Kevin Basil

O Lord and master of my life! Dispel from me the spirit of discouragement and slothfulness, of ambition and vain talk!
Prostration.

Instead, give me the spirit of prudence and humility, of patience and charity.
Prostration.

Yes, my king and Lord, let me look at my own sins and refrain from judging others: For you are bless’d unto ages of ages, amen.
Prostration.

Then, with three lesser reverences:

O God, have mercy on me, a sinner!
O God, in your mercy wipe out my sins!
I have sinned very often, Lord; forgive me!

Prayer text copyright © The Monks of New Skete.

Fr Ted Bobosh has some excellent background on fasting and what it means in the twenty-first century: Fasting: Curbing the Desires of the Heart.

I love that the rules for fasting were originally meant to curb ascetical showmanship and place fasting in a communal context of discipline and obedience.

We have been thrust out of the garden of paradise for our failure to see God through his creation. The world was meant to be transparent, a crystal clear window through which we saw God in all his splendor. Instead, we made the world an idol, and it became opaque. We can no longer see God through it.

Let us cleanse our minds through fasting.

Please forgive me, brothers and sisters, for all the evil I have committed against you.

I wish I could spend my time posting delicious recipes of our family’s fasting menu. Instead, I’ll be struggling with providing three different diets to my family (mine, [my eldest daughter]’s and everyone else’s which includes some serious Asperger’s-related food aversion issues). I guess I’ll write about the struggle. It’s just so NOT neat and tidy, so NOT well organized and so NOT perfect. Morning Coffee: I’m not READY!!!!!.

It sounds like you are ready.

According to a fellow traveler (a choir director whose late father was a prominent priest and whose brother is an archdeacon), in Russia if you cut out meat you are fasting.^[1] During the Christmas fast the refectory was not without a steady supply of hard-boiled eggs. (For the weak, of course. And I was so weak.)

In directed reflection on the purpose of the fast, one of our classes discussed the probability that the aim of all the ascetic struggle and lenten hymnody is to break down the delusion that we have done anything. If we keep the fast, we are accused of pride and self-righteousness. If we break the fast, we are accused of slovenliness. (And we all break the fast.) At the Pasch, Saint John Chrysostom’s preaching kills us:

You are welcome at the banquet anyway. You have not done anything to deserve the feast: That is the whole point. (Still, what do we do with the soiled wedding garment which we were to keep spotless? Or those Boy Scout virgins when we run out of oil? Or those frightening tales of burning trash heaps and lakes of liquid fire?)

The great fast not about getting anything right; that is why the Triodion^[2] begins with a contrast between a sinful tax collector and a religious zealot four weeks before Lent. The fast forces us to admit that we are broken and destitute without Christ, and Christ himself will give each of us what we need to bring us home.

sung at Psalm 50(51)
In Tone VIII:
Open the gates of repentance for me, O giver of life, * for at early morning my spirit seeks your holy temple * though the temple of my body remains defiled. * In your compassion, cleanse it with your loving kindness and your mercy.

Direct me back to the path of repentance, O Theotokos, * for I have defiled my soul with sin, and wasted my life in laziness. * By your prayers, preserve me from every impurity of soul and body.

Then, Tone VI:
Have mercy on me, O God, in your kindness, * in your great tenderness wipe out my sin.

And:
When I ponder the number of my sins, * the day of judgment looms before me. * But in your compassion do I trust, O Lord, * and, like David, I implore you: * Have mercy on me, O God, in your kindness.

These hymns are sung after the reading of the resurrection gospels on Saturday evenings. They are sung from the beginning of pre-lent until the end of the great fast (Lent). Pre-lent begins on the Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee, yesterday. Lent ends with the Saturday of Lazarus, marking the transition to holy week. This year, Lazarus Saturday is March 27. This year we see one of the earliest dates for Easter (Pascha) in the East. Easter falls on the same date in both Eastern and Western calendars this year. (This serendipity is a coincidence of the two formulas for determining the date of Easter and not, unfortunately, a sign of sympathy for union among the Orthodox.)

It has been almost a week since the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Carrefour (car-FOO), Haiti, just southwest of Port-au-Prince, the capital.

I suspect that my church’s charitable organization is funneling funds to other charities with resources on the ground in Haiti; this is good but not exactly efficient. With that in mind, here are some charities that already have resources in Haiti.

The easiest way to get some money to Haitian relief efforts is to pick up your phone and text “Haiti” to 90999. This will charge $10 to your phone bill and give it to the American Red Cross, which has had a presence in Haiti for 5 years. Twitter: @RedCross

Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) has been in Haiti since 1991. Twitter: @msf_usa

The New York Times Haiti Earthquake Recovery group on Facebook posted a list of the top ten most efficient charities in Haiti from Charity Navigator, a non-profit group dedicated to evaluating the effectiveness of charities and protecting donors from fraud and waste. Twitter: @CharityNav.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the efforts of several missionary friends of mine. Quisqueya Christian School in Port-au-Prince is still standing, miraculously. As a result, it has become a center for relief efforts. A nearby orphanage collapsed, and it is providing housing for the newly homeless orphans. It is also providing space for doctors to treat the many people wounded in the earthquake. Many of the staff lost homes and family and are living in tents on the football (soccer) field. There is a PayPal link on their webpage. Charity Navigator has not rated their effectiveness; I can only offer you my assurance that the people I know who run the school, as well as alumni, are of the highest caliber. They do not have a Twitter account.

A letter today from my church’s charitable organization strengthened my suspicion that they do not have their own resources on the ground in Haiti. I believe they are simply funneling funds and resources to other charitable organizations. This is good, because many people give to charities they know and trust without researching their capabilities and infrastructure. I hope this article provides you with other outlets, should you desire to make more efficient use of your donations.

(Aside: My thoughts are intended only for individuals trying to decide where to give their money. If your local parish is participating by collecting funds or necessary items, such as toiletries, please participate fully. If it is not, encourage your priest or pastor to organize something locally.)

Troparion, Tone I
When you were baptized in the Jordan, O Lord, * the worship of the Trinity was revealed to the world. * For the voice of the Father witnessed to you by calling you his beloved Son, * and the Spirit, in the form of a dove, confirmed the truth of his words. * O Christ, our God, * you have appeared to us and enlightened all the world. * Glory to you.

Troparion, Tone IV
Today, the Trinity, which alone is divine, * reveals itself to us in its unique, overflowing goodness. * The Father speaks from the heavens as the Son is baptized, * and the Holy Spirit, too, makes his presence felt. * And we who perceive all this by faith, cry out together: * Glory to you for revealing yourself to us, O our God.

Kondakion, Tone IV
Today, you have appeared to the world, O Lord, * and your light shines forth on us who sing your praises with understanding: * You have come, you have revealed yourself to us, O inaccessible light.

Jerusalem Troparion, Tone V
By revealing yourself to the world, * you made your light shine forth on all creation. * The salty sea of unbelief receded * and the Jordan carried us to heaven by turning back on its course. * By your lofty commandments, O Christ, our God, * preserve us through the prayers of the Theotokos, and save us.

Exapostilarion, Tone III
Our saviour comes to us this day: * In the flowing Jordan grace and truth reveals himself, * to enlighten with his brilliant light * those who languish in the dark, * for the light beyond our reach has appeared this day.

Please forgive me, dear readers. My email form has been borken for quite some time now, and I totally never knew it.

It’s fixed now.

Senator Al Franken, the junior senator from Minnesota and Saturday Night Live alumnus, recently introduced an amendment to the defense spending bill currently being debated in Congress.

Jamie Leigh Jones was drugged and gang-raped by her co-workers while she was working as a defense contractor in Iraq. She was drugged andWhen she reported the rape to her employer, she was locked in a storage container. Once she finally escaped and returned to the States, she was prevented from suing her employer, KBR, who was at the time a subsidiary of Halliburton, by a mandatory arbitration clause in her contract.

Franken’s amendment proposed to deny funds to defense contractors who required mandatory arbitration for “any claim under title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or any tort related to or arising out of sexual assault or harassment, including assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment, or negligent hiring, supervision, or retention.” (Text) As Jon Stewart said, in the video to your right: “Seems like a slam dunk.”

So, that it was not a slam dunk seems to me, on the face of it, absurd. Who would vote against a such a bill? It seems clear and obvious that this is for the common good, unequivocally. There’s no hidden agenda in this amendment. It’s all right there in black and white: If you are receiving government funds as a defense contractor, you have to make sure you prevent your employees from being raped or otherwise harmed for any reason.

Did I miss something? Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know why the thirty Republican senators sold their souls to Haliburton. It’s a rhetorical question.

And these are the people telling us that the poor don’t need health care. Somehow, I think this should not be a surprise.

In all, nine Republican senators “crossed the aisle” to vote for this amendment sponsored by Franken and nine other Democrats. Really, though, why would this not be a bipartisan, unanimous vote? Don’t answer that. It’s a rhetorical question.

In the video to the left, see Franken’s proposal of the amendment on the floor of the Senate.

A friend of mine from college posted a note on Facebook (which I will not repeat in its entirety) which wondered if there was an answer to the following dilemma, posed by Penn Gillette (of the comic magic act Penn & Teller): “‘If God, however you believe God, communicated to you that you were to kill your child, would you do it?’ And he says if your answer is no, then in his mind you are an atheist. If your answer is yes, in his mind you are dangerous and should stay away from him.”

The obvious allusion here is to Gn 22.1-18. My friend noted that we tend to interpret this text spiritually or typologically, seeing Abraham as a type of the Father and Isaac as a type of Jesus Christ, God the Son incarnate. “God did ask Abraham to do this with his son,” my friend writes. “And God the Father essentially did the same to his son.” But he also realized that, taken literally, anyone who tried this today would be incarcerated or institutionalized and his children would be taken away.

First of all, I don’t accept the image of God sacrificing his only son to satisfy his own hurt and bloodthirsty ego. God himself came down and sacrificed himself to free us from death. He subjected himself to this world of pain and want and misery and woe. There is a lot more to say there, but that is the short form. (More sophisticated treatments will, of course, invoke the holy Trinity, but let’s keep it simple for now.) Substitutionary atonement has precedents in Scripture and the fathers, but its formulation since Anselm of Canterbury and Martin Luther is deeply troubling to the theological tradition I work in.

Second, there is a lot going on in the story of Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son Isaac. I encourage you to read a wide variety of literature on the subject — not just devotional literature, either: Look at some scholarly treatments of this very difficult text. Gillette is not the first or only person — irreligious or pious — to question the morality of this story.

I’m neither a literalist nor an adherent of plenary-verbal inspiration; my thoughts may not resonate with you. To me, the most obvious thing going on is that the story is echoing some very disturbing practices in ancient Mesopotamia, or rather, some religious practices in ancient Mesopotamia (and Israel!) that we rightly find disturbing and difficult to fathom — in large part because of the Western ethical tradition formed by the Christian worldview. The Oxford Study Bible, in its note on Gn 22.2, says, “The earliest form of this story may have been directed against child sacrifice, proposing that the deity desires the substitution of animals.”

In its present form, of course, the play on child sacrifice is only a part of the story. As we have received it in Scripture, it has been recast as a morality play about absolute dependence upon God. The New Jerome Bible Commentary points out that, as with the story of Job, there is dramatic irony from the beginning: “The reader knows from the start what the protagonist does not: God is trying him.” It is the the final and ultimate test of Abraham’s fidelity. In this story, we see that Abraham at last has put aside all of his evading and bargaining. He is silently trusting in the will of God. This is no easy task: His own life is inextricably bound up with his son’s.

However, this story only truly makes sense in a world of sacrifice. And perhaps it only really made sense in a world of child sacrifice. Neither of those realities have any real punch for us today. It’s mystifying now, as literal fact. Which brings us to the other troubling notion: Did God literally ask Abraham to do this? I cannot bring myself to accept that God would ever ask such a thing. Poetically, it makes sense as dramatic irony, knowing that it is a test. But it’s a test I would fail — and I don’t even have kids.

I guess I’m an atheist by Penn’s adjudication. Hopefully his won’t be the final judgement on the matter.

No doubt, these reflections would be deeply unsatisfactory for Gillette — as they would be for most atheists. Gillette is absolutely right to question literal sacrifice of children in Scripture. We would do well to question more things in Scripture; maybe then we would collectively have a better understanding of what’s going on. There is no way to justify the murder of one’s own child — or any child, for that matter. We would do well to remember that we didn’t write Scripture — and God didn’t dictate it: He inspired it. Real men and women with real cultural biases which were very, very different from ours wrote Scripture. Our Scripture is not Koranic. And thank God for that.

A friend asked me to link to this site, entitled Orthodox Prayer. So, there you go. There are some very good resources there, though the design could use some aid.

Thanks to Wyn Morris, whose father died in the crash, for reminding me.

EARLY ON SUNDAY, AUG. 27, 2006, Comair Flight 5191 took off from the wrong runway at Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, crashing into trees and killing 49 of the 50 people on board. Many of the passengers were Central Kentuckians. Here you will find the Herald-Leader’s coverage of the crash and its aftermath, along with the stories of the victims and the lone survivor.

via the Lexington Herald-Leader.

The editors at the Chicago Manual of Style — the bible of choice for word nerds — have rapier sharp wits at times. For example:

Q. Is there a period after an abbreviation of a country if it is terminating a sentence? “I went to U.K..”

A. Seriously, have you ever seen two periods in a row like that in print? If we told you to put two periods, would you do it? Would you set your hair on fire if CMOS said you should?

via Chicago Style Q&A: New Questions and Answers.

Today, I received in the mail the notice that everyone in my house has been waiting for: I’ve been accepted at St Vladimir Seminary.

In my church on Easter we bring to church baskets overflowing with foods we forwent during Lent. The priest blesses these baskets full of meats and cheeses, butter and wine, and we exuberantly share the bounty with each other. It has become a personal tradition to include a pepperoni in my basket. One Easter a few years ago, I was enjoying slices of my pepperoni and offering chunks and slices to everyone in the parish hall. Then one of my dearest friends curled her nose at my offering. She squinted at me. “Basil,” she said, “how long have we been friends? What? Ten years? We’ve been friends for all that time, and you still don’t know that I hate pepperoni?” She may as well have told me she hates breathing. I mean, really: Who doesn’t like pepperoni?

My father is a retired Methodist minister. He and my mother now attend a rather large Baptist church in their rural Tennessee hamlet. To Catholics and Orthodox this is as surprising as learning that a delicatessen owner used to prefer pepperoni but, now that he is retired, he prefers salami. To evangelical Protestants, especially those from the rural South, this is akin to learning that the owner of a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise now hates chicken and spends all of his time with beef cattle farmers.

He has been asked by friends and colleagues why I am Orthodox. He tells them that I was always interested in liturgical expressions of faith, which to Baptists sounds like, “He’s always been interested in vegetarian expressions of meat.”

The food metaphor is apt, I think. By framing my faith as motivated by worship style, it becomes a question of taste. De gustibus non disputandum est. There is no disputing over taste, states an old medieval proverb. Like my friend who does not like pepperoni, there is no point in arguing whether you “like” something or not.

Because of the pluralism of our society, much of our discourse about our religious beliefs and practices is framed in the language of taste. If choosing between Jesus or the Dharma or the Tao is like deciding whether to have pizza, steak, or barbecued spare ribs this evening, then I am not hurt if you like Jesus and not the Tao, or even if you prefer your Dharma with a side of Yahweh and a light slice of Quran for desert.

If religion is a matter of the truth of things, that is, when believers act as if they are making statements about the way things really are, then people get hurt. No one likes it when people get hurt, right? And getting hurt reminds people about some very nasty things in the history of Western Christianity pursued under the name of religious truth: the Inquisition and the Crusades, for example.

People are especially likely to get hurt when they are told what to do. Pray this way. Do not eat that. Keep your sexuality pure and whole and simple. Despise not foreigners and weirdos. Give to the poor. Aid the lovelorn and the fatherless. Love unconditionally. The prescriptive nature of religion vexes the irreligious.

License is so much shinier than goodness. Who wants responsibility when you can do whatever you want? Well, teenagers, actually. An important effect of religion is just helping us to act like adults in the face of life’s nastiness. Keep religion no more important than a preference for pepperoni over salami, and no one gets hurt. But if it is not important, one wonders how religion gives meaning to anyone at all.