“There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled. There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled. You feel it, don’t you?” (Rumi)

“You cannot wander anywhere that will not aid you. Anything you can touch – God brought it into the classroom of your mind.” (Rabia Basra)

“What is a charitable heart? It is a heart that is burning with charity for the whole of creation…” (Saint Isaac the Syrian)

“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.” (Fyodor Dostoevsky)

“I paint the way some people write their autobiography. The paintings, finished or not, are the pages of my journal, and as such they are valid. The future will choose the pages it prefers.” (Francoise Gilot)

“What, what am I to do with all of this life?” (Gwendolyn Brooks)

“We all have idols. Play like anyone you care about but try to be yourself while you’re doing so.” (B. B. King)

Things will not always go according to plan

Source: https://piccadillyinc.com/products/the-story-of-my-life/

Things will not always go according to plan or follow the schedule. Unpredictability does not only belong to chaos theory and to weather, but to everyday existence: the ‘big things’ like life and death, good and evil, love and hatred, health and sickness. Despite the super computers, natural human ability to forecast complex weather patterns is still critical, humbling news for machines capable of trillions of calculations per second. Small things can also go awry and sometimes even these apparently insignificant events can become reason for a greater story. Missing your train in the morning; or being given the wrong business card; or writing the incorrect address on a letter; or turning right instead of left. These can all become causes for the unexpected. Despite the planning and attention to detail the future is out of our control. Yet we readily deceive ourselves into believing otherwise, particularly given the advancements in our technological innovations. The reality is perhaps more challenging but far more positive and exciting. We do have some ‘control’ of that world which ultimately does matter: our ‘inner world’. That space within [the ‘inscape’ to paraphrase Gerard Manley Hopkins] which goes a long way to determining our uniqueness, and what we do, and who we become: “[t]he human heart is no small thing, for it can embrace so much.” (Origen)

Truth is the correspondence between language and reality

In simple words, for this is a huge subject, truth is the correspondence between language and reality, a practical definition which probably sits well with most.[1] Then what of truth in literature? How are we to understand metaphor, or poetry, or even myth for instance? Is there a better example of the evident stresses that this correspondence will often elicit than the battle over the exegesis of the biblical account of the creation in the Book of Genesis? What is the cognitive value of this universal story and what kind of truth is it meaning to convey? And what of the spiritual truths put in the mouth of the Starets Zossima by Dostoevsky in his masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov? Or how true is Plato’s famous “allegory of the cave”? An autobiography, a memoir, a life-journal, for example; to what extent are they both literature and science? And how long does a text or document maintain a stable and determinant meaning before the deconstructionists get to it and challenge its structures and propositions? These questions become especially problematic from the moment we make reference to scientific method. One way to arrive at some kind of real-life resolution is to think in terms of context [from Latin contextus, from con- ‘together’ + texere ‘to weave’]. Truth in whatever way we might define or understand it, is ultimately interwoven into and inseparable from life. Following in the spirit of the great storytellers, Sue Monk Kidd writes: “[s]tories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can't remember who we are or why we're here.” Revelation and redemption invariably play an important part in how we mentally grasp the ‘story’ and in what ‘setting’ we locate it.

Providence or Coincidence

Providence is mostly connected to theological reflections and generally associated with divine purpose.[2] “Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father” (Matt. 10:29). Coincidence on the other hand is normally thought of in terms of luck, fate, or chance. In some other instances coincidence has been thought of in the context of meaningful decisions. Perhaps it is at that point when it ‘coincides’ with providence.[3] Ultimately, whatever our definitions, both are forces of influence which determine destiny. In the Homeric writings ‘destiny’ is more coincidence with providence connected to ‘divine intervention’.[4] Destiny is fate for Homer. It cannot be escaped. “And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you— it’s born with us the day that we are born.” Divine intervention, however, can manipulate destiny even with the direct involvement of human agency. The legends of Achilles and Hector as illustrated in the Iliad are classic examples of destiny and divine intervention intertwined. What is it that drives us to understand something of these incomprehensible forces and to put a name to them? An insightful response can be found in Christos Tsiolkas’ Dead Europe. The protagonist, not irrelevantly a photographer, the young Greek-Australian Isaac, reflects in one place when asked to use his camera to document events of the past: “this desperate need to confirm the relevance of history…”. And so we are born into the world. We document the story, our autobiography [‘the account of our life’] as it unfolds, according to the opportunities we accept or dismiss. The love we share or withhold. All the time hoping that at the end of our days, we have been of some relevance.

It does not take much to strip us down to our base animal nature

It does not take much to strip us down to our base animal nature for our repertoire of the most beautiful songs and enlightening philosophies to turn into howls and screams. When our stomach is full, when we are not thirsty, when we live in a comfortable home and have good paying work, it is not difficult to act sophisticated and cultured. How refined would we be if there were ten of us fighting over one loaf of bread? Trying to outrun each other for a cup of cold water to quench our thirst? These thoughts are disturbing not only in the context of our hierarchical needs and natural instinct towards self-preservation, but also when ‘self-preservation’ leads to questions of motivation, self-defence and to punishment. It is shocking, too, to imagine that high culture and the cultivation of the Arts serve as no guarantee to the wisdom and compassion of the human spirit. The Nazis [and others before them and not a few afterwards in similar vein] would do their slaughtering during the day and in the evenings listen to classical music, write poetry, and read Goethe. We are only days, even hours or minutes away from being stripped from the personalities and personas we ideally choose to present ourselves to the world and according to which society rewards us. Self-awareness, to objectively evaluate ourselves, our character and feelings, will make some strong demands of us and oftentimes be a painful eye-opener. It can be a terrifying experience to stop and to listen to ourselves. To say when you have gone to your deepest places, to have found those things you would never want to have found, yes, all of it, that’s who I am. But it is this honest evaluation which also makes us capax dei: “capable of knowing God”. (Augustine)

Sometimes we have to look, nay search

Sometimes we have to look, nay search, for the light in places we might not normally want to look. Think for a moment of the response of the first community of believers to the vision of the brutalized and crucified Christ (Matt. 26:1-27:66). The gaze which normally precedes dogma is invariably more faithful to the reality of things. Difficult words and mind-boggling doctrines can often confuse and meddle with our initial revelation. The first bright illumination which inflamed our hearts and ran down our spines like a bolt of electricity. There is a holding place to most things that they might ripen and mature. Siddhartha Gotama and the prophet Daniel, Saint Isaac the Syrian and Jalaluddin Rumi, Rabia of Basra and Saint Symeon the New Theologian, Saint Francis of Assisi and Moses Mendelssohn, Meister Eckhart and Rabindranath Tagore, Dag Hammarskjöld and Saint Sophrony Sakharov are examples of those profound lights who looked deeper and beyond the margins of their prescribed canon. These souls to be sure remained faithful to their received tradition. The power of their witness is to be found in the unshakeable belief that every human being is of equal value and possessed of the same intrinsic possibilities. The list is a long one and includes meditative minds from every region and culture. In other fields of human endeavour where the “canonical boundaries” were tested, James Joyce did it with experimental literature; Pablo Picasso with Art; James Clerk Maxwell with physics; Ludwig Wittgenstein with his views on the purpose of philosophy; Frank Lloyd Wright with his architectural design; and Rosa Parks who says “No” to become the mother of the civil rights movement. And the great improvisers of music who did it with their blues in Mississippi and jazz in New Orleans. But all of this dialectical movement, the tension of the spirit with all of its divergent impulses, can come with a heavy cost and no small sacrifice, though surely it is worth the risk to be able to one day write: “…with the last ink in the pen I lived, each day I loved and lived.” (Michael Ondaatje)

Things are indeed different from up here

Somewhere over Yekaterinburg and Salekhard

Altitude 36500 feet, Ground Speed 536 mph

Things are indeed different from up here. I do not mean the obvious, the physical perspective of being inside a ‘flying cigar’ with hundreds of strangers almost thirty-seven thousand feet above the earth. How often is it, that we are of one mind with people we have never met before. People of different races and colours and religions, men and women of different education, some virtuous and others corrupt, some in the prime of their lives and others nearer to their Maker than they might care to imagine. Yet with all these vagaries we are of the ‘one mind’. We all want to get somewhere and we all want to arrive there safely. The place which is calling us is love. We also call it home. Up here in space we are living for whatever the duration of our journey, as the saints do, when they come together in communio sanctorum. Is there a term for the ‘communion of travellers’? Fate would forever bind us in the unlikely event that this aeroplane drops from the sky, and it would not be with our dearest we would be spending the last and most truthful moments of our life. We would go to the other side in the company of hundreds of strangers all having hoped to make it safely home. If we could honestly recognize and live out this shared mortality, what differences we might see in the world. John Donne who especially prized this ‘inter-connectedness’ of humanity, has memorably written: “[n]o man is an island entire of itself…”. It is like the passage of time which none of us can escape, except to write on its pages our individual stories. And the eschatology we did battle with when nobody was watching.

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth/#pagetopright

[2] https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godforallthings/2018/01/24/god-god-providence/

[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/02/the-true-meaning-of-coincidences/463164/

[4] https://muse.jhu.edu/article/2579/summary

Providence is mostly connected to theological reflection and generally associated to divine purpose. Coincidence on the other hand is normally thought of in terms of luck, fate, or chance. In some other instances coincidence has been thought of in the context of meaningful decisions, perhaps it is here where it ‘coincides’ with providence.[1] Ultimately, whatever our definitions [throwing in the ‘problem of evil’ to boot], both can be understood as forces of influence which determine destiny. In the Homeric writings ‘destiny’ is more coincidence with providence connected to ‘divine intervention’. Destiny is fate [moira] for Homer, it cannot be escaped. Divine intervention, however, can manipulate destiny even with the direct involvement of human agency.[2] The stories of Achilles and Hector as described in the Iliad are good examples of destiny as a combination of divine intervention and human agency. And this complex interaction between divine action and free will is a fundamental principle in the New Testament, accordingly Saint Paul writes to the Christian community in Philippi that both human responsibility and sovereign control are at work in the Christian life (Phil 2:12-13). What is it that drives us to understand something of these impenetrable forces and to try to put a name to them? An illuminating response from a contemporary piece of literature can be found in Christos Tsiolkas Dead Europe. The protagonist and not irrelevantly a photographer, the young Greek-Australian Isaac, reflects in one place when asked to use his camera to document events of the past, “[t]his desperate need to confirm the relevance of history…”[3] I did have significant problems with some of the content in Tsiolkas’ book, but the masterly use of time and space in this admittedly disturbing novel leave their mark.

Flemington Markets

Katina had turned nineteen and was in the second year of her BIT at the University of Technology Sydney and I at thirty-three had started on the MA Honours at Macquarie University. I needed to find some payable work, we were managing with the help of our parents and our scholarships but our personal finances were starting to run low. My pride and self-belief suffered a severe blow when I joined the ranks of those on unemployment benefits. I was now no longer someone who was greeted with the respect accorded to a professional, let alone a clergyman. It did not matter too much during the time when I was alone. I had already lived in this ‘post’ existence of mine for a number of years, but now what affected me would also have an effect on my younger wife [who as events would prove was blessed with wisdom beyond her years]. From Reverend or Father I was now a “number” doing the rounds knocking on doors and looking for work. This could be anything from stacking sheets of tin in warehouses to selling encyclopaedias in shopping malls. It was humbling, I have to confess, to be asked if I understood or knew how to complete the paperwork relating to my new found unemployment. This process of ‘deconstruction’ had begun a number of years earlier upon my return from Europe where I had worn my favourite black cassock for the last time. Things were made all the more grim for my former “employer” the Archdiocese would not supply me with a reference. The exception was the heroic Father Themistocles Adamopoulo who by this time was himself persona non grata.[4] I asked some other good men from there as well, but their support was qualified. They wanted to know beforehand “where” their references would be going. Walking away from the priesthood is viewed very dimly. Even by formerly trusted friends. And I did understand. As I still do. I thanked them but declined.

It took some weeks getting used to, but I began to love going to my new job at Flemington Markets, more exactly at Paddy’s Markets.[5] It was a time of long stretches of peace and a new type of learning. I was hired as a cleaner: toilets, floors, potato conveyers, fruit crates, large vats, giant coleslaw mixers, windows, walls, and more. If it had to be cleaned, I was the man! But this had a potentially serious health implication for I had been using some very harsh chemicals without any appropriate protection. For afterwards during my service in the Cypriot National Guard the medical investigator was concerned with the state of my lungs, there were some “shadows”, he said. I was told it might be tuberculosis or lung cancer. On my return to Australia I was given the all clear and in another place I will say more on this experience both in terms of divine intervention and human agency. I was also proud of my new ‘vestments’: a pair of weatherproof boots, gloves, overalls, and a yellow raincoat with a hood. The hours as well, they suited an old night-owl like me. Work started eleven at night and I would clock off the following morning around seven, it was not full-time so I had rest days in between. There were many things I enjoyed during those few months that I was able to stay at Paddy’s before I left to entirely focus on the first dissertation, the one dealing with the infamous “666” and the antichrist conundrum. Each night I looked forward to greeting my new ‘con-celebrants’: the Asians who would cut and prepare the salads; the sunburnt farmers; the busy stall owners; the testy truck drivers; and every now and then the pest-control fellow who would also moonlight as a Reiki Master.

The coffee-breaks were history classes in themselves. I heard many stories in that small kitchenette by well-weathered men who had seen much and just about done it all. These were tough but honest folk, people you could trust and where you quickly learnt to "call a spade a spade.” They reminded me of the abattoir workers I used to help load meat trucks in the early hours of the morning to supplement my allowance when I was a student in Thessaloniki. They were also not lacking in the stories department. During this time at the markets I would read whenever I could steal a few minutes during the morning breaks or in between my scheduled jobs. The Philokalia[6] and the Art of Prayer[7] were invariably within reach, together with the lives of two saints whose personalities had especially attracted me, Saints Seraphim of Sarov and John of Kronstandt. Yet again I would be taught that wonderful and encouraging lesson often heard on Mount Athos: it is not the place, but the Way. Other times it might be as simple as the positive energy good spirits [people] release into the air.

Given my earlier life at the café this was not unfamiliar territory. I was in my element in these environments. I look back over more than thirty years later when I first put on the cassock and I realize it is with these ‘straight-talking’ people at places like Paddy’s and King Street, Newtown and in the side streets of Egnatia Odos, where I am most happy and comfortable. And I would have stayed at the markets for much longer if not for my pride “this perpetual nagging temptation” as C.S. Lewis has so well put it and because I knew in the words of one Martin Heidegger that I had “unfinished business”.

Of course, much had happened even before this time. I had spent a lengthy period in the Palestinian desert with the monastic community at the Holy Lavra of Saint Sabbas the Sanctified [also known as Mar Saba] and had privately tutored and taught a number of subjects at secondary school. Later I will speak at length on these wonderfully significant experiences which would afterwards greatly impact upon my life. Providence, coincidence or meaningful decisions? To be at least prepared to walk through those doors which we might reckon belong to the right provenance.

[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/providence-divine/

[2] http://legacy.owensboro.kctcs.edu/crunyon/HRS101/Homer/03&4-Iliad/Fate_Schein.html

[3] Christos Tsiolkas, Dead Europe, (Vintage Books: Australia), 2005, 151.

[4] http://www.abc.net.au/news/programs/one-plus-one/2015-11-26/one-plus-one:-rev.-themi-adamopoulo/6978258

[5] http://paddysmarket.com.au/history/

[6] https://orthodoxwiki.org/Philokalia

[7] https://www.amazon.com/Art-Prayer-Orthodox-Anthology/dp/057119165