Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

C.S. Lewis and the Orthodox Tradition: Part II -- by Ron Dart

For the most part, I find he (Lewis) is very close to Orthodoxy….Through this honest search, he came to many positions that the Orthodox Fathers hold as well. --Herman Middleton         

ROAD TO EMMAUS is a Journal of Orthodox Faith and Culture, and it began in 2000. Many is the fine article that have emerged from ROAD TO EMMAUS, and ‘An Old Western Man: C.S. Lewis in Light of Orthodox Christianity’ (Vol. VIII, No. 1: #28) is more than worth the read. The article is done in an interview style between the editor of ROAD TO EMMAUS and Herman Middleton. Middleton has walked a creative path—a graduate of Wheaton College (Vatican of the American Evangelical Tradition and home of Lewis archives), post- Wheaton life as a theology student in Thessalonica Greece, author of the Orthodox classic, Precious Vessels of the Holy Spirit’ and at the time of the interview, doing doctoral studies on C.S. Lewis from an Orthodox perspective. Middleton is the perfect person, therefore, to reflect on Lewis and the Orthodox Tradition.

What are some of the reasons those committed to the Orthodox Tradition might be interested in Lewis?

"For the Peace from Above" - Metropolitan Kallistos Ware

Displaced Childhoods by Partners Relief & Development

Dear Clarion readers,

Partners Relief & Development Canada and Cielo Pictures are proud to present the television debut of Displaced Childhoods airing on CTV Calgary on December 25th at 6-7pm and again on January 2nd at 5-6pm.

 

Displaced Childhoods takes a look at life for families who live in the world's longest currently running civil war. Interviews from men, women and children who have had to flee fighting and systemic human rights abuses in three of Burma's ethnic states share their stories with us and we learn how a small agency, Partners Relief & Development is helping them. 

I hope you will join us for this great and for those outside of Southern Alberta check to see if your cable/satellite package carries CTV Calgary and join us for this amazing story.

*Remember to set your PVR to record this amazing documentary, especially if you are unable to view it at those times over the holidays.

I want to thank you for all your support of our work as we show God's love to the people of Burma and I hope that your holidays are full of family, fun and rest.

Merry Christmas,

Greg Toews

National Director

 

What's in the Waiting - Christmas Message by Eden Jersak

What’s in the Waiting? by Eden Jersak

Introduction

            Do you remember having to wait as a kid for Christmas?  Oh my!  The sheer torture of the endless days and weeks leading up to that most amazing morning with gifts and goodies, and toys and games! As a young child, my brother and I shared a room, and between the two of us, we could hardly bare the time after being tucked into bed on Christmas Eve and waking up on Christmas morning.  I was an early riser anyway, quite often the first one up in the house, even on a school day, but on Christmas, it was impossible to wait until 6:00.

            I would get out of my bed, make my bed (just to cover all the bases), then I would shake my brother awake, just so I had an accomplice, and we would tip toe down the hallway to peak into the livingroom, where the tree was alight, and the presents galore.  I remember one Christmas being amazed at the sheer volume of gifts under the tree.  I thought my mom must have bought gifts for the whole neighbourhood.  I couldn’t wait for everyone to get up and start in on the fun!

Modes of Future Thought: Can strategic concepts move beyond ideology? by LAZAR PUHALO

LAZAR PUHALO

Modes of Future Thought: Can strategic concepts move beyond

ideology? Political Ideologies and “Global Thought”: Can there be a

Synthesis of Scientific Theories and Spiritual Traditions? 

Big History encounters a universe’s movement into greater complexity rather than its entropy. We are engaged in studying the great difficulty and limitedness with which such an apparent anomaly occurs. Our own biosphere, which, following the thought of Panov1 and others, includes human civilisations and technologies, is one island of this increasing complexity. Such complexity brings with it fragility and vulnerability, and this is a theme that should be of special interest to us, as our own biosphere is at the point of a singularity which must be examined in all earnestness.

SINGULARITY AND MODELS A Definition

Singularity

The term “singularity” will be defined in different ways by some of the disciplines that speak at this conference. We all agree, however, that our biosphere is at a critical point, which we generally refer to as a “singularity.” In terms of the overall subject of Big History, a singularity is a convergence of compound crises on a global scale. For the context of this paper, we will define the “singularity” as a crisis of transition from Axial I into Axial II, from the First Axial Era into the Second Axial Era. Here, “singularity” designates the critical point in a phase transition which creates a structural conflict among differing premises for the conceptualization, interpretation and expression of systems.

For the rest of this article, click here:  Download Modes of Future Thought

C.S. Lewis and the Orthodox Tradition (pt. 1) by Ron Dart

In Great Britain … in the bookshop of the Russian Cathedral at Ennismore Gardens in London there are basically two types of books on sale: Orthodox books and a huge array of the writings of C.S. Lewis.

- Andrew Walker

There have been, over the last two decades, a variety of articles researched, written and published on C.S. Lewis and the Orthodox Tradition. There are reasons for this, and in the next five essays, I will discuss and describe each of these approaches to Lewis and Orthodoxy, and reflect on paths opened up between Western and Eastern Christendom as a result of Lewis’ spacious and catholic understanding of the faith journey.

The Advent of Imagination -- by Brian Zahnd

___________________________________________________________

The Advent of Imagination
by Brian Zahnd

Are we lacking in imagination, we children of Cain
We of the ancient, worn-out myopic Idea
(Long since unworthy of that noble name)
The horrid idea born a bastard east of Eden—
Kill Abel and pretend we don’t know he’s our brother
Kill Abel and pretend we don’t know better?

Are we so appallingly lacking in imagination
That we have no freedom because we have no choices?
That which has been is what will be
That which is done is what will be done
There is nothing new under the sun
Thus spake the Preacher who lost his imagination
Thus chanted the Preacher in his mantra of despair.
(What we need is a greater than Solomon to arrive on the scene!)

Two Blind Men -- Note from Solitary Confinement

Friends,

The more Neaners reflects on his past, reads the gospels, and prays about what he wants to do with the rest of his life, he comes up with stuff like this:

Two Blind Men

Oh check this out. I was just pacing my lil' ass cell, making a jail-house tamale out of chips and thinking of Mathew 9:27-31, when two blind men get healed. 

I look at one of the blind men as us, as the homies, gangbangers on the streets and behind bars.  Or maybe a gangster, a junkie or a prostitute or whatever it is that’s holding them back.  Our blindness, or disability, is our addiction: gangs, sex or drugs. We are blinded to ourselves and our lives. 

            Like for me, I was hurt deeply. I was made fun of as a kid because I was the only Mexican in our school.  I wouldn’t get called on in my 3^rd grade glass because the teacher felt it was a waste of time since English was my second language. I was molested for two years in a bed next to my mother’s. I had no one to really lean on or vent to, so I bottled up all my emotions and feelings. I turned my pain into hate. I leaned on gangs, sex and alcohol for comfort. 

            With the hate I had inside, I used it as my energy to hurt people.  I wouldn’t let no one in, and I wouldn’t get close to anyone. I was blinded to life, real love and to emotions. I became one of the blind men in these verses. 

            Now the second blind man is like society, the system, the gabachos [white Americans], the religious people who only saw the tattoos on my face, people who never trusted us or gave us jobs because of how we dress or appear to them.  Like even this young woman Adria who now writes me and prays with me on the phone—she never would of talked to me on the streets or anyone who looked like me. But after my pastor Chris told her about me and I expressed true deep feelings, she became my first white homegirl.

    Several years ago this dorky white boy with his Chuck’s and guitar named Chris came along, someone who sees something in us homies.  He looked beyond our disabilities like the way Jesus touched the eyes of the blind man and didn’t judge him for being blind.  Chris and pastors who have that kind of relationships with homies have touched us with patience, with love for us, with commitment to us when we fall short. He’ll touch us with kind, gentle words. 

    But that kinda ministry also teaches gabachos y society leaders that we’re not just criminals and drug addicts, but we’re children covering ourselves up with tattoos and tough looks. He helps them see us, and that we need a 2^nd and 3^rd chance. That we’re just a bunch of children who have been mistreated and misguided. To see we people with tattooes and on the streets deserve to be loved y to love as well.  Meanwhile on the streets we start to see a higher power than what we think we see, we to believe in God, when we couldn’t even believe in ourselves or even see who we were.

            Both our eyes and the other blind eyes are opened slowly. Through that kind of healing ministry, God has un-blinded “two men,” see? Two worlds.

That’s how I see those verses homie.

 

Philokalia - Pt. 2 - with Ron Dart and Archbishop Lazar Puhalo