have been put up in the last 150 years) or even to do directly with spirituality (no, Orthodoxy does not have the monopoly of theosis  that it sometimes pretends), but has everything to do with the general ethos. It is the difference between ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’. Orthodoxy is still very ‘top-down’ – modelling the way societies have worked and still work in their home countries. Catholicism has, since Vatican II, become much more ‘bottom-up’, with an active and educated laity which has forced the episcopacy to listen to it. In Orthodoxy, by and large (less so perhaps in Greece and the USA, but definitely in Russia) the episcopacy think they can totally set the tone. This could prove a very major barrier in any real cooperation.

More generally, ecumenism is a funny game. Basically, for the main body of normal believers, the large part of them in the majority church of their particular part of the world, ecumenism is all a bit distant, and really not the ‘scandal of division’ certain people make it out to be. And in mixed situations – like my wife’s icon painting academy in Brussels – seriously committed Christians get on perfectly well despite the supposed division. The only ones who don’t are those for whom confessionality is tied up to identity and who would be out of a job or pastime, and travel to various nice places around the globe, as and when formal unity arrives.

I for one want to move on from this: yes, we in the various churches may not be officially ‘married’, but we are happily ‘living together’, with perhaps more informal inter-communion (especially Orthodox visiting Western Europe) than the authorities would want to know about. For me, inter-religious dialogue – especially with the Moslem world – is becoming the real challenge where I live. Ecumenism is simply passé.

I’m not saying Bose is all bad. We made some very good contacts which made the time and cost of travel worthwhile. Probably we will go again, but only from day 3, when the bishops have largely gone back home.

Following my earlier posting, let me share a few quotes from Richard Rohr and Joseph Martos’ book ‘From Wild Man to Wise Man – Reflections on Male Spirituality’. I am not sure I agree 100% with them, but for me the direction is right.

To Russian readers: some of this may sound strange. For me the Russian church’s problems with masculinity – primarily of machoism and “third sex” – are different, but no less unbalanced and damaging, than those of the Western church

But over to Rohr and Martos.

I am reading with a lot of interest Richard Rohr’s book ‘From Wild Man to Wise Man  - Reflections on male spirituality’.

It rings many bells, three in particular:

a) it confirms my contention that there is a specific male spirituality. This confirms something I have always suspected right back from when I was a monk 30 years back, despite many people whom I considered wiser than myself telling me otherwise ;

b) it moves towards a basic axiom, which Rohr does not state specifically but adumbrates : a man will not get his spirituality right until he has got his sexuality right, and can direct and master the male drive in him. To which I would add: until he is well on the way to this, he should not be placed in a position of spiritual authority, in particular priesthood.

c) A huge problem is facing both the church and society today through a lack of men who are psychologically whole, and able to pass a sense of male wholeness to the next generation.

ad b) A man who has not got his sexuality right will lack spiritual authority. If in a position of authority (priest, novice master, bishop) he will have to impose either by using the rule book or by manipulation. He will not naturally attract men to the faith, other than those who share similar unwholeness or those who instinctively sense they can play his weakness here to their advantage.

Certainly many of my difficulties over the years in the church have been due to finding myself in subordinate positions to such men : I think in particular of my 2-year monastic career in the thirties, where I clashed bitterly with a novice master who, I was convinced, was not in order here (a subsequent sexual scandal and his rapid demise after my own departure proved me right here), and where too many of my brethren, I sensed, were in situations of arrested development, and were using monasticism as a cover. At the time I expressed this too harshly, in part because I had not faced some of my own devils, which was one reason I was asked to leave. But basically, thirty years on, I believe, I was right. Looking back I would say that the monastery was kept going by the strong male energy of three or four individuals, and when these died or left, it started its slow and – today still - continuing decline.

At this stage I need to put in two provisos:

i) male wholeness is not within the reach of every man : some have been too damaged by abuse or bad family situations. To know and accept this and to live with the pain, and be aware of the traps one can fall into because of it, is spiritual strength, and probably a fast track to sainthood.

ii) the ‘wholeness’/’unwholeness’ border line is not coterminous with the gay-straight border line. I have encountered far too many men who are as straight as a die and very unwholesome, and some quite wholesome gays. The relationship of gayness to spirituality is a complex one and, I suspect, still badly under-explored.

I read today the Parable of the Sower for at least the fiftieth time.

It has always been the third case, that of the people suffocated by the wealth and concerns of the world, which has spoken to me most. This time I was struck by the word applied to them ‘fruit-less’, in Greek α-καρπος.

Right at the moment I am asking myself just how fruit-bearing (καρπος), we are being in the parish I am in and in the diocese. Or in other language, how salvation-bearing are we ? How many people, though contact with us as individuals and a group, find the way to more wholesome and more holy lives? The answer is very mixed : yes we have isolated individuals, both clergy and lay, whose lives have been changed or who have reached or are on their way to real holiness, in most cases in response to challenging personal situations. But on average, I am very far from convinced.

There seems in some places to be the idea that Orthodoxy is automatically salvation-bearing : if you expose yourself sufficiently to it you will automatically end up with a ticket to the right place. I very much doubt this : I think there is an awful lot of what we do, especially in my own parish, which bears precious little fruit, and while it may allow someone to slip into heaven, this is very far from the salvation, beginning hic et nunc, which Orthodoxy, and indeed Christianity of any confession, is all about.

Two weeks ago I was helping with emergency repairs on the summer church in a village 1000 km north of Moscow, shoring up the main roof and removing several hundredweight of bird droppings weighing down on it. Our time slot was far too short and we left with the roof still leaking badly onto the floor.

The building was curiously attractive – with good light and proportions – even though far too big, probably already when it was built around 1890, and certainly now with the village at probably under half its pre-Revolution size in summer, and no more than 20% in winter.

For me, in terms of Christianity,the whole exercise was something of a cold shower. People had visibly got their lives back together after the trauma of the early 1990s, when the local wood factory went bust and much of the younger population decamped to the towns: the houses were often quite smart, the gardens tended. But no visible attempt to get the church back functioning. We did a prayer service in the church itself, importing the local priest from the next village, but with no more than 5 local persons present. I had served as deacon with the same priest that morning, with perhaps five people present, no choir, and giving communion to one person only, a struggling four-year old.

This is the reality of the Russian countryside  – not the mythical ‘Holy Russia’ in which everyone has Orthodoxy in their soul – but a place where God seems to be a fairly distant memory, where people get on with their lives pretty much without Him.

It will be an uphill struggle to get Him back. Yes, the church can quickly be brought into use by converting the narthex, which has a proper roof, into a church and leaving the leaking barn of a main building to later. But for this to make any sense the village needs a permanent priest, and not just a summer visitor or a missionary team from one of the seminaries, but a man – and perhaps more importantly his wife - ready to stay the course, including bitter winters and substandard health facilities. A man who does not just not do the services and expect people to come like that – as I rather expect the next village’s priest does – but one able to go out and engage with his potential flock, especially the younger ones.

It’s not a good photo, but it’s the only one I have, of the ordination of my friend Gaëtan as a priest in the RC church in Brussels last Sunday.

Gaëtan I know from taking him and another seminarian with me to Mount Athos two years ago.

It was a moving ceremony. What suddenly struck me, in this late 13th century cathedral, was a sense of continuity – that of all the thousands of ordinations over more than seven hundred years that have taken place here. A succession of commitment and faithfulness.

I’m not a 100% fan of Catholic liturgy, but little bits if the ordination part spoke to me strongly. Like when the ordinand places his hands in the hands of the presiding bishop who says : ‘May the Lord bring what he has begun to a good completion’. And the imposition of hands itself, where not only the presiding bishop, but the entire presbyteral body lays hands, one after another, on the ordinands. Or the way the vesting with the priest’s garments was done by lay-persons, in Gaëtan’s case by his parents. All little things, but which we Orthodox could learn from. They also have this delightful habit – perhaps more Belgian than Roman Catholic – of clapping politely when the ordination part is over. It expresses a real joy and gently lets out a bit of the tension in the air, and allows the mass to continue calmly.