Author: a fool

All alone with Jesus

moonflower

“moonflower”

What do you do when you’re all grown up?
The heart of a child, but you gotta be tough
Scared to death to be alone
Feeling around for a hand to hold

Why did I start to think
I can’t walk if I can’t see?
When did I forget to need You?
I will let myself be weak
A vulnerable dependency
Strong enough to let You lead me

Through the dark
I wanna be where You are
Even through the dark
I wanna be where You are

What do you do when the darkness falls
And nobody thought to leave the light on?
Well, I don’t really like this place
But I will trust You anyway
Take my hand and lead the way

Into the dark
I wanna be where You are
Even in the dark
I wanna be where You are

And they tell you to grow up
To stop being scared
But what do you do when
You still want your dad there?
I know that I’m older
But it’s still the same
The moment I need You
You’re coming my way

And they tell you to grow up
To stop being scared
But what do you do when
You still want your dad there?
I know that I’m older
But it’s still the same
The moment I need You
You’re running my way

In the dark
I wanna be where You are
Even in the dark
I wanna be where You are

I heard about a garden
Somewhere south of London
Where moonflowers are hanging overhead
And though they’re lovely in the light
The gardener said, “Come back tonight
The darkness makes the fragrance rise”

inner vs outer

Now if what has been advanced here is true, if there is nothing incommensurable in a human life except the incommensurability that is there only by accident, from which nothing follows insofar as existence is considered ideally, then Hegel is right. But he is not right in speaking about faith or in allowing Abraham to be regarded as its father, for by the latter he has passed sentence both on Abraham and on faith. In Hegelian philosophy the outer (the externalization) is higher than the inner. This is often illustrated by an example. The child is the inner, the man the outer; hence the child is determined precisely by the outer, and conversely the man as the outer by the inner. Faith, on the contrary, is this paradox, that inwardness is higher than outwardness, or to recall a previous expression, that the odd number is higher than the even.

Evans, C. Stephen; Walsh, Sylvia. Kierkegaard: Fear and Trembling (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy), 60.

spiritual elders

Even though many of the elders were priests or monks, or both, being an elder was not a church office, but rather an informal ministry. Individual supplicants engaged with spiritual elders sometimes with, or sometimes without, the sanction of the institutional church. The reputation of an elder was established “from below” by ordinary believers and an elder’s disciples. Hence, within the Orthodox Church, eldership may be regarded as a more democratic, nonhierarchical form of religious authority, which, until now, has not received sufficient analysis. ….

Many of them had an uneasy relationship with the institutional church.

Spiritual Elders: Chrisma and Tradition in Russian Orthodoxy, 4-5

tonsure

In essence, the monastic tonsure is a second Baptism. We have all been baptized and have given an oath that we will belong to God. We have said, “I do renounce Satan” and “I do unite myself to Christ,” and we have dedicated ourselves to God through the cutting of our hair, but we have forgotten all of this. In fact, by our Baptism, we have bound ourselves to the obligation of belonging to God. With the words “I do renounce,” which we then pronounced (if we were baptized as infants, then through the mouth of our godparent), we drove satan out of our lives, and we even spat upon him three times, losing all connection with him. With the words, “I do unite” we signed, in the presence of angels and men, a sacred contract that now we fully belong to God. With If anyone desires to come after me (Lk. 9:23) the Lord called to the unbaptized. It behooves us, the baptized, to pronounce: Speak Lord, for Thy servant heareth (1 Kg. [1 Sam.] 3:10). It is a big deal, my brothers, that we were baptized and became Christians. How terrible that we forget our baptismal vows, and from this we now lose the grace of holy Baptism.

Monastic Tonsure: Second Baptism, or the Marriage of the Soul to Christ