It is December 28, 2019, the Feast of the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem. It has been more than a month since my last posting, when I was still feeling very much spiritually adrift after having had what I considered my Western spiritual foundation torn down by unlooked-for discoveries about my background and heritage. Well, a lot has changed and developed since then, and I am no longer adrift. Rather, I am on a new direction in my path. It's a good direction, but one in which I must always use discernment and wisdom, and also one in which I need to take the time to rest my mind and soul. New demands are upon me, a new dimension of my calling to spiritual service. I will go into that more, later in this article.
It has been a harrowing journey over the past month and a half, with lots of ups and downs, fears, and worries about whether or not Christ would be displeased with me if I re-integrated certain Anglo-Saxon and Celtic cultural ways and practices (observations of certain harvest and seasonal festivals) into my faith life. Those worries turned out to be nothing more nor less than the error of not believing enough in the efficacy of God's grace, something which my husband helped me to see, as well as our friend who is the pastor of the church where I work professionally as an organist-choirmaster. Why would Christ ever get upset with me, especially over something as silly as human culture? The Church has always embraced those aspects of culture that had seeds of the Gospel. There were times also, in the past month or so, when I wearied my loved ones because of the intense and consistent soul-searching in my journey. I consulted my Irish spiritual father, who helped me quite a few times, first encouraging me not to limit myself by things like heritage and blood, and then advising me to cut back and "divest," as he put it, because it seemed to him I was trying to integrate too many things in an attempt to understand the intricacy of God. I consulted my father-confessor, the priest of the Eastern Orthodox parish to which I belong, who suggested that I might be focusing on my heritage too much and not enough on Christ. At first, I thought his assessment wasn't fair and showed misunderstanding on his part, and got angry with him. But after reflection upon his counsel, I concluded that he actually was right about the fact that if we focus first on Christ, the rest of what we need all comes together. Per his advice and the advice of my Irish spiritual father, we are back to the conclusion of my previous blog article: the need to keep our eyes on the One Thing Needful, which is Jesus Christ. All the rest has its place, but Jesus Himself will put those things where they need to be.
There are two Scriptural passages that come to mind. They are both from the Gospels. The first is this, Matthew 6:33, "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." The second is, as mentioned in the previous article, the words of Jesus to Martha concerning her sister Mary, in the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 10, verses 41 and 42: "And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her."
The first passage, the part about all the rest being added unto us if we seek the Kingdom of God first, is the passage that has been most fulfilled in the past month and a half. If you put Christ first, He will give you what you need and put it where it needs to go inside you. If you put Him first and surrender totally to Him, He will be the Great Soul-Smith and forge your soul into the fine metal that it is supposed to be. He will mend the broken parts and form you into a fine new vessel to receive His Body and Blood.
There are many details about my journey of late that are too personal to write in a blog article of this sort, which would be read by a large public. There are many details of the things I have searched and pondered that need to be kept to myself, and thus will be. But if I wanted to basically sum things up without going into those details, I would say that I have gone through the garden of my soul and decided what plants are right and fruitful, versus what are weeds, and I have pulled up the weeds and gotten the field ready for a new crop.
These are the basics of what I've discovered:
(1) There is no need to worry about whether seasonal celebrations--harvests and such--can be part of the Western Rite aspect of my Orthodox faith, because those observances are already there. Seasonal celebrations, such as the August barley harvest known as Lammas (Anglo-Saxon: loaf-Mass) or the last harvest of autumn known as All Hallows Eve, are already incorporated in the Benedictine prayer tradition. They are found in the feast days of the Church, in the Benedictine diurnal, around those time periods. There are also seasonal hymns for winter and summer in the Daily Office. In the liturgics of the Eastern Orthodox Church, there are services called molieben (litanies of thanksgiving). For celebrating the seasons, these litanies can be inserted any time into the litany portion of the canonical hours, be those hours in the Eastern form of the Horologion or the Western form of the Rule of St. Benedict.
(2) What has often been defined as "magic" by today's earth religions is, for the Christian, simply participation in God's Divine energies through active worship and the free gift of God's grace in worship and sacrament. With this grace as a free gift and available to all who partake as believers in Christ and members of His Church, there is no need for anything else. We don't have to go on vision quests or attend sweat lodges, because we have the Holy Mysteries: we have the seven sacraments, a living manifestation of God's grace that physically comes to us and is available to us in our daily lives.
(3) There is no one, "right" and "only" way to practice Orthodox Christianity. The Church is a great deal more diverse than anyone realises, and there is room for everyone of every culture and every heritage. The idea that we have to pray only a certain way and only use _________ (insert ethnicity here) ways of prayer in order to be saved is total error and crap. While we seek to be Orthodox--right in worship--in our faith practices, it is not this form or function that saves us. It is Christ Himself. It is His Divine grace. We are saved by grace, not by how accurately we pray and practice our faith according to Orthodox tenets. A person can do everything correctly in terms of liturgics and still fail to truly know Christ or live in His love. It is knowing Christ intimately in a personal relationship with Him, and most of all His grace that saves us. We do the best we can to please Him in our practice of our faith, things like our prayer life, reading Scripture daily and meditating upon it, our attendance at services, receiving the Holy Mysteries, etc. That effort helps us towards the sanctification, the Theosis (becoming like God) to which we are all called. But in the end, it's His grace that saves us and makes up for any lack of understanding or failures on our part.
(4) Because it is Christ and Christ alone Who saves us through His grace, we must trust in Him that He will show us what to do as we practice and live our faith. We can't go around being paranoid that this way, or that way, or this jewelry, or that jewelry, or this TV show, or that TV show, or reading this book, or reading that book, will cut us off from Him. There are too many Orthodox converts who walk around being afraid that they'll do something wrong and God will cut them off. This isn't helped by fanatics and self-styled "spiritual fathers" who tell wild stories about visions they had: about how so-and-so that they knew in a village once did such-and-such, suddenly died, and went to hell because of doing that thing, but then that person came back to life and learned his/her lesson. Those types of stories need to be avoided by the faithful when they read Orthodox spiritual writings. There is nothing that can separate us from God if we love Him and believe in Him, unless we just decide to be stupid and say to Him, "The heck with You! I'm not listening to You anymore." Those of us who really love Him aren't going to be that stupid. As long as we're putting Him first and practicing His presence daily and hourly, we cannot be separated from Him. As long as our hearts are open to Him and our hearts bear Him love as opposed to being closed and rebellious, He will always be there for us. We must walk in trust.
(5) God made us the way we are, fundamentally. There are many people who believe that our personalities--preferences, leanings, tastes, etc.--are formed by our environments, families and backgrounds. That's true to an extent, but the basics of who we each are as individuals is the creation of God Himself. Furthermore, it is an ongoing creation that is being continually refined. The key word here is Hypostases. Just as each Person (Hypostas) of the Trinity is Holy in Who He is respectively as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we are each holy as the individuals we are: we are sacred as Gabrielle, David, John, Debra, whoever. God made us who we are, and He doesn't make any junk. Our blood heritage and personality is a part of that sacredness of our person, which is why it can't just be jettisoned in favour of a one-size-fits-all version of the Orthodox Christian faith. God saves us as a community, as a Church; however, as members of that community, we are sacred as individuals too. We each have sacred Personhood, just as the Trinity is sacred in His Three Persons. We are saved as both members of the Church and as individuals. The idea that we are only saved as Church is lopsided, as is the idea that we are only saved as individuals. It has to be both Church and the individual, because Scripture states that there is One Body, but many parts, and that all parts are needed (1 Corinthians 12: 12-27).
These are the basic things that I have learned over the angst of the past month and a half. That being said, I also have discovered that I have a particular calling through the gifts that God gave me both for music and for prayer. I am called to be a healer. Does that mean I have spiritual powers for which I went on some vision quest? No. Does that mean that I think I have special healing powers? No. Is the word "powers" involved at all? No. Do I summon spirits like a shaman? No.
It's simple. God gave me the gift to play, compose and sing music. He also gave me the gift of word-smithing (poetry, prose, etc). I have always used those gifts in service to Christ and His Church, to help people's souls in deepening and enriching their faith through worship. But I also have a calling to sing and pray with a focus on healing for people's illnesses. Does this mean that I actually heal them through music? No. That would be very presumptuous, because only God heals. But I do have a calling to sing and pray for the sick, both the sick in body and the sick in soul. I also have a calling to learn about herbs and natural medicines, and learn to use those in good ways for healing, within the auspices of bonafide medical knowledge. That kind of knowledge supplements my singing of the hourly services, in which I can insert litanies asking God to heal sick people who are on my prayer list. If I happen to know of an herb that can help, I can share my knowledge and also give sick people the websites talking about the medical facts about that herb.
I didn't go through some sort of vision quest to recognise I had this calling. I didn't have a vision on a mountain or some sort of dream. I did, however, go through a very difficult time emotionally and spiritually, in the course of jettisoning non-profitable ideas and recognising that I have inherited the calling of many a Celtic Briton and Saxon lady: to serve God and His Church by helping and healing, with music and knowledge of the things God has given us in the earth that can help and heal us.
I have a lot to learn with respect to herbs. The music and prayer part of my work, however, is something that I have been training for since a young age, through schooling and much musical practice on instruments and voice.
There you have it. I am a musical laece (Anglo-Saxon: healer). As such, I do this work as an Orthodox Christian. I am not some sort of shaman or New Age practitioner. I use the prayers of the Church, singing services (canonical hours, supplicatory canons, akathists) as my regular spiritual discipline and focusing those prayer services for healing as people ask me to do so. The knowledge I will study in the future, that of herbs and natural remedies, will be carefully checked with today's medical and pharmaceutical knowledge to make sure that nothing is ever used erroneously. Nor will I solicit clients with this work. I already have a profession: that of church musician. The healing part of my work is a calling which must be done as an act of love, and when called for by others. If God chooses to reward me for it in some way, He will do so as He sees fit.
That's it. Simple. Right now, I am resting and learning. The boat is moored while I rest for the winter season.
In naman Faederes and Sunna and thaes Hálgan Gástes. (In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit).
Amen.
