I'll let the cat out of the bag...

Okay, this has been a hard week, especially with the loss of our good friend Derek due to a sudden heart attack Wednesday morning in South Africa. This is the closest loss like this that I have known. He was much like a brother to me in many ways. May his memory be eternal and may God Himself be with Heather and their child coming into the world! All you praying friends, please do remember them...

It's also been a full week with various projects on the go, and some humour would really be great right about now. Derek would have understood this... everybody knew he was charming, but also extremely funny in his own way... the phone calls with various ethnic accents.... That said, I don't know how funny what follows actually is. More likely just unusual and maybe mildly amusing.

Some time ago... well, November, was National Novel Writing Month. This little event has been around five years or so and attempts to get people to write a novel in one calendar month. This year our friend Victoria was encouraging everybody to get on board. So I gave it the old college try, getting no more than a short story out there... perhaps inkling towards a chapter someday should I ever look at this again. Anyway, this is loosely based upon a true story. Enjoy them Grand Ducals first!

Am I a Cotton-Headed Ninny-Muggins too?

After Victoria's great post about Christmas movies, I got to thinking about one of my favourites... Martin the Cobbler. Krista hasn't seen it yet, but we were talking with our friends Jeff and Shannelle about it Tuesday night over a thrilling game of CLUE, which I haven't played in at least a decade. I was Professor Plum! Anyway, Martin the Cobbler is pre-California Raisins (1977) claymation. And an amazingly beautiful story. I first heard about it from Dr. Charles Nienkirchen (who is not at all Cotton-Headed but perhaps a bit of a Ninny-Muggins), my intrepid former teacher and then friend & colleague at the Nazarene College in Calgary. Thanks Charles!

Another gem from Met. Anthony...

"The word ‘humility’ comes from the Latin word humus which means fertile ground. To me, humility is not what we often make of it: the sheepish way of trying to imagine that we are the worst of all and trying to convince others that our artificial ways of behaving show that we are aware of that. Humility is the situation of the earth. The earth is always there, always taken for granted, never remembered, always trodden on by everyone, somewhere we cast and pour out all the refuse, all we don’t need. It’s there, silent and accepting everything and in a miraculous way making out of all the refuse new richness in spite of corruption, transforming corruption itself into a power of life and a new possibility of creativeness, open to the sunshine, open to the rain, ready to receive any seed we sow and capable of bringing thirtyfold, sixtyfold, a hundredfold out of every seed."
- Metropolitan Anthony Bloom

"Redemption rips through the surface of time in the cry of a tiny babe."

So last night while Krista was diligently studying for her last final exam (this morning), I went over to our friend David's. In addition to being a dedicated scholar, curator, and beard-owner, he is also an astonishingly generous friend. During our wedding celebrations, he and Anna hosted our rehearsal party for our family & friends in their beautiful back garden. It was lovely. I owe a lot to David, as he offered me the job that brought me to Edmonton, and that set in motion a whole lot of other good things... like, oh, meeting my wife. So last night he gave me a mandarin orange and some green tea, and we were talking about some educational plans for the parish, as Fr. Dennis has asked David to offer some coordination this area, and I'm lending a bit of a hand. It should be fun, we're thinking of some "patristics for the people" kinds of things...

But then, before I left, he said, "Oh you've got to listen to this..." And he played me Arvo Part's superb choral meditation on Luke's genealogy of Jesus Christ called "Which was the son of..."
It's a sort of musical Jesse Tree. Lush and incredible and perfect, and more universal in scope than Matthew's list. Luke goes back to Adam. So fitting for yesterday, which, according to the Orthodox Church (which Part, David, and myself all belong to) is the Sunday commemorating the ancestors of Jesus Christ. Our good friend Micah gave us this Arvo Part recording last year, so it was great to share it with David.

And this, naturally, got me thinking of other art related to the astonishing, crazy, beauty that we Christians call the incarnation. Breathtaking. Niagara Falls in a thimble. One of my favourite's is from a 1991 recording by good ole' Bruce Cockburn....and, since this post is dedicated to men with serious whiskers, here's an old shot of Bruce.














Cry Of A Tiny Babe
Mary grows a child without the help of a man
Joseph gets upset because he doesn't understand
Angel comes to Joseph in a powerful dream
Says "God did this and you're part of his scheme
"Joseph comes to Mary with his hat in his hand
Says "forgive me I thought you'd been with some other man"
She says "what if I had been? - but I wasn't anyway and guess whatI felt the baby kick today"

Like a stone on the surface of a still river
Driving the ripples on forever
Redemption rips through the surface of time
In the cry of a tiny babe

The child is born in the fullness of time
Three wise astrologers take note of the signs
Come to pay their respects to the fragile little king
Get pretty close to wrecking everything
'Cause the governing body of the whole land
Is that of Herod, a paranoid man
Who when he hears there's a baby born King of the Jews
Sends death squads to kill all male children under two
But that same bright angel warns the parents in a dream
And they head out for the border and get away clean

Like a stone on the surface of a still river
Driving the ripples on forever
Redemption rips through the surface of time
In the cry of a tiny babe

There are others who know about this miracle birth
The humblest of people catch a glimpse of their worth
For it isn't to the palace that the Christ child comes
But to shepherds and street people, hookers and bums
And the message is clear if you've got ears to hear
That forgiveness is given for your guilt and your fear
It's a Christmas gift you don't have to buy
There's a future shining in a baby's eyes

Like a stone on the surface of a still river
Driving the ripples on forever
Redemption rips through the surface of time
In the cry of a tiny babe

- Bruce Cockburn, "Nothing But A Burning Light," 1991

Metropolitan Anthony's Sneaky Side...

One of the cool things about Gillian Crow's new book This Holy Man, about Metropolitan ANTHONY (Bloom) +2003, are the anecdotes of his life as a mercurial young man in Paris in the late 20's and 30's. This took place a few years before his monastic tonsure. Just so you know, the Metropolitan's baptismal name was Andrei.


From page 84-85:

Andrei had by this time developed an interest in homeopathy and he tried to set up as a homeopathic doctor, without success. The time was not ripe for alternative medicine. He retained his enthusiasm, however, and would often treat himself with homeopathic remedies.
As well as his work as a physician he continued his youth activities, including leading Bible study sessions in his house. These were a source of inspiration to the young people, one of whom was Nicholas, the son of Vladimir Lossky.

* * * * * * * *

Vladimir Lossky had chosen to remain a layman, despite being a renowned theologian. He was, in Metropolitan Anthony's words, one of the people in Paris who did most to promote Orthodoxy, not only among his fellow theologians but also in the world around him. He had refused to become a priest, saying that he accepted instead to be a lay theologian and, in the freedom that gave him, to convey Orthodoxy to whomever wished to hear about it. He was married, with a family of four children. How he and his wife treated them was something Andrei was never to forget.
'I called for them one Sunday - I was living across the street from them at the time on the Isle St Louis - on the way to the Liturgy. When I went into the house I found the parents kneeling in front of their children asking their forgiveness for any wrong that they had done them during the week. I have no doubt that action had more impact on their faith than any theological teaching Lossky might have given them.
However, the young Andrei was not above disagreeing with his friend when he thought fit. At one time, Lossky's opinion was that the Eastern religions had no proper knowledge or experience of God. Andrei did not dare to argue openly with such a distinguished person, about a somewhat controversial topic. 'But what courage couldn't achieve, cunning could,' he later said, and he decided to make his point in a way that his friend could not fail to respond to. Andrei slipped home and wrote out eight quotations from the Upanishads. He took them back to Lossky with an apparently innocent query.

'Could you help me? I have some sayings of the Fathers here and I can't remember who said what. Can you identify them for me, please?' Lossky went through the list and without hesitation wrote beside each quotation the relevant name: St. John Chrysostom, St. Basil the Great and so on. When the theologian had attributed them all, Andrei dropped his bombshell.
'It's the Upanishads.'
From then on, he said, Lossky began to look much more sympathetically at other faiths and came to find in them truths he had never before been able to acknowledge.

Tisk, tisk, tisk.

We forget that the world has always been in colour...

Our friend Dustin just sent us a note about this amazing exhibition of 19th and early 20th century photographs by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii.

Dustin noted:
"He took photographs of Russia and surrounding areas (obviously) in black and white, but he had some ingenious method of using red, blue and green filters to essentially "colourize" the photos. Modern historians and photographers, using digital technology, have produced colour versions of the photos that are quite stunning. It's a little weird seeing colour 19th C photos, because I think we all secretly believe that the world existed in black and white until Kodak came along."


It is amazing how vividly these images bring a new sense of life to the past.

Me & Metropolitan Anthony

So I went ahead and ordered this book from SVS Press, as a rather luxurious pre-Chrismas present to myself (I can be quite wreckless in this department and usually require supervision in bookstores). The book is about Metropolitan ANTHONY (Bloom), who fell asleep in the Lord on August 3, 2003, just one day after I left London to come back to Edmonton. I had been in his Cathedral Church of the Dormition at Ennismore Gardens just a week before. A few years previous, in Spring 2001, I had the chance to meet him and speak with him briefly, after I went to the Cathedral with my good friend Derek. He listened to me very deeply, and that encounter changed the course of my life, though he didn't "tell me what to do."

He lived, as they say, in interesting times, which perhaps many of us know can be both a curse as well as a blessing. He was the nephew of the composer Alexander Scriabin, son to a Diplomat of the Russian Empire, born in Switzerland, raised in the palatial Persian paradise and then penniless in Paris (ridiculous, I know). An ardent hater of the Church as a young man, and then, all of a sudden - after reading the Gospel of Mark - a serious Christian. A wartime medical doctor and secretly tonsured monk during the French resistance. A missionary priest and Bishop in England. Life-long volleyball player and actor (Metropolitan Anthony played volleyball and did skits with the kids at the Church Summer Camp well into his 80s). I'll have more to say about "This Holy Man." I'm finding out from the book that he could also be extremely 'salty' and quite 'tough' sometimes, but usually brimming with God's life, truth, and vigour. For now, all I'll say, is that I'm having trouble putting down this book... (just ask Krista).

May his memory be eternal!

Sweet Christmas Music

Bright and early Saturday morning, Krista and I joined a whole bunch of friends from our church over at the CKER station to record some Christmas music to be played on Deacon Gregory K's radio show. So we went over and fifteen of us all crowded into this little recording room and sang a whole bunch of fun Christmas music.

One of the great songs in the book we had that we didn't sing was "In The Bleak Midwinter," by Christina Rossetti, one of my most beloved Christmas songs. I remember singing with the (then) meagre Christmas morning crowd at Longsight Church in Manchester.

In the bleak midwinter, frost wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, heaven cannot hold him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when he comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But his Mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshiped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give him: give my heart.

- Christina Rossetti, 1872

And that reminded me of a great recording of Christmas music by Shawn Colvin that Kim got me hooked on several years back, because the first song is... you guessed it! "In The Bleak Midwinter." So we put it on yesterday. It also features the great Peanuts classic "Christmastime is Here." And, for those of you who know me well... or at least, for a long time, know that I have a soft spot for Charlie Brown.

Happy Eve of St. Nicholas!