Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

ENVIRONMENT OF EDUCATION OF CHILDREN (Excerpt) - Lazar Puhalo

BRIEF INVITED PAPER FOR CONFERENCE "ENVIRONMENT OF EDUCATION OF CHILDREN" (PRE-SCHOOL-GRADE 1). MAGNETOGORSK, RUSSIA.

One dynamic area of childhood learning that needs to be discussed in detail is the way in which poverty can lower cognitive skills and interfere with learning ability; I would like to focus a bit on this dynamic.

There has been a tendency in some elements of society, notably right wing conservatives, to almost moralise poverty and the lower levels of cognitive and learning ability in people who grow up in poverty and suffering from malnutrition. While this is particularly true in America, such destructive attitudes exist elsewhere.

Poverty begets poverty. Low income families, those confined to minimum wage incomes and other forms of poverty, tend to remain at poverty levels for some generations. During the dark era of the Eugenics theory, it was posited that families that lived below or near the poverty level were mentally deficient due to some hereditary abnormality. The so-called "prosperity gospel" of some religious sects transferred this eugenics theory into a morality theory. The basic idea was that people lived in poverty because they merited God's disfavour. The theories are reflected in efforts by certain political wings striving to terminate school nutrition programmes that provide for what is often the only nutritious meal that poor children receive each day for the five days a week that they are in school. Even this does nothing to help create a successful learning environment for preschool children who live at or near the poverty level. In some nations, including in North America, this affects millions of children.

Bludgeon or Medicine? Homily by Lazar Puhalo

 

Truly the Holy Spirit has gathered us here today we may worship and praise our Lord Jesus Christ and remember the Gospel that He has given to us, and the freedom that He bestowed upon us. Why does the apostle in this epistle today tell us that Christ has torn down the middle wall that separated us and abolished the ordinances and the laws of commandments that were set before us, yet Christ said "I did not come to abolish the law that everything would be fulfilled" and that "not one jot or one tittle of the law would pass away until all things were fulfilled." The answer is that all things are fulfilled in our Lord Jesus Christ, that the fulfilment of the law is righteousness not punishment. Our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ has fulfilled all righteousness for us, on our behalf. He has also told us the actual meaning of the law and given us the very foundation stone the very hinge upon which the law and the prophets would rotate: love of God with all of our being and love of neighbour as our self. This is all the law and the prophets, and this is what the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ has given us: We have been liberated from the bondage of law and set free into the glorious freedom of divine grace, for we have been given grace in place of law.

Review of "Mystical Landscapes: From Vincent van Gogh to Emily Carr" - by Ron Dart with Lazar Puhalo

Review of Mystical Landscapes: From Vincent van Gogh to Emily Carr. Edited by Katharine Lochman with Roald Nasgaard & Bogomila Welsch-Ovcharov (New York: DelMonico Books, 2016). 

Review by Ron Dart

There has been a regrettable tendency to falsely and naively assume the right wing of the Enlightenment project (with its excessive focus on the empirical, rationalistic, scientistic and secular ideology) defines the modern ethos. Such an approach negates the ongoing interest in spirituality, religion and a contemplative way of knowing and being that have played a significant role in the romantic and humanist commitments of the Enlightenment. The sheer beauty and bounty of Mystical Landscapes: From Vincent van Gogh to Emily Carr is the way this visual and literary text amply illustrates how many of the finest artists of the 19^th and 20^th centuries expressed their spiritual longings on canvass as they drew inspiration and deeper insight from the vast landscape of Nature.

The intricate and delicate interplay in this packed tome between multiple essays and classical paintings drawn, mostly, from the European and North American context make for a comprehensive read and visual tour. The fact that Evelyn Underhill is often cited as a guiding visionary of the mystical grounds Mystical Landscapes in a solid and sustained manner. The equally important fact that the paintings included in the text were housed at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) from late autumn 2016 into the early months of 2017 make this collection an unusual and rare coup of sorts for the AGO.

The wide ranging nature of the topics included in the essays, the depth explored, at both a theoretical and applied level and the constant return to the actual paintings makes Mystical Landscapes an evocative and illuminating read---the sheer synthesis is amply admirable. It might have been valuable, by way of conclusion, to draw in more of the Canadian mountain painters beyond the Group of Seven and Emily Carr (such as Peter/Catherine Whyte---Whyte Museum in Baff) and ponder how Underhill’s journey from her earlier Mysticism (1911) to her more mature Worship (1936) might redefine the relationship between mysticism and landscapes, spirituality and nature but these are minor quibbles.

There can be no doubt that Mystical Landscapes: From Vincent van Gogh to Emily Carr is a pioneering book of the highest quality and, as such, presents, through the eyes and souls of artists and writers, a more nuanced and balanced notion and understanding of the modern enlightenment ethos. Do meditatively read and inwardly digest this beauty---soul, mind and imagination will never be the same.

Ron Dart      

 

Inflicting Righteousness - Lazar Puhalo

We Repent because of Love, Not Fear - Lazar Puhalo

Faith in Christ pertains to the inner content of the life of Christ. It is not just a collection of religious ideologies and moralisms which ignore Christ and His message in order to return to bondage to the law, as if we were without Grace.

It is said by the Saviour that "not one jot or tittle of the law shall pass away until all things be fulfilled." How is it that anyone (even Orthodox clergy) turn to this saying, yet never, ever pay heed to the prayer we say at the Proskomedia, just after the prayer before the Amvon, and before the final blessing? It begins with the theological statement, "Thou who art Thyself the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets ..."

If Christ Jesus did not "fulfill all things," what did He accomplish?

Of course, if you believe in the 'Atonement' heresy--that Christ was tortured to death to satisfy the bloodlust of a cruel and unforgiving deity, and died to save us from God--then you might not realize that Christ did indeed, fulfill all things so that every jot and tittle of the law may pass away, so that the "manuscript that was against us is torn up," as Paul says, and the "middle wall" (Eph. 2:14) is broken down.

Herod Was Religious - Lazar Puhalo

Editor’s note: While many believers celebrate the birth of Christ on Christmas day, millions of others extend the celebration of the Incarnation through what they call ‘The Feast of the Nativity’ well into January. In so doing, they think of the Incarnation as encompassing, not only the birth of Christ, but his whole life as God-made-human.

These are the days of the Nativity of our Lord God and Savior, the Incarnation of the living God, the Incarnation of co-suffering Love. The Sunday after the feast, the Gospel story of Herod and the Magi always holds a great revelation for us.

I was asked recently asked online, “Does evidence disprove religion?” Perhaps it doesn't disprove it so much as it exposes it. Remember, we always try to caution that religion and faith are not the same things.

Herod, you know, was a genuine believer. He was very strict about keeping the kosher laws and the other laws of his religion. Even Caesar makes note of the fact that when Herod would come to Rome—as he had to periodically to promise his fealty to the Emperor—he always refused to eat any kind of pork. And he was very careful about the kosher laws. So we could say he was a religious person.

Of course, he also had several wives and he even killed a few of them. He had numerous children both in and out of wedlock. Yet he was very religious! But this doesn't mean he had any faith.

So when the Magi came and told Herod, “Look, the prophecies of your religion are being fulfilled and we have come to venerate the one who has been born according to the word of the holy prophets,” Herod believed. He knew the word of the holy prophets. Yes, he was very religious. He knew and he could consult exactly where the Messiah was to be born. But he understood that the Messiah was to be a military ruler, a military king who would take over the land of Israel and rule it and make it great again.

The Moral Grief and Co-Suffering Love of Christ in Gethsemane - Lazar Puhalo

Editor's note: This article is a follow-up to Bearers of Co-Suffering Love

Some have asked me to explain "moral grief," looking at the Holy Fathers.

The best example of Moral Grief is Christ's prayer in Gethsemane just before his betrayal. As the fathers tell us, Christ had no fear of death. He certainly knew who He is. What then, was the "chalice" that He suffered from so greatly and wished to have it removed?

He was referring to His grief over the conditions and bondage of humanity. As the great Russian father, Antony Khrapovitsky says, "Christ suffered more greatly from His moral grief for humanity than He suffered physically on the cross."

Christ expressed no outrage over mankind's sins, which He had come to bear away. Even when critiquing the self-righteous, He was sharp and stern, but without outrage. With the woman taken in adultery, we do not see any moral outraged in Christ, rather, being concerned for her healing and salvation, He demonstrates a moral grief toward her accusers who were, despite of their own moral outrage, were immoral and full of sin themselves.

Moral grief never seeks the punishment or degradation of another, but feels grief over their bondage and inner human suffering. Moral outrage wallows in the desire for punishment, and rages against the other rather than feeling a deep sense of humble grief over their condition. I hope this will explain to some degree.

St Antony Khrapovitsky once wrote:

“In the garden of Gethsemane the Lord demonstrated the ultimate degree of co-suffering with the sins of every person, when He began to be oppressed by them to such a degree that He asked the heavenly Father to deliver Him from the agony. 'And was heard because of His reverence" as the apostle says (Heb.5:7), as an angel appeared and strengthened Him.'

"... How can I benefit from the Saviour's grief over people's sins, in the way that a corrupted person's soul is filled by a friend's co-suffering love? Only if I am convinced of the certainty that I too, I personally, as an individual, was and am encompassed in the heart of Christ Who grieves over my sins. Only when I am aware that He beholds me, stretches out His supporting hand toward me and encompasses me with His co-suffering love: only then is He my Saviour, pouring new moral strength into me, He "Who teaches my hands for war" (Ps. 17:34) against evil.

"This is possible only when He is not foreign to me, not a historical example of virtue, but a part of my being or, more correctly, when I am a part of His being, a participant of the Divine nature, as Apostle Peter says (Pt.1:4).T

PATRISTIC REFERENCES: CHRIST WAS NOT GRIEVED IN GETHSEMANE ABOUT HIS OWN SUFFERING AND CRUCIFIXION:

St Hilary of Poitlers devotes several paragraphs to refuting the idea that Christ felt fear in Gethsemane. He says that Christ's words, “My soul is sorrowful unto death” cannot mean that He was sorrowful because of His own impending death. He was sorrowful unto death in that He sorrowed so greatly over fallen humanity that He came unto death over it. “So far from His sadness being caused by death, it was removed by it.”

Concerning the words, “Let this cup pass from Me,” St Hilary says,

For this prayer is immediately followed by the words, ‘and He came to His disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter; could you not watch one hour with Me?...the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh Is weak....' Is the cause of this sadness and this prayer any longer in doubt?...it is not, therefore, for Himself that He is sorrowful and prays, but for those whom He exhorts.

The saint points out that Christ had no need to fear His passion and death, but that even those who were committed to Him would so fear it that at first, on account of it, they would flee and fear to confess Him, and that Christ was sorrowful over this. The whole passage is well worth reading. (See On the Trinity, Book 10:30—40).

See also:

• St John Chrysostom, Against the Marcionites and Maniceans
• St Cyril of Alexandria, On Luke, Sermon 146, 147
• St Ambrose of Milan, On Luke, Book 10:56—62

Both St Cyril and St Ambrose directly confirm Metropolitan Antony's interpretation of the cause and significance of Christ's agony in Gethsemane, and the “cup” which He asked to have removed from Him.

Moral Outrage is a Form of Public Confession - Lazar Puhalo

I want to repeat some things that I have said before because of some current political circumstances both in secular politics and within the Church: True morality consists far more in how well we care for others than in the external behaviour we demand of others. This why moralism is truly immoral and, moreover, moralism is the last refuge of the pervert.

What is true cannot be a heresy and what is false cannot be sound doctrine. We must stop telling lies as if we were doing so to defend doctrine. We cannot demand of educated people that they must choose between God and truth, but that they cannot have both. Nevertheless, this is being done, and it is not only immoral, but it is feeding atheism far more than any militant atheist could ever hope to.

Fear cannot produce sincere repentance, but only trigger a survival instinct which produces a false formula of repentance. Such repentance is not about being sorry for sins, but about regretting that you cannot get away with them. Only love can produce a true, heartfelt repentance.

Moral outrage is a form of public confession; we hate most in others what we fear most in ourselves.

Orthodoxy of the mind is merely an intellectual exercise. Until one attains to Orthodoxy of the heart, one is still an alien to the faith. This is why the prayer of the heart directs us to bring the mind into the heart.

With some sort of power, you can brutalise and bully people into what you consider correct external behaviour according to one or another "moral code," but like the law of the Old Testament, this cannot save anyone, it cannot serve for the transformation of the inner person.

Hypocrisy is among the greatest acts of immorality and sin. It is 100 times worse when the hypocrite is a hierarch or priest. It not only destroys the soul of the hypocrite but forms a stumbling block to others who seeking to follow Christ.

Don't Reinstate What Has Been Fulfilled - Lazar Puhalo

If one were to carefully study the several ways in which Christ Himself turned much of the Old Testament on its head, one might end up being very surprised. 

 The woman taken in adultery was forgiven, not stoned. The Sabbath was not kept in order to demonstrate that the “Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." He exalted and healed those who were not Jews, but "sinners" from among the nations. The Old Testament forbids the deformed, maimed and unclean to enter the temple; Christ fellowshipped with them and healed them. The Prophets rebuked the wealthy and Israel in general for ignoring the plight of the poor, the widow and the orphan; Christ made caring for them a prerequisite for entering the heavenly kingdom. Even the kosher food laws were overturned when the scroll was unrolled before Peter on the rooftop.

Perhaps, then, Christians should be wary of trying to reinstitute even elements of the Old Testament Law. Christ said that no point of the Law would pass away until all things were fulfilled (Matt. 5:17-18), although He had already overturned major elements of it. 

 But when He proclaimed "It is Finished," all things were fulfilled and, as our beloved father Paul tells us, the Law was abolished (Eph. 2:14-15). Moreover, "if there be established a new priesthood, there is of necessity a New Covenant" (Heb. 7:12). And if a new covenant, then what "Law"? For, “in that he says, `A new covenant,’ he has made the first old. Now that which decays and grows old is ready to vanish away” (Heb. 8:13). 

 If the Law is replaced by Grace (the law could neither sanctify nor perfect, nor could it transform the inner person, nor could it save anyone), and by a new law of Love, then why should any dog return to its own vomit when a banquet of love and grace has been set before it? 

 If we seek to reinstitute the law of the Old Covenant, then by that do we not renounce the New Covenant, and with it the High Priest by Whom it is established in His own precious blood? Should those who wish now to reinstitute even one jot or tittle of the Old Law, thus re-establishing the Covenant that has passed away, not rather tremble and repent for having renounced the blood of Christ which established a New Covenant and a priesthood after the order of Melchizedek, abolishing the priesthood after the order of Aaron? Can one embrace one jot or tittle of that Law without renouncing the Grace which replaced it?

Sacred Tradition vs Traditionalisms Trialogue - Lazar Puhalo, Ron Dart, Brad Jersak

Love is the Glue - Lazar Puhalo

Love is the glue that holds the universe together. This is reflected in our hymnology, "Christ the word, the wisdom and the power of God that creates and sustains all things." We can assimilate such a concept as the basis of our spiritual life, and rise above the fundamentalist and literalist understanding of Scripture. The alternative is to engage in monumental flights of the most irrational fantasy in vain attempts to reconcile the concepts of God revealed in Christ Jesus with a literalist understanding that God Himself actually commanded the ancient Hebrews to commit the most unspeakable acts of war crimes and crimes against humanity ever recorded in history. In our own eon, those same acts would have landed their perpetrators, not in the Hague, but in Nuremburg. Yet those same literalists will ascert that God is loving, caring for mankind, just and willing to sacrifice His own son for love of mankind. And they do this in the vain hope that more civilised generations will accept their senseless attempts to justify those monstrous actions. Nor can they explain why the miracles of modern medicine that heal and save the lives of millions of people outstrip the notion of the few, if any at all, actual healings take place through their ministrations. Perhaps this is why medicine in a very modern sense, was a ministry of the Orthodox Church from the time of Apostle Paul until the fall of the Byzantine Empire, why in the Orthodox world, medicine was hospital based, the unmercinary physicians are among the most venerated of saints, and the foundations of Arab medcine were laid in Jundeshapur by Nestorian Christians exiled from the Byzantine Empire. The perverse notion of linking the concept of justice to "punishment," rather than its original concept of putting in balance and setting matters aright, is inexcusable. God is love, and therefore the balance and adhesive of the universe is love. There is no other meaning to life than to love and be loved, and the highest manifestation of that is co-suffering love, the cosudffering love of God with humanity in Christ Jesus. But at every level, sincere love, unselfish love, is the essence of all meaning to life.

Religion That's Lost Its Way: An Impassioned Plea - Lazar Puhalo

This year, now drawing to an end, must surely remind of us of the horrors mankind can visit upon humanity. The disasters we create are worse than the natural disasters that we often fear more. As we carry the tragedies of this year forward into the new year with unresolved wars, incalculable suffering both of refugees and of those unable to flee from the strife and brutality of war zones, it might be well to consider how much of the horror arises from sectarianism and other forms of tribalism. 

While some would like to deny the degree to which the suffering, genocides and savage slaughters are so often religion-based, this reality is ultimately undeniable. Religion which has lost its way and its bases degrades into a system of primitive tribalism and political ideologies. It is tragic that, with all the sectarian and religious-based horror in our world, so many concern themselves with questions of much less significance and with a form of unrealistic, narrow-minded and often brutal moralisms, the meaning of which vanish in the face of the greater tragedies of mankind. Yet, our tribalism leads us to focus on the less significant, the desire to force others to believe and act as our branch of our religion thinks proper, while offering no deeper consideration to the actual, profound tragedies that religious fundamentalism daily creates around the world. 

 

On "Collecting Yourself: The Jesus Prayer" - Lazar Puhalo

Introduction to the Philokalia - Lazar Puhalo and Ron Dart

Wrestling with Adam & Eve: The Human Dilemma Part III - Lazar Puhalo

On the Banality of the Righteous - Lazar Puhalo

Mark Bowden, in his endorsement of Cullen Murphy's God’s Jury, invites our attention to the fact that "we need to be constantly reminded that the most dangerous people in the world are the righteous, and when they wield real power" we see the real pathology of the "righteous."

It is not only the ISIL righteous destruction of some of the world’s greatest and most valuable cultural artifacts because they are pagan – the Puritans in Britain did the very same thing, only they destroyed Christian artifacts, not pagan ones. Barely a week ago, some righteous Orthodox Christians in Russia also decided to destroy some artifacts which they considered "incompatible with Christianity."

One is reminded of the reply of the Caliph to the entreaties of John Philoponus to spare the great library in Alexandria: "If the books substantiate the Koran, they are unnecessary and must be destroyed. If they do not substantiate the Koran they are worthless and must be destroyed." The torture chambers of the Inquisitions, which devised new ways to make burning at the stake infinitely more painful, and more long lasting, than had ever previously been known, was commanded and operated by the righteous. Oh, not that the priests or bishops did any of the "hands on" torturing, no that would have soiled their hands (in addition to their souls), and the twisted, pathological mind of these righteous-ones cleared its conscience by having lay people carry out the actual performance of the evil.

Wrestling with Jacob: The Divine Dilemma - Part 3 Archbishop Lazar Puhalo

Racism and 'the Militsia' - Lazar Puhalo

Like it or not, racism is voluminous, virulent and violent in America today. Not only that, but America is rapidly descending into a harsh police state in which police forces are equipped, not as normal policing agencies, but as full armed militias. Recalling that, in Communist Yugoslavia and Romania, the police were called "militsia," and armed as military rather than police, this should be chilling to Americans as they face another election.

I did not hear this matter raised at all in the Republican candidates debate, and likely one should not have expected in on FOX Broadcasting (it is a travesty to refer to them as "news"), because FOX is comfortable with the idea of a police state. They constantly "justify" the brutal racism in which the militsia/police gun down unarmed black boys and humiliate and degrade black people on a regular basis.

It was not so many years ago that white Christians in the South would hang an innocent black man just for sport or to "keep niggers in their place." Those of us old enough to remember this so well can, perhaps, see more clearly what is going on in America today. Right wing howling about the accusation will not save a single African-American life or protect a black university professor from being treated like a suspected criminal under the most mundane of circumstances.

Will any of the present candidates address the problem? Will anyone in the Orthodox Church address the problem? Not likely. Far too many of us are concerned with depriving others of rights, not defending those who rights have been trampled upon.

Dr George Gabriel adds (in his response to my editorial)

Add to these horrors, widespread gerrymandering, redistricting of election districts to break up large black American voting districts into separate smaller ones grafted onto larger white and more distant ones to make black districts smaller, more difficult to travel to for voting. Also some states, not only in the south but even in PA and the midwest, have done this and have closed polling stations on Sundays and greatly limited the hours they are open on work days. In the south, the black churches traditionally bus their people after services to the distant polling stations. Now this new tactic by white republican governors has made voting impossible for many elderly and poor blacks. Many of these states even require IDs of elderly rural blacks in order to vote now, these are old folks who have no form of ID, not even a birth certificate, photo credit cards, bank counts. etc.

The Voting Act of 1965 (by Pres. Lyndon Johnson) secured voting rights for blacks by federal law. Now the Law is trampled upon and virtually ignored by white so-called Christians. 

I don't believe anyone in the Orthodox Church will address this problem, even though the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Reince Priebus is Greek Orthodox (of Greek and German descent). 

Re: the Republican Debate on Fox -- it got worse when most of the candidates began confessing their Christian faith and devotion. To his credit, however, at least Trump refrained from this ultimate hypocrisy.

George Grant and 'Lament for a Nation' - Lazar Puhalo interviews Ron Dart

Archbishop Lazar Puhalo interviews Ron Dart on George Grant and his Lament for a Nation.

 

Science and Faith: A Dialogue - Lazar Puhalo

  I have suggested before that we are in the midst of a second "great axial period". [1] Like the first "axial period," [2] the processes and influences of the second axial period in which we find ourselves, can lead closer to, not further from, God. This will happen, however, only if we overcome fundamentalism and extreme right wing religion.

     Continuing from my last paper, we will focus this tie on the principle of non-locality.

     In the late 1990s, Nicholas Gisin experimented with twin photons — light particles are shown to communicate with each other instantly — and dispelled any notions of "locality" in physical reality. He gave further strength to the theory of non-locality which had been either obvious to or suspected by the earliest quantum physicists. Earlier, in about 1982, Alain Aspect had conducted a series of experiments with atom optics, from which we argue for the essential wholeness of physical reality at its most basic level. [3]

     We may posit, therefore, that the perceived division between mind and cosmos is an illusion. From an Orthodox Christian point of view, man was intended by God to be a unifying factor in the universe. This is why some of the holy fathers (St Gregory the Theologian, St. John of Damascus) assert that man is a microcosm of the universe. Man is composed of the same elements as everything in the universe, his mind and body operate in a fashion consistent with the so called "physical laws of nature," but in him the spiritual and intelligent aspects of the universe are combined with the physical, without creating any form of dualism. Angels may be, I would cautiously suggest, "intelligent energy," but man is a complete image of the universe, and created in the image and likeness of the Creator. [4] In man alone, we find a wholeness which unifies every part and aspect of all created things, and presents such a wholeness before God.

     This is why the fall of man affected the entire universe, and why Apostle Paul tells us that all creation is being redeemed together with mankind (Rm.8:16-34). Moreover, man alone has the ability to contemplate the universe and to have an awareness of his own presence and place in it.