The Worst Dream Ever
I just had it. I fell asleep helping Isaac take his morning nap, and I ended up taking a nap myself. The dream was utterly terrible, full of betrayl of the worst kind, and not worth detailing.
Next stop, computer. I logged into the Orthodox Writer's group that Frederica invited me to join. There are a lot of BIG NAMES (at least to me) in this group. People like Jim Forest, Scott Cairns, and Sam Torode, in addition to Frederica and numerous novelists, editors of major publishing houses, etc. It's an incredible opportunity to network, learn from others, and be edified. Well, amongst ourselves we'd started talking about sin and how it is that we're responsible for all sin committed by humankind, not just our own volitional sin.
Frederica posted this absolutely awesome quotation from Garrison Keillor's broadcast story "Letter from Jim". The context is that a man who is bored in his marriage is waiting for a co-worker to pick him up for a business trip, someone he is thinking he might begin an affair with.
...I thought, "So this is what adultery is like. Simple." I sat down in the front yard under our spruce tree and waited for her to pick me up...
I believe that men and women can part for many reasons, including the lack of love and appreciation. I left my parents for my wife because she appreciated me and they didn't. Twenty years later I sit in my own front yard, waiting to join a woman who appreciates me more. But in five years, or six, or eight, will I go to a higher bidder? What happens when I'm older and my grade falls? Who do I choose when I'm old and can't run fast and nobody chooses me? I sat there in the front yard and thought, "So this is what adultery is like. It's just horsetrading."
As I sat on the lawn looking down the street, I saw that we all depend on each other. I saw that although I thought my sins could be secret, that they would be no more secret than an earthquake. All these houses and all these families, my infidelity will somehow shake them. It will pollute the drinking water. It will make noxious gases come out of the ventilators in the elementary school. When we scream in senseless anger, blocks away a little girl we do not know spills a bowl of gravy all over a white tablecloth. If I go to Chicago with this woman who is not my wife, somehow the school patrol will forget to guard an intersection, and someone's child may be injured. A sixth-grade teacher will think, "What the hell", and eliminate South America from geography. Our minister will decide, "What the hell, I'm not gonna give that sermon on the poor." Somehow my adultery will cause the man in the grocery store to say, "To hell with the health department. This sausage was good yesterday, it certainly can't be any worse today."
Between this quotation and The Worst Dream Ever, the lesson has been hammered home.
Although I try to make conscientous decisions about where my dollar goes and what I do in my spare time, I must agree with another writer on the forum, a novelist who's Christian name is Katherine Grace, who contributed this to our conversation,
When I was on the Orthodox Converts list, before becoming Orthodox, it came up that women who had had miscarriages were encouraged to go to confession -- and that there were post-miscarriage prayers that involved forgiveness of the woman. I was rather incensed, having had a miscarriage myself in 1994. I certainly didn't feel that I'd done anything to wilfully lose that baby.
But through our discussions it came to me that sin is not just those occasions when we say, "I don't care if it's wrong; I'm doing what I want." It's not even necessarily the taking of a direct action. Sin is simply the fallenness of creation: the ways that nature "doesn't work" the way it was designed to anymore.
I used to participate in a lot of boycotts (I am boycotting Walmart right now, but that's not so hard as there isn't one in my town). In the 70's I boycotted Nestle for starving children in 3rd world countries by telling the women not to breasfeed; I boycotted ARCO for giving money to Planned Parenthood; I attempted to boycott all Chinese goods because of their persecution of Christians; I tried not to buy anything that may have been made in a sweatshop. And I actually feel guilty writing this because I've stopped doing most of those boycotts. And I want to shop responsibly, I really do. But it comes to me that everything we touch is tainted. We get into our cars and pour noxious fumes into the air; we eat food slaughtered under cruel conditions; we vote and the ones we vote for either support the killing of innocent preborn babies, or the killing of already-born babies in wars.
"There is none righteous, no not one." I'm starting to get it. It's not about me. Or rather, it's not all about me. It's about us as a community on this earth. Sin is communal. We only think it's individual. Like in that excerpt from Garrison Keillor.
This isn't all I'm trying to say because in my brain I put miscarriage (and most physical maladies) in a different category from "small thoughtless action" sins. But maybe it's not. I think what I came to understand was that confessing after miscarriage would be a way to say, "I know things weren't originally intended to go this way." (Rather a bold thought, since we're always told miscarriages are "natural")
I know what it is! It seemed obscene to me to confess to something I'd had no control over! And that's where our fallenness had gotten us. Sin poisons humanity and we have no real control over it. It's why we need God. God empowers us to take small, deliberate actions that can start the detoxification process.
So, whatever it is I'm supposed to get from this weekend's womens' retreat (which I still have yet to bake the prosphora for), I think I may just know what I'm supposed to give.
Next stop, computer. I logged into the Orthodox Writer's group that Frederica invited me to join. There are a lot of BIG NAMES (at least to me) in this group. People like Jim Forest, Scott Cairns, and Sam Torode, in addition to Frederica and numerous novelists, editors of major publishing houses, etc. It's an incredible opportunity to network, learn from others, and be edified. Well, amongst ourselves we'd started talking about sin and how it is that we're responsible for all sin committed by humankind, not just our own volitional sin.
Frederica posted this absolutely awesome quotation from Garrison Keillor's broadcast story "Letter from Jim". The context is that a man who is bored in his marriage is waiting for a co-worker to pick him up for a business trip, someone he is thinking he might begin an affair with.
...I thought, "So this is what adultery is like. Simple." I sat down in the front yard under our spruce tree and waited for her to pick me up...
I believe that men and women can part for many reasons, including the lack of love and appreciation. I left my parents for my wife because she appreciated me and they didn't. Twenty years later I sit in my own front yard, waiting to join a woman who appreciates me more. But in five years, or six, or eight, will I go to a higher bidder? What happens when I'm older and my grade falls? Who do I choose when I'm old and can't run fast and nobody chooses me? I sat there in the front yard and thought, "So this is what adultery is like. It's just horsetrading."
As I sat on the lawn looking down the street, I saw that we all depend on each other. I saw that although I thought my sins could be secret, that they would be no more secret than an earthquake. All these houses and all these families, my infidelity will somehow shake them. It will pollute the drinking water. It will make noxious gases come out of the ventilators in the elementary school. When we scream in senseless anger, blocks away a little girl we do not know spills a bowl of gravy all over a white tablecloth. If I go to Chicago with this woman who is not my wife, somehow the school patrol will forget to guard an intersection, and someone's child may be injured. A sixth-grade teacher will think, "What the hell", and eliminate South America from geography. Our minister will decide, "What the hell, I'm not gonna give that sermon on the poor." Somehow my adultery will cause the man in the grocery store to say, "To hell with the health department. This sausage was good yesterday, it certainly can't be any worse today."
Between this quotation and The Worst Dream Ever, the lesson has been hammered home.
Although I try to make conscientous decisions about where my dollar goes and what I do in my spare time, I must agree with another writer on the forum, a novelist who's Christian name is Katherine Grace, who contributed this to our conversation,
When I was on the Orthodox Converts list, before becoming Orthodox, it came up that women who had had miscarriages were encouraged to go to confession -- and that there were post-miscarriage prayers that involved forgiveness of the woman. I was rather incensed, having had a miscarriage myself in 1994. I certainly didn't feel that I'd done anything to wilfully lose that baby.
But through our discussions it came to me that sin is not just those occasions when we say, "I don't care if it's wrong; I'm doing what I want." It's not even necessarily the taking of a direct action. Sin is simply the fallenness of creation: the ways that nature "doesn't work" the way it was designed to anymore.
I used to participate in a lot of boycotts (I am boycotting Walmart right now, but that's not so hard as there isn't one in my town). In the 70's I boycotted Nestle for starving children in 3rd world countries by telling the women not to breasfeed; I boycotted ARCO for giving money to Planned Parenthood; I attempted to boycott all Chinese goods because of their persecution of Christians; I tried not to buy anything that may have been made in a sweatshop. And I actually feel guilty writing this because I've stopped doing most of those boycotts. And I want to shop responsibly, I really do. But it comes to me that everything we touch is tainted. We get into our cars and pour noxious fumes into the air; we eat food slaughtered under cruel conditions; we vote and the ones we vote for either support the killing of innocent preborn babies, or the killing of already-born babies in wars.
"There is none righteous, no not one." I'm starting to get it. It's not about me. Or rather, it's not all about me. It's about us as a community on this earth. Sin is communal. We only think it's individual. Like in that excerpt from Garrison Keillor.
This isn't all I'm trying to say because in my brain I put miscarriage (and most physical maladies) in a different category from "small thoughtless action" sins. But maybe it's not. I think what I came to understand was that confessing after miscarriage would be a way to say, "I know things weren't originally intended to go this way." (Rather a bold thought, since we're always told miscarriages are "natural")
I know what it is! It seemed obscene to me to confess to something I'd had no control over! And that's where our fallenness had gotten us. Sin poisons humanity and we have no real control over it. It's why we need God. God empowers us to take small, deliberate actions that can start the detoxification process.
So, whatever it is I'm supposed to get from this weekend's womens' retreat (which I still have yet to bake the prosphora for), I think I may just know what I'm supposed to give.