Smithing

Passion and Life, cooled,
Distends like icycles
Reaching for the earth,
Reaching downward but thinning,
Puttering out in the outward inertia while
Descending back by the force of gravity;

Warm air, cool air, the vacuum--
It's all quite easy science, the
Inward descending, freezing up
In the atmosphere in some odd shape.

Well, but you shall become a butterfly someday;
Well, but you'll become some flowery spark,
With some titillating story to tell us,
Wonderful.

But at this one moment,
Culled -- sharp and brittle as some ice shard --
Curled over, cold, cooling to some strange shape,
I doubt butterfly or spark
But still have all intention and faith
In the steel, the anvil, the Maker.


-r

Sacramental Meaning of Candles (a reply to Ed)

'I seem to recall that candles are a reminder of the early church gatherings underground in the catacombs, or in back rooms and cellars of homes of believers, in the days before churches were allowed in the Roman empire. As you say, this tradition has continued through the ages in all catholic churches.'

I believe you are correct: candles are most likely remnants of catacombs and early home-churchs; that is, they probably found their origination there. Candles, however (like most sacramental realities), are multi-layered. The candles do serve as a simple, primal reminder of the catacombs, but candles also have meaning in so many other ways.

For one thing, candles are sources of light - they help us see, and they are embodied reminders of Christ, who is the Light of the world, as well as a reminder of the Triune God (in general) who gave us the blessing of light, who created it in His goodness.

Also, candles embody the reality of Jesus Christ's / God's love - one could say 'the Triune love', the love at the heart of reality that defines reality and gives reality its meaning. This love - agape, in the Greek - is a love that gives sacrificially and expends itself for the absolute good of the other with no concern for itself. Candles give us light at the celebration of the Sacred Mysteries, but they 'give up' themselves to do so; the wick and wax burn away to give us light. They're a subtle but powerful reminder of God's love for us.

. . . Candles can be used by anyone and are in themselves good things. I would even go so far as to say a protestant church service is edified by the use of candles, as this is at least a step back towards the source of protestantism in the first place; that is, one of the most notably embodied realities of the loss of meaning that is in fact protestantism is the empty, lifeless nave ('sanctuary') - no Tabernacle, no Christ candle, an empty Cross, etc. My point in the entry was that we miss the point completely if we elevate the use of candles to some sort of super-religious function to the exclusion of Sacred Tradition, within which organic reality the candles find their full meaning and location, and in which context they were first originally used.

-r

Puella: Interpretation of Her Mental Diary Entry at Opry Mills As Inferred from a Friendly Conversation between Islands with a Similar Sense of Humour

[Note: I'm still catching this journal up from the Xanga and hope to move over here shortly]
- - -

A glob of us single persons,
We sit at our own tables
Around empty carousel horses
Far too many horses for two few occupants
Who are waiting around in the food-courts;
Our tables are battle-stations.

Carousel draws our collective glances
Like some drunk aunt making passes
At friends,
Arousing anger,
Sentimental music and revelry suggesting something
Our tables are fortified against.

It's all beneath the surface,
All despite God's given body odours;
We wouldn't mate; we negotiate
Preemptive ceasefires in our glances.
At any rate, we're waiting for others
'Maybe lovers!'
We try to waft to our neighbours
Though more likely waiting for daughters, brothers,
Or friends.

[All this ontology
[Of violence!]

Somewhere someone
No doubt is dropping
Some wayward pick-up line
Not good enough for us, cheesy-
Meaning vulgar as life,
And maybe they'll make some babies;
Meanwhile unadulterated
He mans his station
Glancing at me from there,
No danger here.

Stalemate; thank God,
Here comes my mother
For whom I've waited.
(Maybe
I'll apply to some sisterhood.)


-r

To Be Deep in History . . . [Part 2]

. . . or, 'I am the Water of Life . . . '
. . . of, 'Get off the Tradition Bandwagon.'

http://www.holybiblemosaic.com/

Of course, there is nothing disorderly with supplementing Holy Scripture with religious artwork/ikons, prayers, creeds, etc. - the concept has been employed quite beautifully in many cases - but this particular project strikes me as a continued attempt at sensational selectivism - that is, the dubious 'Catholic buffet' of thirsty protestantism and disembodied/confused Catholics grasping for a thrill mistaken for authoritative substance. It is quite in the same vein with my acquaintance who noted that his local Nazarene church was 'becoming more traditional', insofar as the pastor had begun the practise of having children light candles on either side of the podium before the church service. In both cases, I do recognise the hunger behind the 'traditional' actions taken, and yet at the same time I mourn this as falling short of any real remedy. The acquaintance celebrated the use of candles, as if that were a cure-all or magical elixir, hardly comprehending that candles are an organic part of the Church's historical liturgy whose meaning is wrapped up in the theological reality and affirmation of sacrament. All such ploys are not unlike someone who refuses to drink the full, dangerous reality of 'water' and then, when finally at death's door for such a choice, happily announces that he has begun drinking copious amounts of Pepsi. So close, and yet still lingering in self-imposed exile.

Tradition for tradition's sake is not the answer. What protestant denominations really thirst for is objective authority, which they cannot conjure up (no matter how hard they try) if one of their central war-cries is a sort of gnostic 'believer and Holy Spirit alone' dynamic of 'searching out' the truth. When this is the case (as we've seen), the world ends up with a billion-and-a-half protestant denominations, denominations breaking from denominations and even non-denominations, all proclaiming to have 'some bit' of the truth. Well, that's handy on paper, but these denominations often teach quite contradictory doctrines. A religious group cannot claim apostolic authority if (1) there are no apostles, and (2) they have no authority. Basically, who says so? Just because your pastor dresses up in a liturgical robe and lights some candles does not immediately prevent young people from fleeing your denomination when they begin asking the difficult questions. The Catholic Church does not claim authority because she is 'traditional'. Heaven knows (and so does any honest Catholic of our time), many of the practises in the Church of our day actually threaten the beautiful traditions we've been handed. But the Church claims authority because Christ gave His authority to her, and she goes about saying the Mass, and celebrating the Sacred Mysteries, and making a pilgrimage through history. And to live in this reality is to have traditional elements, candles and all, that we receive from the pilgrims before us and hand on to the pilgrims behind us.

Let us not separate the cart from the horse, or (if we want to separate them) at least not put the candle-cart first and expect a horse-cart reality for our ecclesial communities. If we want the Church, we must accept the Church on her terms, accept her testimony, her witness, and her responsive teachings; if we are a group of protestants simply recognising that we lack any objective claim to authoritative teaching/liturgy/lifestyle and simply want to pad our already faltering ecclesial identity with snippets of 'traditionalism', then we will almost certainly end up worshiping tradition for tradition's sake. Don't waste the money having communion every week if there is no in persona Christi priest who has received the Sacrament of Holy Orders and if there is no understanding of Sacrament or what the Eucharist actually means as the heart of the organic, embodied Church. Don't waste time or money on the candles if they are pieces of sensationalism and nothing more.

--In this case, regarding the Mosaic Bible, until we stop worshiping the Bible, it is only minimally helpful to have ikons and creeds bedecked throughout it. For the creeds and ikons are still only supplements, not gifts handed to us.

-r

To Be Deep in History . . . [Part 1]

[From Xanga archive, trying to return to Blogspot . . . meaning a gradual bringing-up-to-date]

There are many Nazarenes (such as the Reformed Nazarenes, see link below) who are concerned with the direction of the COTN, especially as it is embodied at denominational universities like Trevecca, where many students are either losing the Faith altogether or else becoming Catholic. The answer, according to these Reformed/Concerned Nazarenes, is to get back to the Bible-rooted, fundamentalist identity of the COTN. This is an historically amusing assertion, since the COTN was originally separate from 'Bible-rooted' fundamentalist protestantism and much later (in the Southeast U.S.) was largely subsumed within fundamentalism. It is further amusing to consider, on a larger scale, that the COTN has never had a unified identity or a unified 'direction' - which means that those evil 'emergent Nazarenes' and other groups have just as much claim to authoritative teaching as the fundamentalists do. Then again, this is what happens when you have no apostolic authority, no objective claims to authoritative teaching outside of some vague parametres: you go on archaeological expeditions to find the 'real Church' from which we have somehow departed.

Dr. Hoskins and other notable scholars have been pointing Trevecca students to historical Christianity, and many of us students went in search of the 'real Church' that we somehow lost. Some of us have found Her. Don't blame the thoroughly dyed-in-the-wool Nazarene professors for the 'damage' that a simple study of history will render.

'To be deep in history is to cease to be protestant.' -Cardinal John Henry Newman

[Links]
http://reformednazarene.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/conversation-with-a-university-president/
http://www.crivoice.org/neofundamentalism.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Henry_Newman

-r