Shocked Reactions

I’m reading a book outside of my religious paradigm, and more than half-way through, it dawned on me that I should write some of my reactions down, which I decided to start today.  Don’t you just love run-on sentences?

Here’s the first “note”:

In the Protestant Church, it is true that a pastor is “only as good as his last sermon.” It always made me wonder, as a former protestant, what they do in their off hours (when they’re not giving sermons).  Maybe some counseling here and there – but not much – isn’t that what “Christian counselors” are for? Maybe some administrative duties. But it seems as though there’s nothing for a pastor to do but make his next sermon.  It’s all about teaching, learning, intellectualizing.  I didn’t realize or necessarily have a problem with this when I was a protestant, but during my searching and conversion to Orthodoxy, it was wonderful to not have my value placed on how well I could do intellectually, but in what place my heart was.  (Note that I am not perfect, or even try to be some days.)

However, in the Orthodox Church, the real admiration for a priest comes from who he is as a person. We interact more deeply with a priest (than I ever did with a protestant pastor – and sometimes it wasn’t even for a lack of my trying). We have Confession, where we offer our sins and brokenness to God in the presence of a priest, and he gives encouragement and council.  Granted, there are few who take advantage of this sacrament, but it’s wonderful.  We are aware of holiness because it’s around us all the time – in icons – and in the people around us. We have monastics in our midst, those who strive after God their entire lives. No, they’re not perfect, that’s not exactly the point, but they love God and desire communion with Him. They make little improvements here and there and eventually they will be a little closer to God. And isn’t that what we all want?

Second more shocking reaction:

The most horrible, well, maybe not the MOST, thing is that some people, some protestants see the heart as a bad thing. We need to understand that our temptations and our passions are corrupt, yes, but it is not who we are.  This is not what God meant for us. To be truly free is to be free from the things that enslave us and be in freedom in communion with God.  The nous is commonly translated “heart” and sometimes “intellect” and is the deepest part of a person (see other posts on nous).  This is where we commune with God.

Part of what I had written before was about how the western half of the world separates heart and mind because the concept of nous is very foreign to them… which I’m sure I’ve talked about elsewhere and leave that to your own reflection and infer whatever you will.

The book I was reading mentioned that ‘the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?’  which is Jeremiah 17:9, I found out as I searched for it in the ESV.  I went downstairs and got my roommate’s Orthodox Study Bible, hoping to find some sort of study note that would explain that verse.  To my surprise and utter shock, I found that Jeremiah 17:9 (17:5)says this, “the heart is deep beyond all things, and it is the man. Even so who can know him?”  I sat there in utter shock, not even knowing what to say or what I would post here.  I will leave that to your own interpretation, I suppose.  But I will add two things that might help you, if indeed anyone reads this.  The note says, “St. John Chrysostom labors the point that only God  an know men’s hearts, citing Psalm. 7:9; 1 Kings 16:7, 2 Chronicles 6:30, and Matthew 9:3,4.”  Also I should mention that the Orthodox Study Bible is using the first English translation of the Septuagint, translated by St. Athanasius Academy.  I’m not going to comment further on that because it’s complicated and I’m sure if someone wanted to know there are plenty of resources out there that are more reliable than a blog.

Music and Harmony

“Music, therefore, is a most excellent training, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inner parts of the soul ‘imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful.’  Our souls resound with the same harmonies as the cosmos, because the circles in our souls can execute revolutions answering those of the cosmos.  But it is only through philosophy that we are able to attain to this highest music, as our circles are thrown out of gear by birth.  Consequently music has the power to lead back the soul from the state of unrest to that of harmony, to correct the character, to heal mental diseases.  On this power Greek philosophers from Plato onwards laid particular stress; for the same reason they considered music to be a perfect instrument of education….” from A history of Byzantine music and hymnography by Egon Wellesz

I think I may have found the beginning of some support for a little idea that I’ve had about the perfection of music.  Since learning about the different tuning systems from Pythagoras to equal-tempered, I’ve had this nagging idea that music along with the rest of the world is corrupt because of the fall.  As a side note, that does not mean that we should reject music because it is corrupt, but rather we should pursue it like anything else and cause its improvement.

I have two theses about the corruption of music.  I haven’t decided which I’d rather go with, maybe both.  First, that music is just another extension of creation and is thus corrupted, but will eventually be restored to its original nature.  Or second, that the way we hear sounds and music is reflected from our corrupt nature only, i.e. it’s because our ears are corrupted that we hear music differently.  I guess it could be a mixture of both.

All tuning systems have some sort of error that they have to account for.  Pythagorean tuning lumps all the error into unusable keys, but it has perfect intervals (according to his ratio and number system) in other keys.  Equal – tempered tuning spreads the error out into all keys, so we have the same distance between all notes in all keys.  There are varying systems that go between those two.

Our ears, in the western world, are accustomed to hearing the well-tempered tuning system.  Other cultures, like China and India, indiginously, do not have the same type of system that we have, and their ears are suited to a different way of hearing music.  We perpetuate the sounds we like to hear, what we think sounds ‘good.’  Therefore it could be that our ears are what’s making the music sound good, even though technically, it could be more pure if thought of in a different way.

In the way that the Greeks thought about music, the ratios and numbers to describe the way a string gives off certain frequencies have a direct correlation between the cosmos and music.  It is interesting to me that he mentions that birth throws our connection to the world off, and we must be musically educated to get our circles back in alignment.  Music, they say, can heal you (maybe this is why musical therapy is getting more popular now).  I wonder as well, if one of the reasons why the Byzantine Liturgy is sung is because it is a ‘means of grace’ as my old Calvinist buddies would call it.  I guess in Orthodox terms it would be living a sacramental life, and everything that occurrs in Church is an outpouring of God’s grace and love.

Laws

Natural laws, yes, there are laws of gravity, laws of action and reaction, laws of science.  But why, then, should we reject a natural law of morality or the way in which human beings are meant to act.  Maybe it’s because these laws can be broken, but that only contributes to our free will.  If I chose to fly, could I do it?  Would that not conflict with the law of gravity?  Yet it says that if you have faith you can move mountains – that transcends natural law.

Onto civil laws and the difference between war and murder:

“Could there be anything more absurd than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the water, and his prince has picked a quarrel with mine, though I have none with him?” Pascal, Pensees 60.  It seems that the difference is only in politics and the laws that civil governments make.  Laws are a reflection of the people.  People are corrupt, so the laws will be corrupt.  Therefore, an argument for moral relativity on this basis (that the laws of men vary according to custom and heritage) is not convincing.  We all know people are corrupt.  There is no more truth in all of this than the laws.  The only sense in which we have the truth revealed in our laws is to that extent that we are united with God – in his image and likeness – because God is truth.