Now lettest thou thy servant....Nunc dimittis servum tuum domine,

[sufitom]

[edit: May 27, 2007...well, looking over this entry in 20/20 hindsight I wonder if I could use a little cheese with this whine. When I went to Liturgy this morning I realized why I was there and not in the Protestant church I had been going to for a number of years...the Eucharist. Duh! What a short memory I have. The Protestant minister asked me

Comments

[asakiyume]

A friend of mine who had a--what do we want to call it--direct experience of God, I guess, said to me that the love that God feels for us is so overwhelming and constant, that it's impossible for us to believe our good luck. How can God love us that much? When we can't even love that much? But God does. When she had this experience, she was aware of God's love coming from everything, every place she set her eyes on, and not just some generalized, pantheistic love, but absolutely intense and personal.

Its strange... there is still sadness in the world--she herself has been sad, since then, has had hard times; the memory of that time for her has even faded, just like for Mother Teresa--but still. I think of it. We simply cannot believe our good fortune.

I don't think this means the Orthodox view is unnecessarily complicated; I don't think it says anything about the rightness or wrongness of either approach, because churches are human communities, people coming together to love and worship God together... well, I'm rambling now... but anyway, this memory came to me when I read your entry.