I thought about leaving personal messages to folks. Even surfed back through some very old posts and saw some comments last night that I wanted to recycle just to say “Love” or “Hugs” or, in not a few cases, “Bite me”. Some of you say things online that I’m sure you’re not saying in person: tone and or content comes off rather differently in text, sure, but as I’m learning at work daily, most people have trouble saying what they mean even in person. Of course that goes both ways. I’ve felt, at times, that I was ranting – and you have all been very charitable. Not heard the ranting. responded rationally.

If I’ve said anything that was a sin, or caused you in anyway to stumble, forgive me.

I feel I know some of you (in both the “love” and “bite” camps). I’ve walked short or long journeys with you. Fr Ernesto and William Tighe have been around my electronic journey since my days in the Africa/Asia/Middle East office at 815, using the Quest Network to debate with Odessa Elliott and the funders at Trinity Church Wall Street. And Odessa, whom I just found on Facebook, was my first sparring partner on the Internet – back in the days of “Prodigy”! She thought Bill Bailey was a Spy from 815!

I have crushes on some of you – warm fuzzies when your comments show up.

I would like to know some of you in person.

I’m glad I don’t know some of you at all.

Nevertheless, if you have ever posted a comment and should find yourself in Buffalo: I’m very happy to take a call from you have coffee or, perhaps, dinner. We deserve it to each other to meet once this side of Beaulah.

Yes, some part of this feels like I’m committing online suicide. In case you can’t tell.

I’m going to write a bit – including the book reviews I promised. I’ve been working on a liturgy book as well and a theology book. And I’ve been wrestling with some choices I want to make, some corners to turn and some passages I want to walk. I mentioned last night that when it comes down to making a choice between my Spiritual Health and my Blog… (ie, my ego) it should be clear which choice to make.

All Comments will be on moderation and – as always – will close after 30 days.

Last night, after posting the Earlier Palinode, (which still explains a LOT), I went downstairs, had dinner and watch a movie about hippies whilst knitting with a room full of hippies. Then I went to sleep. That sounds like a very healthy pattern to hold to for a while.

Chop wood, carry water.

and/or Bite Me.

(It’s hard to stop, you know…)

Last word.

Now.

Originally published in 207, it makes a bit more sense of this journey and, I think, goes a long way to explain my departure.

This essay picks up where Going Off the Deep End left off.

OOKING BACK Over a life of conversions – from Protestant to Anglo-Catholic to Pagan to Gnostic to “seeker” to Episcopalian to Orthodox – I recognise a constant two-part pattern. For now, let’s call it convertitis, although it shows up in other contexts besides religion: when I came out in 1983/84; when, to a great extent, I went back in again 4 years ago; through several phases of politics and philosophy, etc. I also recognise it in various spiritual experiments/research in which I participated on my journeys. In each new conversion (religious, spiritual, political, whatever) the two parts follow, the first, then the second – rarely an overlap or shared boundary. They may be separated by years. I think they are linked as a matter of style more than anything else.

Part the First

On the one hand there is a full-tilt, gung-ho attitude. There is a need to do everything to the fullest extent possible and there is a need to do absolutely everything connected with the new conversion. Another way to say this is “Do everything and do it right” where “right” is defined as “to the Nth degree of exactitude.”

This has been a long-standing issue: when I dated a Jewish Girl in High School and we discussed my possible conversion, I said I’d only consider it if we were talking about Orthodoxy. Why do it at all, I remember saying, unless you’re going to do it right? Never mind that such was a level of observance far greater than she, raised in a secular family, had ever expected or desired. It was, ultimately, far easier for her to “pray the sinner’s prayer” at my evangelical church, as she did one Sunday, and get on with her life. I did the same sort of “level of observance” (earlier in High School) with Lord of the Rings. I did the same thing with my best friend and with football my freshman year: for a kid who didn’t like sports, how odd was it that I went to every game save one?

Jerusalem My Happy Home…

Seemingly, every time I turn around there is a new pool into whose deep end I must jump, feet first, with no preparedness. The Jerusalem Syndrome comes to mind. This was first mentioned to me by Margaret, the Chair of my Vocational Discernment Committee at St Gregory Nyssa Church:

[It is] the name given to a group of mental phenomena involving the presence of either religiously themed obsessive ideas, delusions or other psychosis-like experiences, that are triggered by, or lead to, a visit to the city of Jerusalem. It is not endemic to one single religion or denomination, but has affected Jews and Christians of many different backgrounds.

The best known, although not the most prevalent manifestation of the Jerusalem syndrome, is the phenomenon whereby a person who seems previously balanced and devoid of any signs of psychopathology, becomes psychotic after arriving in Jerusalem. The psychosis is characterised by an intense religious theme and typically resolves to full recovery after a few weeks, or after being removed from the area.

…previously balanced and devoid of any signs of psychopathology, becomes psychotic after arriving in Jerusalem. I love that.

In a real – although I pray non-psychotic – sense, “Jerusalem Syndrome” is descriptive of my life at every turn, if “Jerusalem” is considered as the metaphore for everything from Anglo-Catholic Ritual to the writings of Mary Daily to Irish Republican Politics to the Gnostic Grail Mass to sex, drugs, Springsteen, my fraternity and nearly every intimate relationship I’ve had.

I get to Jerusalem and I go ga-ga.

It does not end, so, however.

In connecting my convertitis with “Jerusalem Syndrome” I learn a lot. But I don’t know: is there a way for me to enter Jerusalem without going crazy?

Vision Swings

In each successive conversion, I’ve “died to my old self.” The man who was adamantly opposed to Apple computers in the 1990s becomes an Apple Evangelist in the new millennium. The man who said, in High School, that all homosexuals should be shot comes out in college and becomes a political activist on quite a large stage. The same High School student who handed out tracts on “the Roman Catholic Cult” becomes Episcopalian before he graduates. The man who argues for Open Communion at a General Seminary gathering in May of 2002 is Chrismated Eastern Orthodox in June of that same year.

These wide swings of vision would not be so distressing (at least in a post-modern, GenX kinda way) if I wasn’t prone to burning bridges behind me. When I left NYC to move to SF, I wrote an essay about how glorious life was in the human-scaled SF compared to the Megacity of NYC. Many of my NYC friends just stopped bothering with me at all at that point. When I left Christianity for Paganism I wrote a letter that said, basically, “Fuck You” to my previous spiritual home. When I left ECUSA to be Orthodox I did the same thing.

Sadly, not until now – in my early 40s – did I ever feel regret for any of these actions. At the time each event felt like logical growth, evolution, sloughing off old, dead skin. Now I’ve reached an age where it might be nice to have at least some emotional (spiritual, domestic, philosophical) roots. Every community that would have welcomed me in – perhaps even in a position of leadership – every lover that opened his heart to me, almost every friend I’ve had has been dissed away at least somewhat in order to make room for me to “move on” and “grow”.

Many of my friends who are Orthodox now see me as finally having left all that “wrongness” behind. Now I’m “right”. Being right is no great comfort when it’s cold and lonely. The first regret I can remember feeling is when that same Vocational Discernment Chairwoman asked me, standing in her bookstore, if Orthodoxy was all I had wanted and hoped it would be. 28 June 2006, about 5pm, 601 Van Ness in San Francsico, CA, a wave of profound regret swept over me – lost friendships, lost opportunities, lost what evers, from so many bridge burnings – and I said “No.”

Eight months later I’m still trying to figure out what that means.

Part the Second

The second half of the pattern I see repeated in my journey – which may, in fact, be part of the source material for the first half – is passive aggression.

I was a practising Pagan for years before I announced any change of faith to those Christians around me and it was longer before I stopped going to Church because of a perceived discontinuity between my public actions and my private faith. I wanted to leave San Francisco nearly 18 months before I did, bringing myself to live so duplicitously that I managed to date a man in that period, claiming to him that I would never leave SF. I was secretly attending only Orthodox liturgies weeks before I told my vocational discernment team that I was leaving. During the overlap – when I wanted to be elsewhere, but wasn’t yet – every little thing about where I didn’t want to be would anger me: I’d fight with my pastor about a vestment choice when I was already praying to St Raphael. I’d fight with my boyfriend about smoking in the house when I was researching a move out of NYC. I’d move heaven and earth for a new Job description from my employers when I was getting ready to quit. In my pride, I pretended I just didn’t want to offend anyone. The result of my covert action being later discovered, I’d effectively lied to everyone for a set period (months, weeks, whatever). I wasn’t worth being trusted at all as a member of their – or any other – community.

The Root?

My problem, in case you cannot tell by this point in the essay, is that I think too much. I over-analyse and weigh every option, every minute option. One might want to be generous and credit this to my good sense. Rather I credit it, if credit is the right word, to fear. Although I can push the envelope when I make up my mind to do so (move across country, join a new church), it can take quite a long time to get to that point. I’d rather be seen to be a well-considered sort of guy; reasonable and not impulsive: to show my work, make the right steps, do the right thing. In fact, I’m usually just afraid to take the next step without permission. Fear is my great hobgoblin: fear of the unknown, fear of the dark, fear of death (in one of many possible senses), fear of change, and, to a great extent, fear of the possibility that I might paint myself into a corner from which it is not possible to escape.

It is also a fear of success. The irony is that in my fear – which a good many people charitably perceive as patience – I let most things slip through my fingers as I can’t quite decide if, in fact, I want to grasp them. Thus when I do, finally, act with sudden haste and seeming great aplomb, in the grip of some new Jerusalem Syndrome, I terrify and abandon those who came to love me for the mask I previously wore. I could rewrite the history of every major change I’ve made in my life – including my “Spiritual Autobiography” – by noting the point at which I wanted to change but couldn’t and saying “at this point the fear took over and I started telling lies.”

I would love to be the patient, careful man many seem to think I am. I would equally love to be the man who can think of a great plan and act on it, bringing it to fruition in grace and wonder. Sadly, I am neither.

…When shall I come to thee?

I don’t know. I’m not where I want to be. I can’t quite figure out where that is. I struggle to know what I believe (if I believe anything at all) and I worry that I’m pretty much telling lies all around. When I see Orthodox attacking others whose faith is different or weaker – or maybe stronger, though less exact, more grey – I get angry. That’s me, really: that person of a different faith, a weaker one. But also I recognise I’m in that part of the pattern where I’m gunning for an excuse to leave rather than just being honest.

When I’m honest (as I was, recently, with my confessor) my faith is more grey, and open-ended than I’ve been willing to let on, even to my self. It’s not that I deny things taught by the Church, it’s just that I don’t *know* them and I refuse to circumscribe possibility by them. There are more things in heaven and on earth…

What I’m sure about is that I don’t want to any change, growth or evolution to come off as more bridge burning. I broken off communion with hundreds of people – thousands actually – from whom I was learning of Christ’s unstoppable, universal and welcoming love. I don’t need my communion table to shrink any further. Some of my readers would call them heretics or sinners, one even ventured to call them blasphemers. *Shrug*. I’m not a man that is that sure of things even though I’ve managed to play one on the internet – words are cheap, living is hard. What I am afraid of, even more, is that having reached the most exclusive club there is, any recantation will be perceived of as a total dismissal. I fear any admission of weakness will be perceived as a chink in the armour of faith, rendering me impure. My own control issues and my own pride – by which I want to be 100% right all the time and seen to be right buffet me about on every side at this point. I can be 100% right and still be exactly wrong.

It is mostly my own pride and fear that keeps me where I am – that keeps me from hitting publish on this post.

Fear of y’all’s silence (my readership dropped nearly 30% after Going Off the Deep End) or reaction and, when I’m honest, fear of a vengeful God that I didn’t believe in before I became Orthodox: not since I was in first grade have I believed in this one, the one who keeps track of things in a ledger, the one who hurls earthquakes at Constantinople (as per our liturgical calendar) and invading tribes at Russia (as per our saints). And we wondered where people got the idea that the Tsunami was a curse from god? Increasingly this god seems nothing like the God of Jesus.

It was suggested that I focus on God’s love. The Gospels are all about love…

Lord, have mercy.

There have been very few posts in the last few years that rank as “greatest hits”. I don’t doubt this is because there are too many bloggers now: it’s far easier to stand out when there are nearly no others! I remember when the entire ortho-bloggopsher – minus LJ, which still doesn’t count – was Clifton, James, Karl and me. Then David and John. Serge, I’d add you to the list, but I’ve never been very clear as to what denomination you belong! Then (thankfully) some women signed on. Then there were billions. My mediocre quality is more evident now: so it is harder to be a large fish in a huge pond.

So I’ve nothing to add to my series of Greatest Hits, today, although there is a whole page of essays (linked in the menu above) including the Essays I am most proud of: my series on Trinity, Incarnation and Eucharist.

Tomorrow I’ll post a bit of an adieu, but today here’s a taste of the future:

Even during the sabbatical, the two annual series will continue (1) the daily post of the WR Lenten Liturgy (which I’m already scheduling) and station church “virtual pilgrimage”; and (2) the advent meditations on the Great O antiphons.

Also, during Sabbatical, I will keep this blog active by doing something I love to do: read and review books. I realise that sounds odd, but I’ve not had time to read a damn thing, recently. So I can review books, post essays, and maybe make some money – or at least get free books! (I’ve signed up to be a reviewer for Thomas Nelson and I’m also getting Sara Miles’ new book soon.)

Personal stuff will go away as will spontaneous essays and blogging/conversing about the hot topic du jure. I’m going to try, at least for a little while, to avoid even commenting on other blogs. I’m debating, at this point in time, turning off comments entirely or just leaving everything in moderation. Maybe. You’ll know when I know: tomorrow.

Yes: I’ll still be available on Facebook and Chat, t his is not an online suicide! But my goal is to move the internet into the same space as TV currently has in my life. Maybe. We’ll see.

At the same time, I was wrestling with the vocational discernment team at St Gregory of Nyssa Parish. Was I called to the priesthood? I’ve also compared this to group therapy: once or twice a month, 15 people sitting in a circle, discussing things that need to change in order to let one finish. Except where CIIS was group therapy, the Discernment Team felt like working with 15 therapists.

These two therapeutic processes played out in a complex way on my own internal dialogue which was, at the time, covering a number of mid-life issues. (I was 36 in 2000.) It felt like my life was looping itself (like it does today, to be honest). Somehow I had been dealing with the same set of questions since moving to SF in 1997 and it was all coming to a head. What was a relationship? What was GOd? What was I doing in Church? What was I doing in bars? What was I doing in bed? What was I doing at the altar? What was love? Why did men constantly treat me like a cute, huggable (but not dateable/marriageable) Teddy Bear? Why was I about as rootless as I could be?

The month I first moved to SF, I met a man in a bar. For the next 5 years we flirted off and on as he moved to Sacramento and then Seattle. Then we forgot about each other. We met, again, in December of 2002 – just as I was planning to move to Asheville, NC. Things continued to evolve and soon my own desire to leave SF was struggling with my desire to stay with RJ. My issues with theology and sex were coming up more and more and it was harder to deal with any of them.

While becoming Orthodox was, I still believe, the right thing, nearly all the rest of the decisions made in those succeeding months were based on my own unwillingness to communicate in-person with anyone. Writing was about the only method I had, but my blog had no audience – certainly not the people to whom I needed to talk.

Follow this: I needed to have several serious conversations over the course of two years, with my discernment team, my college classes, my partner, my confessor. But I was afraid to talk to them. So I used my website, my blog to vent. For example: for a while I had a “book blog” where I posted as-it-happened reactions to the books we were reading in class. These were filled with all the usual liberal arguments, all the usual clap trap about peace with no Jesus, love with no sin and sin with no guilt, so I vented a lot. At the same time my reaction to things in my parish community were much the same. But ididnt tell anyone. I was afraid they wouldn’t let me be a priest. But after converting to Orthodoxy – in a parish with several gay couples – I was, myself, continuing to struggle with the difference between things as they were and “things as they should be” in my head. Dating a man – then living with a man in my own apartment on Minna Street, wanting to leave, wanting to stay, wanting to have to stop wanting. I kept writing about the people I should be talking to… And got an audience of people that were also venting about the same people.

A curious transubstantiation took place.

The more I said the things my audience wanted to hear the more applause I got. The more applause I got the more I wanted to say those things. And wanting to say those things is the same as believing them. Life soon follows wanting. My own sense of self was changing. I wasn’t a conservative but I played on on the Internet.

This is the mindset (in hindsight) of the person who wrote “I was in Hell” whilst living in a passive agressive argument with his soon to be ex-lover in SF. (Please read all the follow-up posts and comments over there.) I earned $200 for this piece of writing, the only piece of my prose ever to get published-for-pay.

It’s interesting to note: “I was in Hell” blames everyone else for the choices and struggles I was making. That’s not very Orthodox. Not at all. But Frederica Matthewes Green called it one of the best examples of Orthodox Spiritual Writing she’d ever seen. Get that? It’s all your fault… But when I later discovered that it was my fault that I’m a self-centered ass… and that you are Christ, even if you’re dancing naked in a gay pride parade… she said my metaphor was weak. No one liked this article as much. Not at all.

So there I learned, right there. My crowd didn’t want to pay for me to be a sinner. They just wanted to pay for me to blame everyone else because it supported not their religion but rather their politics.

And, ironically, that was the beginning of my coming out.

My conversion was real. I’m still wrestling with that. But my conservatism was not. The slow, dawning realization that Red Staters had hijacked my Chrismation Process for their own purposes was a bit painful. What was real, what was not? What was chrismation? What was conversion? What was important? Questions are more important than answers, I think. I’ve been blogging my way through that since 2005.

Part of my experience as a Pagan in San Francisco was the total lack of community. You can do pagan by yourself so you don’t need to sit still when someone does something you don’t like: go next door, go to your own basement. I came from “back east” where traditions pagan “Denominations” were very important forms of Identity. So doing it “by myself” was awkward at best and frustrating most of the time. Going back to church was a way to get community back in my life, and a sense of accountability too.

Donald once told me that what makes us a Christian community was gathering in Jesus’ name to do the things he commanded us to do. And, week after week, gathering to sing and dance as Jesus leads, breaking bread and feeding each other, makes us Christian. After a while, my daily meditations on astrology gave way to a daily meditation on the lectionary which went out on a mailing list – 30 or 40 subscribers at its max. I can trace there the evolution of my own sense of radical gospel – of Christarchy, of AnarChristos, etc, of inclusion and exclusion… it’s all there. You can, ironically, see the evolution of my Eastern Orthodoxy there too. My friend Damon was on my vocational discernment committee and he says that, reading these daily meditations, he used to wonder, “Why are you not Orthodox?”.

There’s no “Greatest hit” entry from this period, just a note about what was going on. I think it’s interesting that I feel many of the same energies now, present and active in my life: the desire for community, the urge to “go it alone” coupled with the strong desire not to be alone. I blogged it last time. Don’t want to this time.

By October of 1998 I had purchased the Doxos domain, and I’d sifted through several different ideas about what to put on the page. Then I discovered a website called “PlanetSOMA” which no longer exists as a live, updated site. The Author, David, is now in Pittsburgh, oddly enough: North Carolina, SF, and now Rust Belt, we seem to be on some odd parallel – and we’re the same age, same month, if memory serves. Astrology, anyone? ANYWAY, David had an online journal. His diaries were all there for the reading and edification (or not). His personal evolution was traceable. And I immediately figured out what Doxos was for – my journal. I did write David to tell him that he inspired me. We did correspond a couple of times but we’ve never met. He’d only know Bill Bailey from SF.

And so: in early October of 1998, my weekly report appeared on the web. Doxos has been here ever since. By Mid-October, living in the Mission on 24th St and working two jobs, never having the time to write, I faced my first deadline with nothing to talk about. Again, I pulled out the Garrison Keillor voice and wrote this piece about my late Grandmother.

Big hit. Sappy. Tear jerker. Needs editing now – and the David mentioned at the end of the essay is not the David of PlanetSOMA, but rather my BF at the time, David C. Grandma, however, is still deeply loved. And still deeply missed.

Columbus Day weekend. Discoverers’ Day. The 503rd anniversary of the invasion. 503 Years of Oppression. The Day the Italian Jew did a good thing for the Catholic Church in the name of Spain. Pick one. San Francisco celebrated them this weekend, along with National Coming Out Day. I am sure that as I type this, there is a parade somewhere. It’s a long weekend and a lot of The City is closed. I do have to go to the bookstore tonight but such is life.

In 1984, on Columbus Day. I was working for a presidential campaign. Three guesses. Mondale and Ferraro were not the most exciting pair imaginable. There was some hoopla over the lack of Y Chromosomes in Ms Ferraro’s blood stream, but she was a politician through and through: very skilled and stirring up the emotions of domesticated primates. She and her Alpha Male was not as skilled as the leaders of the Republicans but that’s OK. I was walking up the Parade Route at about noon. Behind the Candidates, and their secret service and the media vans, there was a crowd of supporters. We had been stationed along the route. The idea was to sort of flow into the parade behind the passing group as a sort of staged ground swell of support. The night before, another political campaign group had been climbing light poles all up and down Fifth Ave. to place posters of “Mark Greene for US Senate”. I had discovered that with the right assistance – someone else to hold the posters and the stapler – I could climb up the light poll and run a line of Greene posters out along the electrical wire and thus make these huge arches along over 5th Ave. This was especially useful at the Metropolitan Museum where the trees parted and the gray and white stone and sky formed a perfect backdrop to the green arches of Mark’s Posters.

I was leading a sort of Greek chorus in a chant. I would yell, “Mondale!” And then a host of women would yell back “Ferraro!” It was odd. Several media persons had commented on how the lone man in the group seemed to be the only person yelling for Mondale. At about 60th Street, I was surprised to find that I had been joined by my Fraternity Brother, David Cusick. He put his arm around my shoulder and vary simply said, “Your Grandmother has died.” David took me to place a call to Mom, and then put me on the subway. It was that day that I learned that crying on the NYC subway can get you nearly a whole car to yourself.

My grandmother, Gran’ma, Bessie Richardson, had raised me from the time I was 1 until I started school in the Fall of 1970. It was she that – for better or worse – taught me how to clean and use all sorts of kitchen things. My grandfather taught me how to build with tools and to do electrical wire stuff. But I was home all day with Gran’ma. Gran’pa was an evening and weekend kind of experience. When she wasn’t yelling at me to stop watching TV and to go outside and play, Gran’ma was getting her house in order. That’s all I can remember her doing. She’d clean. She’d cook. She’d bake bread. Shed’ make lunch. Gran’pa would come home. We’d eat lunch. Then we all took a nap. She’d clean, and get dinner ready. At night, after she had done the dishes, we’d watch TV while Gran’ma would crochet. On other nights, if there was a special movie, she would pop corn on the stove, or make fudge. Sometimes she would go back in her bedroom and play the little electric organ that sat on her trunk.

There are some special memories all tied up in sitting on her bed, feeling the chilled mix of air- conditioning and the satin-like bed spread, while she played and sang hymns from her old song books: “I come to the Garden Alone” and “The Old Rugged Cross” and “The Little Brown Church in the Dale.” I can’t imagine what memories those songs inspired in her. I know what they bring back to me. She couldn’t really sing. She sang with a voice which crossed somewhere between the older Kathryn Hepburn and Harvey Firestien. I can still hear her, and I’m still smiling. She taught me how to play the organ and to crochet granny squares with the same patience and skill that my grandfather, Kenny, used to teach me wires, ohms and resistance and other science things like evolution and geology.

The family gathered in the home town of Edenville Michigan. The town is very much trapped in the 40s and 50s. Sitting in a little pedal boat, you move up the local river very slowly, until rounding a bend you come upon a large damn. There, on the other side of it, time moves forward, but Edenville is still sitting in the time when my grandmother owned a restaurant and filled it with her daughters, cooking for the locals during the depression and WW2.

At the funeral, 14 years ago, I preached the eulogy, as was fitting for the “Son” even though I was the oldest son of the youngest daughter, almost everyone in the family had met me through Gran’ma: my first trip to Michigan had been with her. I also sang, “I come to the Garden Alone”. It was her favorite. My cousin Greg played the organ in the funeral home while I sang. People cried. She had red roses all over her casket, or at least she does in my memory.

I’m not going anywhere with this story. It’s has just been on my mind all week, as I realized that Columbus day was coming up. Grandma was the center of her very large family: 7 daughters, her children’s children and the sisters and nieces and nephews and grand nieces and grand nephews. Her death was really the last time we were all together. The center had gone out and there were to be no other Matriarchs. In a large sense, there are now 7 matriarchs, all the sisters heading their own families, but I miss the days when we had a center. I could sit in her kitchen and look at the plate on the walls, from places that she had traveled with Gran’pa and I was constantly imagining a world that was no longer open to me: a world where she and Gran’pa had traveled after the war. The closest thing I’ve found so far is Muir Woods. That still looks the same as many of the pictures that were found in their albums. San Francisco, on the other hand, has changed greatly: the pictures I recently received from Gran’pa look nothing like the city in which I live. Those pictures were taken in 1961.

I miss my Grandmother. I have a lot of her in my heart and life: I still take my rings off when I bake bread. I can still make an afghan though it takes me months and months to do it because I won’t pick it up every night to work on it. I still believe in hard work, and when I don’t clean right, I can still hear her voice – which is why I get upset when I have to hear other voices like David’s or my mother’s.

Anyway, I’ve rambled a long time. If the Internet is connected to the Astral Plane – as some people seem to believe – then Gran’ma’s continuing Ed class in Heaven has probably surfed this page a couple of times. I love you, Gran’ma. I miss you.

::Krisp Memories
by Huw Richardson

Sitting at my desk on 14 August, the radio played some kind of “adult contemporary” to which I wasn’t listening. I heard the DJs (Scott and Tod) hassling their co-host Naomi over the fact that she knew nothing of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. My God! I thought. What in the hell are they going on about Krispy Kreme doughnuts for? Then the truth came out. The King of Dixie Confections had opened a stand on the corner of 23rd Street and 8th Avenue in New York City. Sweet Mother of Mercy! I almost took a taxi at that moment. I called my mother in Columbus, Georgia. “Mom! They’ve opened a Krispy Kreme on 23rd and 8th!” She responded, “Get the phone number so I know where you are.”

I don’t know when it opened: my friend Jorge has known about it for a couple of months already. I could have killed him when I learned that and he hadn’t told me. But when do you expect Yankees to know anything about haute cuisine? At least he likes grits. My mouth watered all day in anticipation. I couldn’t go there right after work. I had to meet friends for dinner and cocktails. I thought Krispy Kreme for desert would be heavenly.

23rd and 8th is in the middle of Chelsea. Chelsea is as close to Gay DisneyLand as we get outside of San Francisco. The addition of Krispy Kreme makes it more of a DixieLand Theme. It is also across the street from a Cineplex Odeon, one of the largest multiplexes in the city. I entered the shop and was immediately confronted by the smell of sugar. Jorge turned to me and smiled, “I can smell the grease!” He said with a grin that only weight-conscious gym bunnies can muster when they look at us fat slobs.

“Shut up,” I said, my native drawl returning. “I’m here to recapture my childhood.” I turned towards the counter. Between me and Sweet Death were seventeen people from Atlanta. I could tell: they all had blonde bouffants, even the men. They were all dressed in those red polo shirts and matching shorts that scream NRRWT (Nouveau Riche Retired White Trash). They smiled, hearing my accent and parted before me like the Red Sea before the Chosen People: I was going to Beaula.

I politely ordered “Two Regular Glazed” from the girl behind the counter. When she handed me the bag, I shoved my nose right into the opening and inhaled deeply. Time stopped. Suddenly I was four again, standing with my grandmother at the counter in the Krispy Kreme, next to the Winn Dixie in Columbus. I’d been a good boy while we shopped and here was my reward. The doughnuts had been taken from the glazing tray just before they handed them to me. I could feel the hot of the oven in my hands. I didn’t care: they’d be plenty of cold ones when we got back to the house. These were hot. Special. Magic.

The girl behind the counter giggled. “You must be from the South.” I smiled back at her, it wasn’t her fault her parents were Yankees. “Yeah. I’m from Georgia. I bet you’re getting a lot of this, huh?” She didn’t respond, but bustled on in her New York way, to the next customer.

Jorge was laughing behind me. “Let’s go.” And out on to 23rd street we went. Then I took one out and bit into it. I close my eyes, remembering other parts of my past. On the other side of Highway 75 from Georgia Tech is the world’s largest drive-in: The Varsity. We’d go there after concerts and such for the bestest burgers and the greasiest fires on the planet and deep- fried apple pies with a Coke. From the front of the place you could see the very Co’Cola factory in question. It was a miracle, equal to the epiphantic discovery of a Krispy Kreme in Manhattan.

The doughnut was heavy. Don’t get me wrong. Krispy Kremes are not some lighter-than-air confection which melts in your mouth. No. These things stick to your tongue and your fingers. The group from Georgia hovered near the Subway Steps, the youngest child having misplaced his napkins and become stuck to the railing. I walked past them, remembering that I too had forgotten my napkins. I licked my fingers clean, savoring every sweetness and the on-coming buzz. All I needed now was a bowl of grits and gravy.

When Jorge interrupted my silence, I was surprised to find that my drawl had come back in full force. As I type this I keep thinking that there aren’t enough syllables in Yankee English to convey the joy of it all. I’m thinking in Georgian. Trust me.

We sometimes over-romanticize our childhoods. I know I’m doing it now. 30 plus years along, where childhood still seems like yesterday, I know it was a long time ago. (My Ex-friend Robb’s last words to me were “I bet you can see Middle Age from where you’re standing.”) We’ve and landed on the moon and done disco and Jimmy Carter since Grandma and I shopped at Columbus Square. I don’t even know if there was a Krispy Kreme there or if I made it up in my head.

I know that the South in the late sixties was a time of turbulent love/hate – much like the rest of the country. I know that my people still get bashed when they have the audacity to exit a bar holding hands in Columbus. Some others find time to terrorize blacks and hispanics from within the voting booths and gun shops of Atlanta. But last night, for about fifteen minutes, on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Twenty Third Street in Manhattan, I wished I was in Dixie. I did. I could hear the crickets on the Chattahoochee and feel the humidity (or was that New York). I was surrounded by spanish moss. I was four.

This was the first time I used my mental Garrison Keillor to tell a story. Folks seem to like it. It’s dated (remember Ross Perot? Ken Griffey? Huey Lewis?), But I think it still works. The second post hit was a post on Krispy Kremes… I’ll run that up the flag pole later.

This was the first chance I had to feel the effect of words on the net. By this time I’d been going for a year in journalling and the Episcopal Church also joined Ecunet. This essay first circulated there…

::Opening Day Essay 1996
© 1996

Well, it’s Opening Day. At least it should be. Rain in many places and snow in Cleveland has ruined many a dream today, but all in all the Season has started and the game is afoot.

For a few moments, we should consider the mystical aspects of the game: Never was a pagan fertility ritual so occultly obvious or so publicly hidden. The mysteries of Alchemy and the Tao are all laid out on the Diamond. Lo, the mystical orb, launched from the consecrated hands of the Hierophant, is hurled towards its rightful resting place. Yet, hark! The sound of the Wand of the Fool striking the sacred sphere as it is sent soaring in the astrals and beyond, lost in the very light of the Sun. The Fool speeds his way, passing the resting stations on his journey: First base is active. Second is almost maddeningly passive. Third a creative merger of the two. Rushing to Home, the Fool moves to another plane of reality and becomes Adeptus – for now. Yet life is always a series of Initiations. Each turn at bat another trial and another chance for salvation.

It is odd that this ultimate American pastime – with all of its talk of team and sportsmanship comes down to me (the Batter) against thee (the Pitcher). What you can do to me, I – and I alone – can defend against for this time. Baseball, like American Religion, is about personal salvation leading to universal Nirvana – for an elect (the World Series champs). Thus we see in our Game the realities of our life. The work ethic of American Protestantism would have us believe that I may save myself (and maybe my family) if I work hard to get God’s blessings. But as a side benefit, American Society will also be blessed.

When the Batter faces the Pitcher, he is the laborer facing the manager. He is the secretary facing the boss. The Batter is the commuter wondering if she will find the way clear to get to work in decent time and then return again to home in the ‘burbs. The Pitcher is every teacher we ever hated but grew to love because her tough teaching awakened in us skills and powers we never knew we had. The Pitcher is every parent who ever said “A good job and a good life only comes after hard work.” The Batter is every kid who ever took the challenge.

We can’t help but wonder – as any bunch of good fans should – what might be the outcome. Will the Braves do It again? Will the Yankees come out of their choking habits? But all this questioning is really about our own national prosperity and our personal blessings. Can I manage to get my family through yet another year of higher taxes and greater health costs? Will I ever reach the Home Plate that seems to beckon from behind the Hammers and the Perots and the Forbes? Can I bring enough food home to feed the kids? Like Romans in the Coliseum, we find ourselves absorbed in the Spectacle of it all – just once in awhile to forget the real troubles of our lives.

Joseph Campbell postulated that the Myths of ancient cultures represented the energies of the body fighting against themselves. I would postulate that we feel the same way about our teams today. For me, the Mets are all that is good and noble – but not good enough. The Yankees – while having been champions for an inordinate number of times – represent all that is past and arrogant in their passing. The Dodgers represent the betrayal of corporate downsizing. The Denver Rockies show us the peak industries of chips, modems and the net. Granted, all of this would be different to the fans of the LA Dodgers, or to my Little Brother, Joey or my Friend, Jorge – ardent Yankee fans.

That’s the beauty of Baseball – and of America on its better days – there’s room in the pennant race for Yankee Fans and Mets Fans. We can – if we are lucky – find that inclusivity in all of our modes of our life. Baseball shows us the good sides of ourselves. We think that the winner is a once and for all declaration, but it is not so: next season begins the day after Closing Day. Spring Training comes right after Christmas.

Opening Day is here. We shall watch the bats swing from now to October – barring a strike (Heaven forbid). Ken Griffey Jr will do some miraculous things on the Diamond and at the plate. People will complain about team names and fanatic gestures. Huey Lewis was raised from the dead for Seattle’s opening night festivities. Truly, miracles will continue. Summer’s here and the time is right for racing in the streets until we crown our Autumn Kings.

ISTORIANS Discussing the origins of Christmas on the Church’s calendar will sometimes focus on the date itself (not quite the solstice, not quite not the solstice, etc) but I’m rather partial to the work of Fr Thomas Talley, a liturgical scholar and, in retirement, a resident of Asheville, NC, and member of St Mary’s parish. His book, The Origins of the Liturgical Year is one of the seminal works in this area, focusing on the historical evolution of the various celebrations. He tracks the various community celebrations (and the reason for their timings) that evolved into the festivals we celebrate today. He skips over pneumatic reasonings that can’t quite be verified and, like Blessed Alexander Schmemann and Canon Hugh Wybrew, would rather see and track the historical process.

Today is one day when that process (rather than the Holy Spirit, per se) rears its head in the most annual direct form. And it is one day that I rather love. It is interesting: through the historical evolution, it is the Spirit’s action and the Church’s teaching that we see.

In the West, today is the feast of the Epiphany, or manifestation: the day that commemorates the visit of several astrologers to the birthplace of the infant Jesus. The theological import is that here the Jewish Messiah is being worshipped by Gentiles but more – and perhaps most importantly – and it was their own religious traditions that brought them. In the East the title of the feast is “Theophany” and, more clearly, it points to the Manifestation of God. The Gentile religions had in them the logos, the Mind of God, present wherever there was Truth. The Tao te Ching is, for them that can read it right, an “Old Testament” as well. The stars and astrological mindset of the Persians bring them to a place of preparedness, and – as St Justin the Philosopher makes clear, even the philosophical ponderings of Plato and Socrates prepared them for the Gospel. Theophany reveals that truth that they have always known to be Who He Is.

In the Christian Orient, using a different calendar, January 6th is the only feast there is: today is the Nativity and the Theophany all at once. The manifestation of God is, once and for all, accomplished today. Communication between the Roman World and the Orient was so weak that the new-fangled feast of “Nativity” never made the journey that far east before political squabbles killed it outright. They only have the Theophany.

For those hundreds of millions of Eastern Christians using a different Calendar, today is 24 December, Christmas Eve. The entire Christmas/Theophany cycle is preparing to play out again for half the Christian world.

Crossing the streams, East and West, Oriental and Byzantine, Gregorian and Julian, you can see, today and tomorrow, a huge swath of Christian history and theology laid out with all its beautiful and complex patterns made clear and simple by repetition.

This is, really, only a position available for someone in a post-modern, internet connected world. In “the Old Countries” everything is just as it always was. In pockets of hold-out modernist Fundamentalists in the Church various parties fight over the calendar as if it was a matter of Doctrine and Salvation.

But from another point of view (not more enlightebed or “better”, just another) the Internet – a window into the world next door – becomes an Old Testament, an historical preparation offering us a chance to see the Manifestation of God in the overlapping chaos of a liturgical and historical kaleidoscope that suddenly – for two days – manifests an icon of the Nativity.

A blessed feast!

Like a Mardi Gras in yer mouth… (Here’s the recipe I used, but I improvised a tiny bit.)