Kevin Basil

It’s great to be home. I just want to say that. I have approximately one year left in the Navy, and I can’t wait to come back here for a much longer period.

I just signed up with Twitter, which is a micro-blogging site. I can also sync it up with Facebook status updates. My twitter username thingie is kevinbasil.

I CAN HAZ LIFE NOW?

When I finally gave up hoping that my Jeep would be returned to working condition in what I would have previously considered a timely fashion, I stopped paying exorbitant fees for taxicabs and learned how to use the local public transit, which is primarily buses. Greg is a friend from Boston who uses public transit there exclusively, and he promised I would find it liberating. Although I miss the freedom of a private vehicle (no word yet on the Jeep), his promise has been fulfilled in a very spiritual sort of liberation:

I no longer fret or steam over traffic snarls. I typically leave one and a half to two hours before liberty expires, and I must be on the ship. Further, someone else is in the driver’s seat. It is their problem, not mine.

I have completed reading several books (today makes three by my count) — a feat I had not accomplished since February 4, 2004 (yes, that fateful day). I have started many, but finished none.

These are, of course, the two books recommended by my spiritual father and the other, related title, which I mentioned previously. Since my internet connection is currently hampered by my abysmal financial condition, I will collect offline my thoughts on each text individually and then post them here.

Clearly, this is liberty of a different sort. As a citizen of the United States, I am accustomed to imagining liberty, especially when associated with traveling about, with freedom to: to move, to go where I wish right now, or in exactly thirty-five minutes, to get there faster or slower, and so forth. But my newly discovered liberty is precisely a freedom from: from the need to be dominated by my desires to roam, from the entanglement with traffic, which tends toward my agitation, from slavery to an object that, as we speak, is demonstrating that its value will have an end.

And it feels good to be free.

I’m now on Facebook, which I can already tell I will like a lot better than myspace. I got a nice warm fuzzy when I saw it used php instead of coldfusion, then I saw that a lot of people that I already know have Facebooks. (Apparently, that’s the semantically correct way of referring to one’s profile.) After reading a New York Times article about Facebook, I was a little nervous that I would seem old and creepy. This was short-lived, as I found that many of my meatspace friends already have Facebooks.

I have been advanced to Sonar Technician Second Class. A second class petty officer is equivalent (by paygrade) to Sergeant in the Marine Corps or ArmySergeant in the Marine Corps or Army. Since, iIn the submarine force, the engineering rates all arrive at the boat as third class petty officers, because of their nuclear training, and most forward rates are fairly close to third class, as well. And, depending on one’s rate, third class advancement percentages can be fairly high. As a result, third classes are sometimes treated rather like seamen in the sub force. Second class, I’m already finding, is where more responsibility is truly given and expected.

We are going underway again, very soon. (That is why I have not posted very much here lately.) We will make a stop in Mayport in the middle of two weeks of midshipman ops and in Port Canaveral towards the end of the underway. Apparently, there is a rumor that we may see the Great and Elusive Swim Call, thought by some to be only a mythical beast.

Sign up on the mailing list to get updates from sea.

Having reached the end of the introductory writings that accompany this “critical edition” of Brother Lawrence, as well as the Eulogy written by his original publisher, Joseph Beaufort, I will report: Brother Lawrence was an extremely intelligent and insightful monk who was raised with a minimum of education. He was able to write, but he was not a scholar. His method indicates a familiarity with the patristic consensus as it would have been understood by a Discalced Carmelite of the seventeenth century. His writing is consistent with the fathers, but he does not quote them.

He was beloved by Archbishop Fénèlon, who was implicated in the Quietist controversy of the seventeenth century. Fénèlon’s Maxims of the Saints and other writings were condemned by the pope as Quietist. It would be interesting to see an objective discussion of Quietism from an Eastern Orthodox perspective — one free of any anti-Roman rancor.

The Eulogy is rather saccharine and bears unfortunate similarity to medieval and Byzantine hagiography, without the fantastic embellishments of miracles and asceticism which stretch credulity and remove the subject from the realm of the mundane in which the reader lives. The editors include it because it represents an honest, if stylized, portrait of Brother Lawrence by one of his peers and the man who (most likely) originally published the writings which we have preserved.

Next, I hope to report on some actual writing by the monk himself.

I am going on a blog sabbatical. I am not speaking of a rest from writing; I need a break from reading blogs so I can read something enduring. It has been a long time since I read a hardcopy book, and I have been given several recommendations by my spiritual father: The Practice of the Presence of God, by Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, a Discalced Carmelite of the seventeenth century, and The Mountain of Silence by Kyriakos Markides, about his encounters with a monk from Mount Athos. Along with these, I purchased and hope to read Scott Cairns’ Short Trip to the Edge about his pilgrimage to Athos.

I hope to find some time to write about these here, but I need to stop reading the ceaseless torrent of blogging to get there.

Joyous feast! (S’prazdnikom / С праздником!)

To all my brothers and sisters at Saint Athanasius, I miss you very much, and I’m sorry I was not present for the first ever liturgy on the land.

Tropar hymn, Tone III

Like a pillar of orthodoxy you supported the church with your teaching, O holy hierarch, * refuting the nonsense of Arius by insisting that Father and Son share the same nature. * O venerable father, beg Christ, our God, to grant us his great mercy.

Kondak hymn, Tone II

When you sowed the teaching of true faith and cut away the weeds of falsehood, * you made the seeds sprout forth in great abundance by the showers of the spirit. * For this, we sing your praises, Athanasius, holy father.

I had two wonderful posts written. I killed them both inadvertently (ie, by my own stupidity).

These are the results of some quizes I’ve taken recently. I think the Five Love Languages result really explains why I’m so messed up. I need physical touch and quality time and get neither.

Are you a non-conformist?

You Are 80% Non Conformist

You are a pretty serious non conformist. You live a life hardly anyone understands.
And while some may call you a freak, you’re happy with who you are.

Blogthings - Are You a Nonconformist?

The Five Love Languages

My primary love language is probably
Physical Touch
with a secondary love language being
Quality Time.

Information

Unhappiness in relationships, according to Dr. Gary Chapman, is often due to the fact that we speak different love languages. Sometimes we don’t understand our partner’s requirements, or even our own. We all have a “love tank” that needs to be filled in order for us to express love to others, but there are different means by which our tank can be filled, and there are different ways that we can express love to others.

Take the quiz

The confession of faith. For many, it is the most memorable part of reception into the Church, especially if it is accompanied by a renunciation of errors. Listen to this recollection by my godfather:

When our youngest, Clare, read the oath, “This true faith of the Orthodox Church, which I now voluntarily confess and truly hold, that same I will firmly maintain and confess, whole and unchanged, even until my last breath, God helping me. And I will teach and proclaim it, insofar as I am able. And I will strive to fulfill its obligations with zeal and joy, preserving my heart in good deeds and blamelessness. In witness of this, my true and pure-hearted confession, I kiss the Word and Cross of my Savior. Amen,” her voice rang clear and pure. She was a good reader and did not stumble in the least - either over the difficulty of some words, much less the boldness of what she was saying. You could hear the echo of the many child martyrs the Church has known through the ages. Somehow all of us felt embarrassed by the purity and sincerity of her words - purity that older men and women rarely have any longer.

Read the rest: A Last Minute Word to Catechumens « Glory to God for All Things

I do not recall making a profession of faith. Shocking? I wish I had, to be honest. I would speculate that perhaps the fact that we had already been Orthodox in theology and liturgy provoked an economical decision, but later catechumens in our parish were likewise not required to make this confession. I do not know why, really. We certainly were not asked to make so sacramental an act as kissing the cross and the Bible as a seal of our pledge to confess and hold and firmly maintain the Orthodox faith until our death.

I wish I had. I am having no thoughts of apostasy, mind you. But I have been thinking about my place in this vast, Byzantine symphony we call the Church. I think all converts spring back eventually from their initial zeal and fervency. And I have been missing some things about my past. Call it nostalgia. I have no intention of leaving the Church, but it would be nice to point back to such a profession, to a kiss and a vow, and remind myself, “I promised.”

Or, Have I Unlearned Everything Doctor Hurlow Taught Me in Advanced English Composition?

Earlier today, I was helping my brother write an essay for his application package to a film school in Nashville, Watkins Film School. I discussed basic strategies for structuring an essay, such as the inverted triangle introductory paragraph with thesis, three points with a paragraph each, and summary conclusion. Other structures could be found, but we don’t have time for a seminar in creative writing. His first draft is full of promise, but it lacks structure. So I commended him for having great ideas but assured him that every writer revises his work several times. As I said this, I realized that blogging has changed my writing habits, and I determined that something should be done about it.

When I first started blogging almost five years ago, I was very happy for the opportunity to write nearly every day. Professional writers often say that a daily habit is crucial to developing and nourishing good writing skills. That has slipped over the years. Many of my recent posts are simply passing along links to other sites. Other posts are short complaints or status updates. Writing is no longer something I do daily. I want to change that.

As I discussed structure with my brother, I realized that I usually give very little thought to structure in my articles. Perhaps logical development has become a habit for me, such that structure is completely natural. If that is the case, contemplating the structure of my articles will only strengthen my writing style and ability. As I thought about structure, I realized that I am poorly versed in other possible structures, other than the inverted triangle of journalism. I want to change that, too.

Most importantly, I wondered if this slovenliness has caused my writing to be less powerful and interesting than it could be. In turn, this prompted me to think about whether my content is interesting or useful to my readers. Google Analytics data shows that nearly 75% of my visitors are reading my site for the first time. Only 25% of those who read my writing think it is interesting enough to return. My top hit is a spooky car advertisement video; it may be asking too much to expect more than 25% of its visitors to return when the rest of my site is about Orthodox Christianity and miscellanea. This area needs more examination, but I want to change it, too.

I intentionally wrote this article with the basic structure I spoke of earlier. The goal was to give it a structure — any structure — as an exercise in writing. I want to change some things about my writing, and frequency, structure, and content are good places to consider improvement. We shall see if it produces any changes in my site statistics.

Several years ago, my parents told me about eHarmony.com. They heard about it on James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, and they thought it might be useful as a way to find someone. I was initially hesitant but eventually saw the intelligence of matching people based on personalities and interests. It took several years to overcome my continued reluctance. For some reason, I finally decided tonight was the night.

I just struggled through completing their personality profile questionnaire. I find personality profiles to be difficult, though they are often revealing and helpful once you put forth the effort. At the end, I was told that they could not match me.

You read that correctly. eHarmony has a company policy of refusing to try to match persons who are unlikely of being matched. Although I was surprised that they have a policy of refusing certain cases, I was not surprised that they thought I was difficult to match.

Depending on what day you test me on, I’m an INFP or an INFJ, according to the Myers-Briggs personality inventory (which uses Jung’s archetypes but is, of course, quite different). Both of these personalities occur in less than one percent of the population, so it’s quite understandable that I would be difficult to match.

A couple of friends (all Orthodox, with similar personalities — there’s a correlation there, I think) told me they had the same experience with eHarmony. One told me that her friend was more fortunate. After signing up with eHarmony, she began receiving hundreds of matches.

Can you imagine?

This sounds familiar, not because I was gay and now I’m notstruggled with same-sex attraction and now I’ve found a balance (I’ve always been straight), but because this is why I became Orthodox (I was Roman Catholic at the time). Of course, most Orthodox parishes would never have treated me the way I was treated at St. Athanasius, so I would still be Roman today if it weren’t for Fr. D. and Matushka R.

So, if this pricks you about how you treat those with same-sex attraction, excellent. But it may also prick you about how you treat anyone at all.

I care about this so much because I wouldn’t be Christ’s today if it were not for the friendship and love of the Christians in my first Anglican parish, people who knew I was a gay activist, didn’t agree with me about gay sex, and loved me anyway. They knew I had homosexual sex and that I believed it was fine – and they disagreed with me. But they nevertheless invited me to their cookouts, car washes, sporting events, school plays, pot lucks…the whole joyful, chaotic mess of parish and family life and as our friendships deepened they showed me they loved me.

And they told me their stories too. They told me about their own past drug use, their own previous abortions, their own prior womanizing, and their own previous struggles with the Faith and its demands. In short, they made it clear to me that the church universal is a hospital for sinners far more than it is a penthouse for saints.

This was crucial because prior to coming to Trinity, I used to believe that Christians would treat me…well, much as the New Oxford Review appears to believe they should have.

I had a little box of prejudices in which I put “Christians.” Christians, I believed, hated and feared me. Christians would not want to have anything to do with me. Christians believed I could not be trusted with their children.

Read the whole article: Sed Contra: What? Befriend Those People?!

After being given a light rebuke by my priest last year over my observance of the fast (or the lack thereof), I’m trying again to observe the fast with renewed zeal. This evening, I’m enjoying a bowl of vegetable soup with croutons, a pbj sandwich, and a glass of Gumdale 2005 Shiraz, an Australian vinter I’ve never heard of before. Oh, perhaps that last is not totally lenten. Anywho. I read it on the web.

You see from that Google search above that most everyone who had something to say about the Gumdale 2005 shiraz had something bad to say. Frankly, it does what I wanted: Provide a decent, inexpensive table wine. In reality I wanted a Rosemount Estates shiraz, but there were none that I could find. I really miss Liquor Barn.

This evening at vespers, we hear for the first time these words:

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

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

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.

With each of these verses, we make a prostration. Then after the service, we prostrate ourselves before each other and ask forgiveness, because forgiveness of each other is a prerequisite for forgiveness from God, as our Lord taught us.

I have duty today, and I am far away from the people I most need to ask forgiveness. (I could not be in all those places at once, anyway.)

Please, my brothers and sisters, forgive me, a sinner.

Appropriately, the choir sings the paschal stichera hymns during the forgiveness rite:

Today is the day of resurrection, let us be illumined by the feast, let us embrace one another joyfully and let us call brothers even those that hate us. Because of the resurrection let us pardon all and let us sing:

Christ is risen from the dead, conquering death by death, and upon those in the grave bestowing life.

This past Wednesday was Saint Valentine’s Day. Do you remember the story of St. Valentine’s life? (The correct answer is, “Which story? There’s so many to choose from.” In second place is, “He’s not on the Roman calendar anymore, silly.”) So, anyway, I was reminiscing on the year that I dyed my hair black (all of it, eyebrows and goatee included), painted my fingernails (I wanted black for that, too, but had to settle for dark gray, as it was all Chris had) and wore all black to school. (Few souls at the Christian college got the joke; most just thought I was being weird. One professor told me I looked like Rasputin!) Then I did the math and realized I must have done that in 1997 — which would be ten years ago.

My (second) senior year of college was ten years ago. I am old.

Much prior to my Valentine’s reminiscence, I attended Theophany services at my home parish. Having met my new priest a year prior at the parish in Oak Ridge, about an hour from my parents’ home, I was able to meet his wife and son. But not the coming arrival she bears within her. As father welcomed me and my traveling companion into the house, matushka^[1] walked out of the kitchen — barefoot and pregnant. (I let her know I wouldn’t forget it. She’s highly educated, so I hope she took it well and wasn’t offended!)

Watching her care for their young son during services on her own, I imagined what things will be like once there’s two. In fact, I kept thinking about it while I was underway for about two and a half weeks.

It takes a very strong woman to be a priest’s wife. During the services, while the priest is completely occupied with the prayers and rituals of the church, she carries the burden of a single mother. It strikes me that the Roman Catholic practice of requiring celibacy of priests is a mercy towards would-be priests’ wives. By freeing priests to focus entirely on service to the Lord, the Roman Catholic Church saves women from marriages to double-minded men.^[2]

The price of both is high. But it seems to me that prospective Orthodox priests have a heavy burden when they decide whether to be married or not.

I’m back on land (and I have been for a few weeks now).

I moved in with my brother upon arriving in Norfolk; he’s an airman at Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Center (METOC). This has been cool and a little stressful, too. Not because we’re having any friction, but because I have a lot of stuff in boxes from moving that I keep trying to move around, like a game of Tetris that I’m about to lose because there’s no room left.

While out at sea, I received my silver dolphins. (Readers of the mailing list already know this.)

More to come on the mailing list. I’ll return to my eccentric reflections on the meaning of all things once I get some movement going in organizing my stuff.