Epistle to the Antipodeans

I’m quite incapable of finishing things.

I’m also quite incapable of taking something small and expanding on it. I’d like my thoughts to be like seeds: you plant the seed, then you water it every day and watch it grow until you have a big, bushy tree bursting with fruit — the kind a kid would draw. In reality my thoughts are more like twigs: you can stick one in a plant pot and water it every day, but it’ll never be anything more than a twig.

Sometimes, with monastic patience, twigs can bear fruit.

I lack that kind of patience, so here’s some of my twigs.

Nails fix things: they fix things to other things. Why did Christ have to be nailed to a cross? Because whatever happens to his flesh happens to us. How can He correct the passions? By fixing them in place. This has to happen physically, and it happened on the cross when his flesh was fixed to it. When we become the Body of Christ, we partake of everything that happened to His Body:— O Thou who on the sixth day and in the sixth hour didst nail to the Cross Adam’s daring sin in Paradise, tear asunder also the handwriting of our sins, O Christ God, and save us.

When you think thorns, you need to think brambles. That’s how thorns manifest in our experience.

Whenever you want to do some work — to build something — you have to clear a space. If that space is wild, it will be full of brambles. Brambles are the opposite of space. They are these writhing, tangled things — kind of like lots of snakes.

It’s not just that they have individual thorns that pierce you. It’s that the whole bush grabs you, and entangles you, and ensnares you. You get stuck in the mess. It’s linked to foolishness too, because being tangled in a thorn bush diminishes your powers (you can’t move) and makes them silly (you can’t use them properly): you fall over and trip and flail around.

Brambles grab you and hold you down, like sleep. If you stay tangled, you’ll die. An animal stuck in a thorn bush is dead. In the parable of the sower, the good ground — the open space where life can thrive — is opposed to the thorny ground: the tangled space where life is choked. The thorns choke or strangle the seed. When you strangle something, you hold it down until it dies.

The earth brings forth thorns after the sin the Paradise:— Cursed is the ground for thy sake; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. The curse of the serpent and the curse of the ground mirror each other:— Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life; he shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. The serpent bites at the heel; the thorn bites at the heel. The serpent bites to paralyse and kill; the thorn bush bites to paralyse and kill. Man returns to dust in the ground that bites him with thorns, and the serpent is cursed to eat Man: the dust of the ground.

There’s a kind of piercing side to reality. The thorns in the ground. The thorns in the crown. The nails; the spear. The lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Maybe before the expulsion that piercing side of reality was the self-sacrifice of love — being wounded by love. It still is after the expulsion from Paradise, but now there’s this extra piercing: compunction, repentance, piercing to death (and somehow, to life):— Nail down our flesh with the fear of Thee, and incline not our hearts unto words or thoughts of evil, but pierce our souls with longing for Thee.

Feet: they are the support of the body, hence why we are sat down in darkness when defeated:— By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down; and we wept when we remembered Sion. We have no support to stand upright. To be upright is to be awake and alert, walking with the sun shining overhead; not being upright is about being stationary in the darkness of sleep or captivity:— For you shall go before the Face of the LORD, to prepare His ways: to shine upon those sitting in darkness, and in the shadow of death, and to direct our feet into the way of peace.

Every time I don’t want to do something, or I feel a sense of dread or anxiety when thinking about doing something, it’s always accompanied by an image of the activity. Ignore the image and get straight to it. It’s your thoughts that stop you and bring you down, nothing else. The reasons for not doing something are not real.

You have to be slow. Rush reading and you won’t understand. Rush prayer and you won’t pray. Rush somewhere and you’ll miss what’s on the way. Rush your work and you’ll make a mistake. Rush anything at all, and you’ll get so anxious you can’t bare to do it any more. Slow is growth and life. Everything grows slowly, but when it dies it rushes to decay. Virtue is gained slowly; the fall into vice is quick. We reach Heaven step-by-step on a ladder; we rush into Hell down a deathslide.

The heart rises in the chest, but never goes out to meet them — Seeing people in need.

If sin is only wrong, and not also tragic, then no one would ever stop sinning. It’s the tragedy of sin that allows compassion and mercy to reach down into it and pull people out. If it was only wrong, there could be no co-suffering, and if there was no co-suffering, there could be no redemption. Love cannot remove someone from doing wrong only on the basis that it’s wrong to do. The tragedy and frustration of sin causes us to cry out, and in crying out we can be saved. The tragedy repulses us; the compassion draws us up.

There are beings and their way of being, and then there is our life as one among them. The first distinction we call ontology, the second we call existentiality.

Ontology concerns these basic facts: that the flower of the field is, then is no more; that a man sleeps, and dreams, and wakes up again, and then one day he doesn’t; that a man is a man and not a chicken; that Peter is a man, and Paul is a man, but Peter is not Paul. Ontology concerns the central riddle: that things have both a oneness and a manyness to them: they can be in one way the same and in another different, they can be more or less real, and they can both be and not be.

What should a man do with this existence that one day is and one day isn’t? That is the concern of existentiality. It’s based on a different riddle: that a man is born into this world, and then he must do something about it. Ontology asks, What is a man? Existentiality asks, What does is mean to be a man? One asks, What is Peter? The other asks, Who is Peter?

The first ontological distinction of the East is created and uncreated; the first existential distinction life and death. The first ontological distinction of the West is natural and supernatural, the existential distinction good and evil. The ontological vision of the East puts Men in the same category as Angels. The ontological vision of the West puts Angels in the same category as God. The existential life of the East is aimed at healing and growing — moving from death to life. The existential life of the West is aimed at doing good things and not doing bad things — moving from bad to good.

What’s the problem? — Evil men have no reason to be good, but even evil men want to be alive.

You can’t play songs on the radio if there’s swearing. But you can play songs about sex and violence as long as no one swears.

A dream for the few
And not for the many;
Though given to the many
Who dream to be few.

I needed words to comfort you;
I thought I ought to try.
But down the well my bucket went
And only came back dry.