John's Micro.Blog

On Holy Saturday we were blessed to witness the reception of five catechumens into Holy Orthodoxy. Something like these words went through my mind.

Elder Sophrony of thrice-blessed memory once said “It takes twenty years to become Orthodox.” When my wife and I reached the twentieth anniversary of our reception into the Church, we told each other, tongue-in-cheek, “We’ve made it!”

We were joking.

First, if you have been Orthodox for only a few minutes, and the Holy Chrism is still fragrant on your body, you are fully Orthodox right now, as fully Orthodox as the Elder himself, entitled beyond any merits of your own to partake of Christ’s very Body and Blood.

Second, Orthodoxy is bottomless. After twenty years and more, we are only beginning to know the inexhaustible riches of Christ’s Holy Church. But from the very beginning, the Church has been there, feeding us, guiding us, forgiving us our countless sins, and leading us onward toward the union with God that will be our salvation.

It’s a journey, one that fulfills us from the very beginning, one that never grows old.

Amen.

I’m a fan of Wanda Gag’s classic children’s book Millions of Cats (which, among its many virtues, apparently pioneered the double-page spread in book illustration). The entire book is hand-lettered in a stylish, very uniform hand. I’ve wondered whether the lettering has a source, and confirmed today that it’s Disjoined Library Hand, a style that was once taught in library schools for use in card catalogues. Library Hand fell out of use as typewriters became common. There’s a cursive “Joined” form too. You can look at samples of both here.

Sri Lanka imposed a social media blackout after the massacres. This piece reflects on the risks (authoritarianism) and upside. Quote:

Overall the sound of silence is not only more dignified for the dead, but also more beautiful to my ears. What have I ever gained from social media during terror attacks? Nothing, I expect, that I couldn’t have obtained more easily and with greater certainty elsewhere. And if so: Why do we bother, either consuming or producing social media posts during these events? I know I am not alone in wondering whether social media is not so much a new medium for communication as a novel form of mass psychosis, more like ergot poisoning than the invention of moveable type. It is a compulsive behavior that induces delusions about what is individually or collectively healthy. I hope that in the future we find more ways to mute it voluntarily.

From an interview with the author of a memoir by a “mixed-race” author:

It ended as an argument against race, just all the way, saying that we’re not going to transcend racism so long as we believe that you are a different race than I am, which necessarily imposes and implies hierarchies. So, I don’t think you can transcend racism without transcending racial categorization, and the book became a kind of memoir making an argument.”

One of the many, many ways that I feel we’ve backslid in my lifetime is that, all across the political spectrum, we seem to have abandoned the “color-blind ideal” as a path to human solidarity. Left and right promote identitarianism for their own purposes, and the ideal is lost. It’s bad, and no good will come of it.

I know one answer is “Color-blind is the ideal, but to get there we first have to go in the opposite direction.” Believe that if you want, but please count me out.

I know it’s difficult, and countless forces work against it, but I continue to believe that the ideal is the only way.

I was reminded of this powerful Bob Marley song, whose lyrics are excerpts from a speech by the Emperor Haile Selassie.

Report from the trenches: “I have a friend who teaches philosophy. They have a student who said demanding people have reasons for their beliefs is the same as colonialists going to other countries to tell poorer people how to live their lives. So, insisting you defend your position (in a philosophy class, mind you), is the same as invading another culture and telling them how to live. SMDH.”