On Birth, Death, & Resurrection

I've been reading Paul Kingsnorth for a while, and appreciate his unique voice.  His substack is well worth the subscription.  He is a recent convert to Orthodox Christianity, from a place of atheism; I find the ways that he writes about our humanity very insightful.  Last week, Kingsnorth was interviewed by Jonathan Pageau, another very interesting Orthodox thinker and artist.  One of Pageau's preoccupations is in reading the symbols and rituals in our culture in the context of re-enchantment, which dovetails nicely with my own interest in the subject. 

Image via Uncut Mountain Supply

What I like about Pageau and Kingsnorth is that while they are clear-eyed about the changes in our world, they do so with a hopeful eye to the future, thinking of the birth of something new to come.  They bear in mind the basic human frailty and weakness in the face of passions.

Kingsnorth writes:

"...the useful work now seems to me to be that outlined by [Joseph] Campbell: to conquer death by birth. ...[T]he correct response to a rootless, lost or broken society is ‘the growing of roots’... Pull up the exhausted old plants if you need to - carefully, now - but if you don’t have some new seed to grow in the bare soil, if you don’t tend it and weed it with love, if you don’t fertilise it and water it and help it grow: well, then your ground will not produce anything good for you. It will choke up with a chaos of thistles and weeds. 

This, in practical terms is, the slow, necessary, sometimes boring work to which I suspect people in our place and time are being called: to build new things, out on the margins. Not to exhaust our souls engaging in a daily war for or against a civilisation that is already gone... To go looking for truth. To light particular little fires - fires fuelled by the eternal things, the great and unchanging truths - and tend their sparks as best we can. To prepare the ground with love for a resurrection of the small, the real and the true.

But first, we are going to have to be crucified." 

~The Faustian Fire, Abbey of Misrule Substack, Paul Kingsnorth, April 28, 2021

Image via Uncut Mountain Supply

It seemed a fitting thing on this day of Mystery: Holy Thursday.  A reminder to set our eyes on the road before us.  This morning we relive the establishment of the Mystical Supper in the Eucharist, and tonight we will go through the Passion with Christ in the Twelve Gospel readings.  Tomorrow, we sit at the foot of the cross and lament while we await the third day resurrection.    

"Today, He who hung the earth upon the waters is suspended upon the tree."~Matins of Holy Thursday

The thing I come to at the end of this Великий пост is that the road is long and I am weak and careworn. 

I am counted amongst the foolish women, forgetting to fill my lamp and missing the feast of the Bridegroom.  I am Simon Peter, declaring my love and then betraying it before the cock crows. I am Gestas, the thief who mocked Christ even as he hung from his own cross.  I am ever Thomas, fighting with my doubts in the face of the Risen Lord.  

Dismas and Gestas, 16th century Kievan icon

But I am also the publican who beat his breast in the corner of the temple, asking God's mercy for his sins.  I am Dismas, the thief on the cross who begged mercy in his final hour.  

I am a lumpen stone on the Sculptor's anvil, and the blows of His hammer can shape me into something better.

Behold, I show you a mystery: We shall not all sleep; but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

(1 Corinthians 15:51-53)