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I have some comments posted on my brother’s website in three places.

www.robinphillips.blogspot.com/2007/08/thoughts-on-eastern-orthodoxy.html

www.robinphillips.blogspot.com/2007/08/infant-baptism.html

www.robinphillips.blogspot.com/2007/09/no-theology-without-tradition.html

theological response unit

tyranny response unit

interrelated dogmas

Before I was Orthodox, I called myself a Universalist.  Since then I have seen that so much of the paradigms from which Universalism springs are really intrinsically western, even if by way of reaction.  The following quotation is from the first book I read at during my first visit to a monastery.  It was given me by the Abbot as a recomendation.  Life After Death by Herotheos Napkakos.  He is bishop of a city in Greece.  The whole book will be posted on a link to the side in my blogroll for the next several days.

“The question of purgatory was the first to be discussed between the Orthodox and the Latins at Ferrara. The festive assembly of this Council began on the 9th of April, 1438, but the discussions took place later, in June of the same year. Among the existing differences betwen the “Churches” it was preferred to begin with the question of purgatory. The representative of the Latins, Cardinal Julian Caesarini, said that they should begin by first examining the Pope’s rule, that is to say, his primacy, but he considered it better to talk “about the purifying fire, so that we too might be purifed by the words about it”. St. Mark Eugenicus agreed with this view but he wanted to find out where the Latins acquired these traditions, how long they had believed them and just what their view was on this subject…The fire of hell is not corporeal, created, but uncreated. The light in the worthy is vision of God, says St. Mark. And of course this light is the uncreated glory of God. St. Mark also associates the uncreated light with the fire of hell. He says that the eternal fire is not corporeal, “as it is light for those worthy of the vision of it”. Analysing this view, he affirms that the saints of the Church take the eternal fire and unending punishment “rather allegorically”. It is a matter of allegory, because the light of the righteous is not corporeal, nor is the fire of the sinners created and corporeal. They are actual facts and true states, but not the states which we know from the world of the senses.Holy Scripture uses many images to indicate the condition of those punished, such as fire, worms, snakes and the gnashing of teeth. All these express other realities. By fire the saints mean ignorance of God: “that fire there should not be thought of as corporeal nor outer darkness as other than ignorance of God”. Of course when one speaks of ignorance of God, one means not participating in Him, since we realise that the sinners will see God, that is to say they will have a sight of God, but, not participating in Him, they will be ignorant of Him. Knowledge of God in the Orthodox Tradition is participation in God. The worm or some poisonous and flesh-eating genus of reptiles indicate the torment of the immoral by their conscience, and that bitter remorse. The gnashing of teeth means exactly the same, that is to say it indicates the grief, rage and bitter lamentation of those in conflict with themselves.It is clear then that where there is reference to fire in the ecclesiastical tradition, the eternal and uncreated fire is meant. This means that it is not a question of some temporary purifying fire, but of the experience of uncreated grace as fire because of one’s impurity. For just this reason it is not possible that there can be a purifying fire in the Latins’ sense…An interesting point in our study is to find the reasons that led the Latins to the teaching about the purifying fire. This is necessary, because, as we believe, the appearance of this teaching is not fortuitous.

We must point out that, as it appears from our study, the teaching about a purifying fire is an organic part of the Latins’ whole theology and is developed entirely within that atmosphere. So it is not a chance event, but a symptom of the theology of the West as it has been developed in the course of its severance from orthodox theology. We have already had occasion to look into this in previous analyses, but now we shall study it more extensively and analytically.

We can point out five factors which brought western theological thought to the teaching about a purifying fire.

First, the lack of a neptic theology. Western theology, by its withdrawal from orthodox theology, especially from the neptic tradition about purity of heart, illumination of the nous and the vision of God, prepared the way for the teaching about the purifying fire. This is said in the light of the fact that in the hesychastic-neptic theology of the Orthodox Church one speaks of the energy of God, which, as a fire, purifies man. In view of its action the grace of God also acquires a special name, it is called a purifying, illuminating and deifying energy. In other words, when the uncreated energy of God purifies a man it is called purifying, when it illuminates him it is called illuminating and when it deifies him it is called deifying. Christ Himself said: “I came to send fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” (Luke 12, 49). The Apostle Paul writes: “For our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12, 29). St. John of the Ladder, expressing the whole neptic tradition on this subject, says that we experience the grace of God first as fire, a flame, and then as light. The supracelestial fire, when it comes to dwell in the heart, sets some people ablaze because of the insufficiency of their purification and illuminates others “according to the degree of their perfection”. This same fire is called “both a consuming and an illuminating fire”. Therefore some have come from their prayer as if from a flaming furnace, feeling relieved from uncleanness, and others, when they have finished their prayer, feel as if they were coming out illuminated and had put on the garment of lowliness and rejoicing. At another point St. John of the Ladder says that we take great pains until God’s fire enters into our sanctuary, our heart. God, who is a fire, consumes “all lusts, all stirrings of passion, all predispositions, and all hardness of heart, and darkness both within and without, both visible and spiritual.” Generally, the whole ecclesiastical tradition speaks of the fire which enters the heart, that is to say the uncreated grace of God which one feels in one’s heart burning up the passions. This fire is uncreated, that is to say, it is the uncreated grace of God, which burns up the passions, purifies the heart, and therefore is called the purifying grace, and this takes place during a man’s struggle to be cured. It is essentially the first stage in the spiritual life. Likewise this same fire, the purifying grace of God, will work in those who have fallen asleep who have entered the stage of purification but have not had time to be purified…

Since the Latins had lost the neptic theology and did not experience these states empirically, they misunderstood the patristic texts. They were certain that the texts of Holy Scripture and the holy Fathers are speaking of a fire which purifies a man, and that this continues even after death for those who have already entered repentance, the stage of purification; and since they did not have spiritual experience of this teaching, they misinterpreted the patristic passages. Thus they came to speak of a created fire of punishment, through which men will pass. But it is clear that the term has another meaning in orthodox patristic teaching.

A second reason for the appearance of the teaching about the purifying fire is the identification of essence and energy in God, which has brought about many evils in the West. From orthodox theology we know well that God has essence and energy. If the essence is uncreated its energy is also uncreated, if the essence is created, then also its energy is created. The essence of God is uncreated, and so we say that His energy is uncreated. Love, peace, justice, and so forth are energies of God, which are certainly not impersonal, but personal, since it is impossible for energy to exist without a person, by reason of the fact that he who acts is the person. This theological truth protects us from many dangers and from heretical deviations. This distinction is not made in the West. The scholastic theologists, in their effort to maintain the simplicity of God and at the same time to keep intact the distinction between God and the world, identify God’s energy with His essence, calling Him `actus purus’ (pure energy), and at the same time consider the providential and saving energy of God as created. In this way God, according to western theology, has no actual relationship with the world in His uncreated energy, but only through created means and created energies. But this teaching impairs the whole basis and content of man’s salvation. If we examine carefully all the differences between the Orthodox Church and that of the Latins, we shall be convinced that they are due to this crucial theological question. Precisely this also appears in the teaching of the Latins about the purifying fire. At first they speak about the experience of the purifying fire, which is created, since God has no direct communication with created things, and as a result they speak of the vision of the uncreated essence of God by those who have been purified. That is to say, when men have passed through the purifying fire, they reach the vision of the essence of God. But this teaching, apart from the others, inasmuch as it speaks of salvation, necessarily removes the distinction between created and uncreated, between nature and grace.

In the Orthodox Church, however, salvation is identified with man’s participation in the uncreated deifying grace and energy of God. Here salvation is real and God remains God.

Third, the teaching about the purifying fire is a consequence of the whole Franco-Latin tradition as it is expressed by the so-called scholastic theology. Actually, as we have also said before, scholastic theology, which disengaged itself from the empirical, hesychastic and neptic theology of the Orthodox Church, has done a great deal of harm in the West.

According to Western theology, which was based on St. Augustine, the ancestral sin is inherited from Adam by all the descendants, and God’s justice has condemned all mankind to Hell and prescribed the penalty of death. Therefore, according to the Franco-Latin tradition, hell and death are a punishment by God and not an illness, as the Orthodox Church teaches.

As a consequence of this teaching, the Franco-Latins were led into the theory of punishment and a purifying fire. The Franks, since they believed that the punished do not see God, considered the fire of hell as created. It is in this light that we must see Dante’s Hell, where the sinners will be tormented by the created fire of Hell. Thus the Franco-Latins imagine the world as three-storeyed, made up of the unchanging heaven for the fortunate, the changing earth for the testing of men and the changing underworld for those punished and being purified.

Of course the Franco-Latins, as we have said before, also speak of the vision of the essence of God by the righteous and the purified. In other words, by their grace and their reason, those saved will see God and the archetypes of beings, which exist in Him. By this vision of the divine essence the souls will be released from desire, passion, and changing, and so will become unchangingly happy. Needless to say, the Orthodox Church does not accept these views, since the achetypes of beings do not exist in God. God creates, foresees and saves the world by His uncreated energy.  Likewise the Franco-Latins did not understand apophatic theology correctly; they took it more as a theology of conjecture. In Orthodox theology the glory of God is put in terms of opposites: light and dark, fire and darkness. The first antithesis is about the glory of the righteous, the second is about the state of sinners. These antitheses are used not because antitheses exist in God, but in order to express the truth that there is no likeness between the uncreated glory of God and created things. In any case these presuppositions of the Franco-Latins led western theologians into a teaching about a purifying fire, by which the sinners and penitents will be punished so that in that way they may attain the vision of the essence of God. Therefore we maintain that the Latins’ dogma about a purifying fire is not independent of the basic structures of the scholastic theology of the West.

A fourth reason is the Latins’ teaching about satisfying divine justice. According to Anselm of Canterbury the requirement to punish man and the requirement to save him are a necessity of the divine nature. Contrary to the teaching of the Fathers, who speak of sin as an illness and salvation as God’s love, through which a man’s cure is achieved with his own cooperation, Anselm speaks of offending God’s justice and of atoning for it.

Such a view on the part of the Latins about man’s salvation was subsequently to lead them to the teaching about the purifying fire, to the teaching about man’s punishment so that God might be appeased. Naturally this teaching distorts the whole spiritual life, since it makes it a commercial transaction and sets up relations of offended and fallen.

A fifth cause of the appearance of the teaching about the purifying fire is the politico-economic connection of Popery. Since the Franco-Latins lost the empirical theology of the eastern Church and disengaged themselves from the neptic-hesychast tradition of the Orthodox Church, it was natural for them to fall into anthropocentric conditions. The feudalistic conception of the composition of the community, the passion for building and economic rise, the clash with the political authority, and so forth, contributed to the dogma of a purifying fire. In this way too the people are held down, but the “Church”is helped in the reconstruction of buildings. The connecting of the purifying fire with material offerings brought the people’s disenchantment with the Popery. It is said that the purifying fire, the so-called purgatory, was invented for the completion of the temple of the Apostle Peter in Rome and the upkeep of the Papal palace. But it must be observed that the dogma of the purifying fire was not invented simply to exploit the people, because, as we have said before, it is in line with the Franco-Latins’ scholastic theology. Nevertheless it was used for economic reasons as well.

After this analysis we can end with the following conclusion. Just as Orthodox theology constitutes a unity – I would say a circle -and when one approaches a point on the circle one meets the whole circle, the same is true also in Franco-Latin theology. All of its novel dogmas are interrelated and are defined on the same basis. This means that the loss of hesychastic theology and the discarding of therapeutic and empirical theology, have brought many evils to the West. The dogma of the purifying fire is not unrelated to the loss of the teaching about the inseparable distinction of essence and energy in God. The purifying fire is a fruit and result of the scholastic theology of the Franco-Latins and has no relationship to Orthodox theology as Christ taught it, the Apostles lived it and the holy Fathers handed it down to us.”

Stephen and Patrick

Ganser and Chomsky: my email exchange with Chomsky

I’ve been quite impressed with the work of Dr. Daniele Ganser.  I’ve been blogging about him and included an interview.  Yesterday I emailed Noam Chomsky to ask if he was aware of Ganser’s work and what he thought of it.  This morning there was an email waiting in my box from Chomsky himself (the man we learn about in linguistics who coined the grammatically correct, yet nonsensical, sentence colorless green ideas sleep furiously.)   Chomsky has remained staunchly anti-conspiratorial after 9/11, even when credentialed people have come out in support of an alternative analysis.  For this reason, I suspected he might look less favorably on Ganser’s work.  I was pleasantly surprised to receive the email back from from Chomsky praising Ganser’s work.

Here is the email I sent:

Dear Mr. Chomsky,
Have you read Nato’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe by Swiss Historian Dr. Daniele Ganser?  If so, I would like to know what you think about
these stay-behind structures that subverted the politics from within.

Dr. Ganser is now teaching a class on 9/11 at Zurick University.  A related question would be why this man is so little known in the  United States, even in left-leaning
circles?

thank you for your time.

patrick

 The reply was: 

“I know Daniele Ganser’s work, and know him personally a little too.  The work is
outstanding and important, and he is a careful scholar who should be taken very
seriously.  Why is he so little known?  In the mainstream, because his conclusions do not
conform to preferred doctrine.  But the left should compensate for that, or at least try.
 I’ve cited him often in books, but that hasn’t made a dent.”

NC

It is sometimes very frustrating for me because I try to study hard, and do study hard, but tend to have headaches when I spend a lot of time in the books.  This propensity for headaches has actually kept me from taking classes in the past.  I have a good indication that—over time—this problem will become less and less (just as the headaches now are not as severe as two years ago), but right now it is something that is annoying—sometimes very annoying, espeically when you have two weeks to memorize the International Phonetic Alphabet.  People try to give me aspirin.   Actually the one thing that really helps is Billberry and my Mom buys me a lot of this.       

     The people I admire most are those people who remain calm even when difficulties and stresses come there way.  This is my goal.  In yoga we are taught to cultivate both kinds of energy: hot and cold.  Truly in life this is what is needed.

more about this website

This website is pretty chill.  It is a way to get me used to blogging.  Right now I certainly don’t have time to write the kind of in-depth social and political analysis I hope to one day.  I have alerted various friends and family members who coalesce around me.  Aside from one word from a friend from church named Mike saying ”thanx” in an email, my mother was the only one to express any kind of excitement or interest in my new site or even to acknowledge its existence.  Other than those two people, not one single word to the news that I now have a website.  Since  then I have had almost 100 hits (the website doesn’t count my own hits),  and I really have no idea who may be visiting this site.  But knowing my audience will definitely help me gear the blogging in certain directions.  Some people I know say I spend too much time in politics.  But this comes from a surface reaction that is far from accurate.  Most of my posts so far have been concerned with health and with religion.  Will the readers of this website please stand up? 

the miracle of the Holy Fire

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“On Holy Saturday believers gather in great crowds in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. For on this day fire comes down from Heaven and puts fire on lamps in the Church.” Thus one reads in one of the many Easter itineraries to the Holy Land.

“The Miracle of the Holy Fire” by Christians from the Orthodox Churches is known as “The greatest of all Christian miracles”. It takes place every single year, on the same time, in the same manner, and on the same spot. No other miracle is known to occur so regularly and for such an extensive period of time; one can read about it in sources as old as from the eighth Century AD. The miracle happens in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, to millions of believers the holiest place on earth. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre itself is an enigmatic place. Theologians, historians and archaeologists consider the church to contain both Golgatha, the little hill on which Jesus Christ was crucified, as well as the “new tomb” close to Golgatha that received his dead body, as one reads in the Gospels. It is on this same spot that Christians believe he rose from the dead.

One can trace the miracle throughout the centuries in the many itineraries to the Holy Land. The Russian abbot Daniel, in his itinerary, written in the years 1106-07, in very detailed manners presents the “Miracle of the Holy Light” and the ceremonies that frame it. He recalls how the Patriarch goes into the Sepulchre-chapel (the Anastasis) with two closed candles. The Patriarch kneels in front of the stone on which Christ was laid after his death and says certain prayers, upon which the miracle occurs. Light proceeds from the core of the stone a blue, indefinable light which after some time kindles closed oil lamps as well as the two candles of the Patriarch. This light is “The Holy Fire”, and it spreads to all people present in the Church. The ceremony surrounding “The Miracle of the Holy Fire” may be the oldest unbroken Christian ceremony in the world. From the fourth century AD all the way up to our own time, sources recall the awe-awakening potent. From these sources it becomes clear that the miracle has been celebrated on the same spot, on the same feast day, and in the same liturgical frames throughout all these centuries. One can ask, if it would happen also in the year 1998.

In order to find out, I travelled to Jerusalem to be present at the ceremony in which the Miracle of the Holy Fire occurs, and I can testify that it did not only happen in the ancient Church and throughout the Middle Ages but also on the 18th of April, 1998. The Greek-Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Diodorus I, is the man who every year enters the tomb to receive the Holy Fire. He has been the Patriarch of Jerusalem since 1982 and thereby is the key-witness to the miracle. Prior to the ceremony of this year the Patriarch received us in private audience, where I had the opportunity to speak with him about the miracle in order to know exactly what happens in the tomb and what the miracle means for him personally in his spiritual life. Furthermore I was through his intervention admitted to the balconies in the dome of the Holy Sepulchre Church, from where I had a fine view over the masses that had gathered around the tomb in anticipation of the “Great Miracle of the Holy Fire”.

But what exactly happens in the Holy Sepulchre Church on Easter Saturday? Why does it have such an impact on the Orthodox Tradition? Why does it seem as if nobody has heard anything about the miracle in the Protestant and Catholic countries?

One of the Most Famous Ceremonies in the Orthodox Church

The miracle occurs every year on the Orthodox Easter Saturday. There are many types of Orthodox Christians: Syrian, Armenian, Russian and Greek Orthodox as well as Copts. In the Holy Sepulchre Church alone there are 7 different Christian Denominations. The Orthodox Easter-date is fixed according to the Julian Calendar, and not the usual Western European Gregorian calendar, which means that their Easter normally falls on a different date than the Protestant and Catholic Easter.

Since Constantine the Great built The Holy Sepulchre Church in the middle of the fourth century it has been destroyed many times. The Crusaders constructed the Church that we see today. Around Jesus tomb was erected a little chapel with two rooms, one little room in front of the tomb and the tomb itself, which holds no more than five people. This chapel is the centre of the miraculous events, and being present at the celebration fully justifies the term “event” for on no other day of the year is the Holy Sepulchre Church so packed than on Easter Saturday. If one wishes to enter it, one has to reckon with six hours of cueing. Each year hundreds of people are not able to enter due to the crowds. Pilgrims come from all over the world, the majority from Greece but in recent years increasing numbers from Russia and the former Eastern European Countries.

In order to be as close to the tomb as possible, pilgrims camp around the tomb-chapel, waiting from Holy Friday afternoon in anticipation of the wonder on Holy Saturday. The miracle happens at 2:00 PM, but already around 11:00 AM the Church is a boiling pot.

Festival

From around 11:00 AM till 1:00 PM the Christian Arabs sing traditional songs with loud voices. These songs date back to the Turkish occupation of Jerusalem in the 13th Century, a period in which the Christians were not allowed to sing their songs anywhere but in the Churches. “We are the Christians, this we have been for centuries and this we shall be for ever and ever. Amen!” they sing at the top of their voices accompanied by the sound of drums. The drum-players sit on the shoulders of others who ferociously dance around the Sepulchre Chapel. But at 1:00 PM the songs fade out and after there is silence, a tense and loaded silence electrified by the anticipation of the great manifestation of the Power of God that all are about to witness.

At 1:00 PM a delegation of the local authorities elbows through the crowds. Even though these officials are not Christian, they are part of the ceremonies. In the times of the Turkish occupation of Palestine they were Moslem Turks; today they are Israelis. For centuries the presence of these officials has been an integrated part of the ceremony. Their function is to represent the Romans in the time of Jesus. The Gospels speak of Romans that went to seal the tomb of Jesus, so his disciples would not steal his body and claim he had risen. In the same way the Israeli authorities on this Easter Saturday come and seal the tomb with wax. Before they seal the door it is customary that they enter the tomb to check for any hidden source of fire, which could produce the miracle through fraud. Just as the Romans were to guarantee that there was no manipulation after the death of Jesus, likewise the Israeli Local Authorities are to guarantee that there be no trickery in 1998.

The Testimony of the Patriarch

When the tomb has been checked and sealed, the whole Church chants the Kyrie Eleison (Lord have mercy). At 1:45 PM the Patriarch enters the scene. In the wake of a large procession he encircles the Tomb three times, whereupon he is stripped of his royal liturgical vestments, carrying only his white alba, a sign of humility in front of the great potent of God, to which he is about to be the key witness. All the oil lamps have been blown out the preceding night, and now all remains of artificial light are extinguished, so that most of the Church is enveloped in darkness. With two big candles the patriarch enters the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre first into the small room in front of the tomb and from there into the tomb itself.

It is not possible to follow the events inside the tomb, so I asked the patriarch of Jerusalem, Diodorus, about the center of the events.

“Your Beatitude, what happens when you enter the Holy Sepulchre?”

“I enter the tomb and kneel in holy fear in front of the place where Christ lay after his death and where he rose again from the dead. Praying in the Holy Sepulchre in itself is for me always a very holy moment in a very holy place. It is from here that he rose again in glory, and it is from there that he spread his light to the world. John the Evangelist writes in the first chapter of his gospel that Jesus is the light of the World. Kneeling in front of the place where he rose from the dead, we are brought within the immediate closeness of his glorious resurrection. Catholics and Protestants call this Church “The Church of the Holy Sepulchre”. We call it “The Church of the Resurrection”. The Resurrection of Christ for us Orthodox is the center of our faith. In his resurrection Christ has gained the final victory over death, not just his own death but the death of all those who will stay close to him.

“I believe it to be no coincidence that the Holy Fire comes on exactly this spot. In Matthew 28:3, it says that when Christ rose from the dead, an angel came, dressed all in a fearful light. I believe that the striking light that enveloped the angel at the Lord’s resurrection is the same light that appears miraculously every Easter Saturday. Christ wants to remind us that his resurrection is a reality and not just a myth; he really came to the world in order to give the necessary sacrifice through his death and resurrection so that man could be re-united with his creator.

Blue Light

“I find my way through the darkness towards the inner chamber in which I fall on my knees. Here I say certain prayers that have been handed down to us through the centuries and, having said them, I wait. Sometimes I may wait a few minutes, but normally the miracle happens immediately after I have said the prayers. From the core of the very stone on which Jesus lay an indefinable light pours forth. It usually has a blue tint, but the color may change and take many different hues. It cannot be described in human terms. The light rises out of the stone as mist may rise out of a lake it almost looks as if the stone is covered by a moist cloud, but it is light. This light each year behaves differently. Sometimes it covers just the stone, while other times it gives light to the whole sepulchre, so that people who stand outside the tomb and look into it will see it filled with light. The light does not burn I have never had my beard burnt in all the sixteen years I have been Patriarch in Jerusalem and have received the Holy Fire. The light is of a different consistency than normal fire that burns in an oil lamp.

“At a certain point the light rises and forms a column in which the fire is of a different nature, so that I am able to light my candles from it. When I thus have received the flame on my candles, I go out and give the fire first to the Armenian Patriarch and then to the Coptic. Hereafter I give the flame to all people present in the Church.”

The Symbolic Meaning of the Miracle

“How do you yourself experience the miracle and what does it mean to your spiritual life?”

“The miracle touches me just as deeply every single year. Every time it is another step towards conversion for me. For me personally it is of great comfort to consider Christs faithfulness towards us, which he displays by giving us the holy flame every year in spite of our human frailties and failures. We experience many wonders in our Churches, and miracles are nothing strange to us. It happens often that icons cry, when Heaven wants to display its closeness to us; also we have saints, to whom God gives many spiritual gifts. But none of these miracles have such a penetrating and symbolic meaning for us as the miracle of the Holy Fire. The miracle is almost like a sacrament. It makes the resurrection of Christ present to us as if he had died only a few years ago.”

While the patriarch is inside the chapel kneeling in front of the stone, there is darkness but far from silence outside. One hears a rather loud mumbling, and the atmosphere is very tense. When the Patriarch comes out with the two candles lit and shinning brightly in the darkness, a roar of jubilee resounds in the Church, comparable only to a goal at a soccer-match.

The Miracle Leads to Faith

The miracle is not confined to what actually happens inside the little tomb, where the Patriarch prays. What may be even more significant, is that the blue light is reported to appear and be active outside the tomb. Every year many believers claim that this miraculous light ignites candles, which they hold in their hands, of its own initiative. All in the church wait with candles in the hope that they may ignite spontaneously. Often closed oil lamps take fire by themselves before the eyes of the pilgrims. The blue flame is seen to move in different places in the Church. A number of signed testimonies by pilgrims, whose candles lit spontaneously, attest to the validity of these ignitions. The person who experiences the miracle from a close distance by having the fire on the candle or seeing the blue light usually leaves Jerusalem changed, and for everyone having attended the ceremony, there is always a “before and after” the Miracle of the Holy Fire in Jerusalem.

Unknown in the West

One can ask the question why the Miracle of the Holy Fire is hardly known in Western Europe. In the Protestant areas it may to a certain extent be explained by the fact that there is no real tradition for miracles; people dont really know in which box to place the miracles, and they dont take up much space in newspapers. But in the Catholic tradition there is vast interest for miracles. Thus, why is it not more known? For this it only one explanation suffices: Church politics. Only the Orthodox Churches attend the ceremony framing the miracle. It only occurs on the orthodox Easter date and without the presence of any Catholic authorities. By certain Orthodox this evidence proves the notion that the Orthodox Church is the only legitimate Church of Christ in the world, and this assertion obviously may cause certain apprehensions in Catholic circles.

The Question of the Authenticity of the Miracle

As with any other miracle there are people who believe it is fraud and nothing but a masterpiece of Orthodox propaganda. They believe the Patriarch has a lighter inside of the tomb. These critics, however, are confronted with a number of problems. Matches and other means of ignition are recent inventions. Only a few hundred years ago lighting a fire was an undertaking that lasted much longer than the few minutes during which the Patriarch is inside the tomb. One then could perhaps say, he had an oil lamp burning inside, from which he kindled the candles, but the local authorities confirm to have checked the tomb and found no light inside it.

The biggest arguments against a fraud, however, are not the testimonies of the shifting patriarchs. The biggest challenges confronting the critics are the thousands of independent testimonies by pilgrims whose candles were lit spontaneously in front of their eyes without any possible explanation. According to our investigations, it has never been possible to film any of the candles or oillamps igniting by themselves. However, I am in the possession of a video filmed by a young engineer from Bethlehem, Souhel Nabdiel. Mr. Nabdiel has been present at the ceremony of the Holy Fire since his early childhood. In 1996 he was asked to film the ceremony from the balcony of the dome of the Church. Present with him on the balcony were a nun and four other believers. The nun stood at the right hand of Nabdiel. On the video one can see how he films down on the crowds. At a certain point all lights are turned off it is time for the Patriarch to enter the tomb and take the Holy Fire. While he is still inside the tomb one suddenly hears a scream of surprise and wonder originating from the nun standing next to Nabdiel. The camera begins to shake, as one hears the excited voices of the other people present on the balcony. The camera now turns to the right, whereby it is possible to contemplate the cause of the emotion. A big candle, held in the hand of the Russian nun, takes fire in front of all people present before the patriarch comes out of the tomb. With shaking hands she holds the candle while over and over making the sign of the Cross in awe of the potent she has witnessed. This video appears to be the closest one gets to an actual filming of the miracle.

Miracles cannot be proved

The miracle is, as most miracles are, surrounded by unexplainable factors. As Archbishop of Tiberias Alexios said when I met him in Jerusalem:

“The miracle has never been filmed and most probably never will be. Miracles cannot be proved. Faith is required for a miracle to bear fruit in the life of a person and without this act of faith there is no miracle in the strict sense. The true miracle in the Christian tradition has only one purpose: to extend the Grace of God in creation, and God cannot extend his Grace without the faith on behalf of his creatures. Therefore there can be no miracle without faith.”

No theology without tradition

http://robinphillips.blogspot.com/2007/09/no-theology-without-tradition.html

 If anyone knows who the Ikon is of that Robin has posted on his article, I’d enjoy knowing.

almonds for almond milk

I have been enjoying Bob’s Redmill Cream of Buckwheat cereal every morning for breakfast, which I sprinkle with four tablespoons of hempseeds.  Recently I came across a recipe for almond milk which looked really interesting.  So I went out to buy almonds at my local Co-op.  I found that the organic almonds were almonds 20 dollars a pound.  One cup cost me 9 dollars.  The cashier informed me that this was because of the great die-off of bees around the country.  But the almond milk was the best I’d ever made and I was very pleased.  The recipe called for four cups of water to one cup of almonds, soacked overnight, two dates for sweetener, and half a teaspoon of vanilla.  The next day I went to Whole Foods to see if they had any conventional almonds that were a reasonable price.  They did.  And a new notice was put on all the bulk almond containers informing customers that as of Sep 1st 2007, a new FDA law required  all almonds to be steamed before going to market.  This is in effect pasturization of almonds and makes even less sense than pasturizing cows milk.  In what sense can we then say that these almonds are raw?  The point of making your own almond milk is to keep the vital nutriants intact. 

 I settled for brazil nuts and I have to say that milk this morning was extremely tasty.

Berlitz classes

Having just finished a two month long Spanish class at Portland’s Berlitz language school, I wanted to meditate for a while on what a great school is Berlitz.  I have truly men some wonderful people, some of which have become amigos of mine and even seeing each other sometimes outside of class at social events.  Berlitz has classes all over the world and offer study abroad opportunities.  One of my compañeros is a Romanian man who has a girlfriends in Mexico city.  His name is Valentino and he goes to Mexico city a lot.  His girlfriend is the secretary to the Mexico city Berlitz school.  Berlitz classes cost less than University courses and if one travells outside the United States often the classes are even less expensive than in the United States.  It is great for travellors who often find it difficult to find people to speak to.  One of the things I like about Berlitz is the constant interaction with speakers of other languages.  I have now had two Spanish teachers.  One class from a Cuban man and another from a Mexico man.   I hear the difference between the two types of Spanish.  Very different.  Beacuse the vowells are pretty much the same wherever you go in the Spanish speaking world, there is not so much variation as with English accents, but still enough to notice in the consonants and the intonation.  And my Spanish class at PSU is with someone from south America.  What have I learned?  That I prefer Mexican Spanish the least.  This is unfortuante because many people from Mexico speak very good Spanish.  But those people don’t come here.  They stay in Mexico.

linguistics post #1

So what did I learn in linguistics class today? To spell?  Not exactly.

There are many field of linguists.  One of the things linguists look at his how certain words unconsciously invoke certain meanings.  For example, in advertising: chereos and checks are names of cereals and they are meant to make us think of the word cereal without even realizing it.  Why do new brands of perfumes have certain sounds?  What about tampax?  Why wouldn’t this be a good brand name for a cereal?  It actually was invented as a brand name to invoke a few different words.

In our native languages we don’t think about word order.  We instinctively say, “The three old Spanish guitars,” rather than “the old three Spanish guitars.”  We have unconscious rules about order of adjectives, such as numbers first and nationality last—as in this example.  These unconscious rules are just a much a part of native English speakers weather or not they can explain them or are even aware of them.  It is part of their inherited grammar.  However…as inate as these rules are, these rules still can bump up against reality sometimes.  When we go to order at Starbucks, having these rules of adjective placement unconsciously in mind, we might say to the barista, “I’d like a double late, no cream, grande, iced frapaccino” or whatever.  That’s probably not a very good example, but you get the idea.  A lot of adjectives that we make decisions about where to place based on what sounds right, just like we instinctively say “three old Spanish guitars” rather than “old three guitars Spanish.”  It bumps up against reality, though, because Starbucks has there own order which is Universal, universal to any Starbucks.  And it makes sense for them.  They always put the word “decaf” first because that is the last thing they can afford to forget.  Similar considerations center around weather the drink is hot or cold.

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.  This sentence actually is grammatical.  Even though it is nonsense, it could be a sentence just like the word “blick” could be an English word but “blocksp” could not.

gulags in America

As the Bush regime continues the construction of huge detention facilities throughout this country, it may be aprapo to meditate on the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn.  When is enough enough?

 And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling in terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst; the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!”
- The Gulag Archipelago

our deepest fear

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

desert fathers

I saw the snares that the enemy spreads out over the world and I 
said groaning, “What can get through from such snares?” Then I 
heard a voice saying to me, “Humility.” 

St. Anthony the Great 
When anyone is disturbed or saddened under the pretext of a good 
and soul-profiting matter, and is angered against his neighbour, 
it is evident that this is not according to God: for everything 
that is of God is peaceful and useful and leads a man to humility 
and to judging himself. 

St. Barsanuphius the Great 

Pie Jesu

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3496602003945397070&q=sarah+brightman&total=2700&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1

St. Irenaeus

Irenaeus, writing in the 2nd century about apostolic succession.

“As I said before, the Church, having received this preaching and this faith, although she is disseminated throughout the whole world, yet guarded it, as if she occupied but one house. She likewise believes these things just as if she had but one soul and one and the same heart; and harmoniously she proclaims them and teaches them and hands them down, as if she possessed but one mouth. For, while the languages of the world are diverse, nevertheless, the authority of the tradition is one and the same” (Against Heresies 1:10:2 [A.D. 189]).

“That is why it is surely necessary to avoid them [heretics], while cherishing with the utmost diligence the things pertaining to the Church, and to lay hold of the tradition of truth. . . . What if the apostles had not in fact left writings to us? Would it not be necessary to follow the order of tradition, which was handed down to those to whom they entrusted the churches?” (ibid., 3:4:1).

…

“It is possible, then, for everyone in every church, who may wish to know the truth, to contemplate the tradition of the apostles which has been made known throughout the whole world. And we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the apostles and their successors to our own times—men who neither knew nor taught anything like these heretics rave about.

“With this church, because of its superior origin, all churches must agree—that is, all the faithful in the whole world—and it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the apostolic tradition” (ibid., 3:3:1–2).

operation gladio

When confronted with the idea that 9/11 might be an inside job, many people instinctively say, “Our government just wouldn’t do something like that.”  This a-priori objection is put to rest, however, by a new book by Swiss historian Daniel Ganser called “Nato’s Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe.”  He shows how our government has carried out many false-flag attacks against friendly countries in the past, and then blamed them on official enemies.  Dr. Ganser is now teaching a class on 9/11 at his University in Zurick.  This man’s research is breathtaking and yet hardly known in the United States, even in left-learning circles.  His research is important because it offers a precedent to 9/11, as well as a more complete understanding of the cold war.  There is also a three-part BBC documentary about Operation Gladio on google video.  Here is a link to an interview with Dr. Ganser which is a good overview of his work.  I am very glad that his current research is going in the direction of 9/11.

http://www.danieleganser.ch/interviews/pdf_05/EIR_Interview_Gladio_and_911_08.04.05.pdf

Ron Paul slams helicopter “drop money from the sky” Ben

This from prisonplanet:  

Ron Paul has slammed Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke for deliberately depreciating the value of the dollar to artificially bail out Wall Street while poor and middle class people lose their homes and have their living standards lowered.

During a Banking Committee hearing on Capitol Hill today, the Texas Congressman confronted Bernanke and accused the Fed of trying to solve the problem of inflation with more inflation by creating artificially low interest rates that have no effect because of the dollar’s weakness.

Paul questioned how it could ever be morally justifiable to deliberately depreciate the dollar and pointed out the fact that the dollar collapse was a deliberate policy on behalf of the Fed.

this website

I appreciate the friends and family members who have started viewing this site.  Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to write the kind of in-depth analysis I would like.  Occasionally I will post interesting things, things to do with my linguistics class.  But this website will be pretty chill, kind of like an online journal. This is also an opportunity to get used to maintaining a website so that when, in the future, I do have something more serious—it will not be so difficult.  And if ever I started worrying about spelling, I would never write anything.

Yoga with Paul

I think this short clip on U-tube of Yoga with the ex-Beatle is really great!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00XqvNwYMoc

Hymn for the Unsung

Ariel Dorfman wrote these words for the first gulf war, but they are aprapo.  This essay Hymn for the Unsung is featured in his book Other Septembers.  One of the purposes of my website is to raise consciousness.  One of the ways we do that collectively is to begin looking in the mirror—

Somewhere in the Saudi Arabian desert, an American corporal is reading Moby Dick. He is reading Melville’s novel, a newspaper reports, in order to “understand what drives people toward destructive obsessions,” concentrating above all on Ahab, “how he kept after the whale” – and wondering if “he was like Saddam Hussein.”  

How typically American, I thought from my third world perspective, this need to understand the enemy one is fighting – as American as his pathetic incapacity to achieve that understanding. Saddam as Ahab might fit neatly into the current interpretation of the Iraqi leader as a madman, irrationally pursuing his own downfall in spite of all warnings – but the corporal did not apparently seem interested in stopping to ask who the whale might be in this equation or what the whale might have done to Saddam, which parts of his body and mind had been devoured, to make him act with such abandon.  Because if Saddam is indeed Ahab, the clues to his present behavior might fruitfully be searched for in the past, a search that I doubt the corporal or his fellow Americans are particularly interested in. Instant amnesia seems to have infected the people of the United States as they devastate a country that a few months ago hardly any of them could find on a map. It is easier to conceive of Saddam as Satan – a personification of evil substituting for historical explanation. No need to ask what has been done to the Arabs – as to so many other third world peoples – that makes them feel so humiliated, enraged, threatened, alienated, that a tyrant such as the Iraqi leader can manipulate those feelings to turn himself into their representative.

No need to ask why there is a power vacuum in the Middle Eastthat this dictator, like others who will come, thinks he can fill. No need to remember that before this Ahab there was Mossadegh, an elected Iranian leader who nationalized oil and was overthrown with the help of the CIA in 1953. The autocrat who replaced him with a puppet was, of course, the shah. When the shah was in turn swept away by Khomeini’s Islamic Revolution, Iraq was encouraged to arm itself to the hilt in order to contain the Iranian menace. Iraq expanded this mandate into a savage war, with America’s blessing (and European and Soviet assistance), all human-rights violations and gassing of Kurds winked at, all condemnations blocked, until some years later when the U.S. ambassador would give Saddam Hussein the go-ahead for the invasion of Kuwait.

But what if Saddam is not Ahab?  How can it be that this young man who faces death so far from his home should be unable to catch even a glimmer of the possibility that Saddam might be the whale and that George Bush might in fact be an Ahab whose search for the monster in the oceans of sand and oil could end up with the ruin, not of the monster, but of those who were bent on its extermination?  Saddam Hussein, of course, is not unique as a monster. He is as monstrous as General Augusto Pinochet, who, having been brought to power by US intervention against an elected democratic government, victimized my own people for seventeen years. And Iraq’s aggression against Kuwait is as monstrous as the aggression of the United States against Nicaragua and Panama, against Grenada and Vietnam, as monstrous as the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. And Saddam Hussein’s lobbing of missiles at civilians in Israel is as monstrous as the Israelis’ bombing of refugee camps in Lebanon. For the corporal, or the American people, to understand Saddam Hussein in these terms, as one who has been selectively and conveniently demonized, would necessarily mean condemning their own country’s complicity and participation in the pervasive evils of the world today. It would mean seeing the adventure in the Persian Gulf not as a struggle for democracy – which the United States has eroded all over the world by propping up friendly torturers – but as one more sad intervention in the affairs of a region that it knows nothing about, one more step toward the militarization of a world that should be disarming. It would mean denying America’s own morality in a conflict that once again finds a superpower technologically assaulting a poor third world country, no matter how well armed it may be. It would mean that the true connection of Iraq to Vietnam should be made: that the war in the Gulf is being used to refight the war in Indochina with far more lethal weapons – rewriting that American crisis and defeat, proving how it could have been won, having at last the “good war” the Pentagon has been seeking all these years with a single mindedness that would have astounded even the crew of the Pequod. These connections, alas, are not being made. Pursuing their reflection in the Gulf, Americans are blind to the true meanings of their actions. It is not, however, only their own image that Americans cannot decipher in the nightmare waters of this war.

Not far from the American corporal musing on Moby Dick there is an Iraqi corporal. I know nothing about him, except that he breathes not many miles away and all too soon will be as close as a bayonet thrust, and not even that intimacy of combat will bring closeness or comprehension. It is the very fact that he is nameless, that he has no face, that no newspaper has told us his thoughts, that we have no way of knowing what Moby Dick, what Melville of his own culture, he reads in the darkness, what blindness of his own he is submerged in, the fact that his being is a blur that we must imagine; it is the stark fact of his very absence from our awareness that prepares his death. How easy to kill somebody we don’t have to mourn because we never dared to imagine him alive. I want neither Saddam Hussein nor George Bush to win the war in the Gulf. I wish that both of them could be defeated. But I anticipate that these two, Ahab and the whale, the whale and Ahab, George Bush and Saddam Hussein, will emerge unscathed, and that it will be their people who will have to pay for this absurd conflagration. It will be the two corporals who will pay, even if they survive, even if they are not shattered for life, they will be the ones, along with their children, who will pay endlessly for a war that nobody desires and that everybody seems so eager to fight.  

Or has the world itself Ahab, suddenly gone mad?

ORTHODOX PSYCHOTHERAPY

The following words were written by a Bishop in Greece named Glakos.  He is a very intresting theological writer and very prolific, with books translated into English.  He says that heresy can only be understood in the context of spiritual sickness.  Since the church is primarily a hospital which cures, heresy is that which deludes or waters down the medicine.  In the Eastern Tradition, theology is not seen as ideas but as means to curing the soul.  Heresy is not a wrong ideas as much as the wrong medicine.  The fathers of the church are good doctors and are entrusted with keeping the medicine pure.  Glakos says that the person who has attained vision of God is the theologian par excellence.    There is a link to the side to a website that has some of his books completely posted for free.  I want to make it clear, though, that there is also the work of Fr. John Romanity.  Although I think Fr. John’s work is interesting, I do not necessarily subscribe to his historical conspiracy theories.

Here is an example of some of Glakos’ writings— Many interpretations of Christianity have been formulated and many answers given to the questions: What is Christianity and what is its mission in the world? Most are not true. In what follows we shall seek to make it quite clear that Christianity, and especially Orthodoxy, is therapy. We shall also try to describe what therapy is and how it is attained…It is clear that Christianity is principally a science which cures, that is to say, a psychotherapeutic method and treatment. The same should be said of theology. It is not a philosophy but mainly a therapeutic treatment. Orthodox theology shows clearly that on the one hand it is a fruit of therapy and on the other hand it points the way to therapy. In other words, only those who have been cured and have attained communion with God are theologians, and they alone can show Christians the true way to reach the `place’ of cure. So theology is both a fruit and a method of therapy…

And this precisely is the work of Orthodox theology. When referring to Orthodox theology, we do not simply mean a history of theology. The latter is, of course, a part of this but not absolutely or exclusively. In patristic tradition, theologians are the God-seers. St. Gregory Palamas calls Barlaam a theologian, but he clearly emphasizes that intellectual theology differs greatly from the experience of the vision of God. According to St. Gregory Palamas theologians are the God-seers; those who have followed the “method” of the Church and have attained to perfect faith, to the illumination of the nous and to divinization (theosis). Theology is the fruit of man’s therapy and the path which leads to therapy and the acquisition of the knowledge of God.

Babar’s Yoga for Elephants

 this book review is from www.santosha.com.  Unfortunately, there are no pictures online of Babar doing yoga.   

by Laurent de Brunhoff

Babar narrates this lighthearted guide to yoga for pachyderms (and people). He begins by explaining that archeologists working in a cave near Celesteville recently discovered ancient drawings revealing that woolly mammoths not only practiced yoga they invented it. Since then, yoga has become “tremendously popular” in Babar’s hometown; it “helps us all to relax and draw strength from our inner elephant.” In straightforward prose, this thoroughly relaxed elephant outlines yoga movements, stretches and exercises to improve balance and to strengthen the back and stomach. (Yoga lovers will recognize his opening Salutation to the Sun, and all that follow, as the real McCoy.)

Though these instructions include playful touches (at one point Babar notes, “I find wrapping my trunk around my feet helps to stretch”), aspiring yoga practitioners can easily follow de Brunhoff’s directives and imitate the movements in his signature watercolor renderings of the earnest narrator. A comical concluding sequence of pages shows Babar and pals putting their yoga positions to the test as they stretch in the airport during a delay, relax on the median at Times Square or imitate landmarks (e.g., a Head Stand in the Place de la Concorde next to the obelisk; a Standing Head to Knee in Venice’s Piazza San Marco). This diverting volume conveys de Brunhoff’s passion for his subject both the star and his practice. All ages.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.