NEWS AND NOTES:

Bishop's Visit:

His Grace, Bishop Basil of Amphipolis, our bishop, will visit us for Sunday, 4th October. He will serve Divine Liturgy in St Leodegarios at the usual time of 12.15 p.m. We hope that all will be able to attend. Please bring a contribution to the refreshments afterwards.

Study Group:

Monthly meetings will resume from Wednesday, 16th September. Venue for this and dates of future meetings to be determined.

The Parish Meeting

The Parish Meeting held on Sunday, 5th July, accepted the recommendation of the Parish Officers, that we should leave the Carlton Church and move temporarily to St Leodegarius, Basford. The decision was by overwhelming majority with only few against. Sadness was expressed that this decision had to be made but it was considered to be the best way forward in the unfortunate circumstances which have developed over the past three years

Catechesis and Readers Training.

There is a need for both Catechesis and follow up training for those new to the Orthodox faith or keen to join in a refresher course. There is also need for Reader training sessions. If you would like to be considered for either of these options, please give your names to Fr David

Conference reports

Three very interesting and stimulating conferences have been held over the summer. Here is the report.

1. Association of Orthodox Christian Psychotherapists.

Our recently held conference was entitled " The Ground of Our Being: A Study of Hidden Consciousness".

Wendy Robinson and Fr David Gill outlined the understandings of Jung, Freud and Viktor Frankl. Metropolitan Kallistos Ware and Fr. Professor Andrew Louth explored the Fathers understanding of the unconscious or, at least, their understanding of the mystery of the human person. A study of Evagrius, Makarios of Egypt and the Marcelians lead Fr Andrew to the conclusion that the Fathers had no anticipation of modern psychology but that they would not have been surprised by its discovery. Demonology is an an anticipation of modern psychology but there are no concepts of repression or unconscious motivation. The concept of self image leads to the aim of cutting out what we don't want. Choosing and deciding is innocent of the notion of the unconscious, indeed all thoughts are regarded as conscious. At the same time Makarios speaks of the soul as having many members and being of great depth. The Marcellians regarded human behaviour as out of place (atopos) and hence there are recognized to be areas of being over which control has not been gained. It was understood that when we transgress, we are bound with life in this world and so hedged in, fractured and handicapped. This leads to the conclusion that human life is not simple but manifold and that there are multiple contenders for our selfhood. We are not in control of self and this manifests in behaviour which betrays us and gives away our true motives. This is what we don't want; there are clearly other forces at work. The inherited fracturedness within us, making us unable to recognize the presence of the power of God, may reflect the presence of the collective unconscious as described by Karl Jung. If the Fathers had an understanding of the unconscious it is always manifest in the analysis of the fallen state and is an escaping from elements of the unconscious. Self knowledge is an acceptance that we will become transparent, we will know ourselves and be known by others and this will be the state of life in heaven.

Metropolitan Kallistos noted the many references in scripture to our complexity. "The heart is deep" ( Psalm 63), the heart is the spiritual centre of the total person. " Purify me from the secret things within me" ( Ps 18) says the psalmist. It seems that with the Fathers, the heart is the unconscious. "Has anyone understood his own nous" asks Gregory of Nyssa. St. Peter refers to " the hidden man of the heart ( 1 Peter 3) and St. Paul refers to " the secret things of the heart" ( 1 Cor 15). The Homilies of Makarios state that the soul contains many hidden thoughts and he refers to "The Prairies of the heart" where is grime and dirt and where, about the rough hewn ways and chasms, are found beasts. But where is also encountered, God and the angels and heavenly cities. Other writers refer to different levels. In the depth is only to be found God. Mark the Monk says that the level of the heart is inaccessible to evil. Gregory of Nyssa says that we do not understand ourselves because we are made in the image of God and hence part of us, like God, is not knowable. This means that we need an apophatic anthropology. Most Fathers say that if you know yourself you will know God and become like God, whilst Barsanuphios says: "Forget yourself and you with know yourself".
Both Fr Andrew and Metropolitan Kallistos referred to the importance of the writings of Jean-Claude Larchet "L'Inconscient Spirituel"
There was a lively discussion exploring the subject of the colloquy and a very firm desire to pursue other topics in this forum.


2. Fellowship of St John the Baptist.

The theme this year was Creation and Evolution An Orthodox Approach. Deacon Dr Christopher Knight who is Secretary of the International Institute of Religion and Science began the proceedings with a stimulating overview of the development of the Cosmos. The Big Bang theory may be the explanation but it is the fine tuning which is remarkable. All depends on the exact value of gravity which means that the potential for all development has been there from the very beginning. The fulness of creation was in this potential and could not have been realized if this fine tuning had not existed. Here we see the hand of God. Why should He not create and sustain by the laws He has established?

Professor George Theokritoff, A Palaeontologist spoke of the debate ( or lack of it ) between the Creationists and the Evolutionist which leads Dawkins and his atheist associates to complete misunderstanding. He said how these are "out of focus and miss the point". Orthodox take a middle and synthesizing position. The workings of God are in and through His creation. Science is a response to creation. There is no "God of the gaps". We find God in what we know, not in what we do not know. We should distinguish, as does Alfred Russell Wallace, between Evolutionary Theory and The Theory of Evolution. In the seventh Century The Venerable Bede described how God rested on the seventh Day but how this changed with the appearance of Christ. God rested on the seventh day but did not cease His activity in creation. Christ rested the seventh day in the sepulchre but was then raised in the eighth day. St Ambrose on Creation is most enlightening.

Archimandrite Kyril Jenner spoke on the theme of God, the Creator and Preserver of all Mankind and Professor Richard Swinburne's title was The Universe and its Evolution as Evidence for God. He argued from pure logic which determines the probability of God's existence. This can be verified mathematically: Observed evidence E makes a purported causal explanation of it H, probable in so far as it is probable that E given H, it is not probable that E given not -H. H is simple, H fits with " background knowledge" i.e our evidence about how things behave in wider fields that that of H. He argued this in detail but in summary, the closeness of the human person's likeness to our ideas of God makes the being of God very probable.

Wendy Robinson gave the final talk The Uniqueness of Man drawing from the writings of Maximus the Confessor.

The whole conference was very stimulating, affirming and enjoyable.

3. Orthodox Theology Research Forum.

This year this was organized by Dr Mary Cunningham and held in Ripon College, Cuddeston, Oxfordshire. The theme was Evil and Suffering: The Orthodox Christian Response. The eminent speakers were Metropolitan Kallistos, Bishop Basil, Fr Andrew Louth, Dr Bernard Farr, and Dr A. Sokolov.

Dr Sokolov, from her expertise as former Reader in Literature at Durham, spoke of Sin and the Weakness of God in the Novels of Dostoyevsky. There is no life without suffering. Weakness is the “Power of God and the wisdom of God” ( 1 Cor.). Christ before Pilate is silent.

Dostoyevsky provided a microcosm of fallen humanity which is dearly loved but not justified except by the freedom of cooperation with God. The author/creator of the novel removes his own voice and sets his characters on the way to salvation. Each character develops a momentum but there is no Deus ex machina. The author, like God, loves his characters and opens a way for them – they have the free will to determine their own path. Various literary characters do not promote their own ideas but by this passivity point the way to salvation; their participation is Christ-like. For Dostoyevsky, the wages of sin is death, usually by loss of contact with others, leading to suicide or madness. Sin is thus a dead end but holiness is a life giving perspective.

Metropolitan Kallistos looked at The Mystery of Evil. To be a person is to be free, created for mutual joy and mutual love. Both love and joy give freedom but, as Paul Evdokimov writes: “God can do anything but compel”. Freedom, therefore, involves the possibility of sin, evil and suffering - The Divine Dilemma. Hence, Berdaev could write that without freedom it is impossible to be human. God is only operative in freedom and this is sacred but it may lead to tragedy which is hard to bear. “Evil is inexplicable without freedom. the secret of evil is the secret of freedom”. But evil is resolved by the experience of caring, of compassion and of love. Suffering can never be justified but it can be used, accepted, shared and then transfigured. Through Christ, God shares in the suffering of the world. He accepts the consequences of His creation. Isaac the Syrian says: “The Mighty has put on insecurity, been made completely vulnerable, bruised for our iniquities”. The participation of Christ transfigures the world, evil and suffering. There is no way round but there is a way through. The Mother of God at the foot of the cross “co-suffers with Christ”. Mother Maria Skobtsova writes: “He bears, she collaborates, co-feels, co-experiences and is co-crucified,” The way through for all of us is to Love one another.

Fr Andrew Louth, quoted Basil the Great: “God is not the source of evil.” Wisdom pervades all. There is harmony and synthesis throughout the Cosmos. God created all and saw that it was good and beautiful – not pleasing to the eye but with beauty according to the rules of art, pleasing to the eye and with purpose, not comfortable but pleasing. In creation there is nothing disordered and evil. There is, however, darkness in shadows which cut out the light. We become the source of evil, we can choose between darkness or light. “You are the masters, do not search for the source of evil in others, The fault, dear brothers, lies in ourselves”. Nothing happens outside God’s will but the source of evil is in our own determination. If we complain and blame others and deny God or accuse Him of being the author of evil, which is the same thing, we fall away. The way to handle suffering or tribulation is to deal with it as God deals with it and which is exemplified in Christ’s suffering. God creates good but its distortion gives evil. Evil is estrangement from God and His good purposes.

Bishop Basil outlined the scheme of the created order outlined by Dionysius and then drew from the writings of Maximus the Confessor. When man falls, everything falls, There is no evil until man appears. All are doing what created to do. Evil is not a being, all share in the goodness of God. Evil does not exist in itself but it destroys and distorts but it cannot annihilate. Evil has no capacity to create or beget but only to distort. Even that which resists God has this ability from God. Evil only arise in the freedom given to mankind Paradise does not destroy nature but leaves all in place. Man remains free. He cannot be forced to be good. His fall has consequences which affects all creation.

And other excellent contributions from Kosta Milkov, Jessica Rose, Fr Kyril Jenner, Dr Bernard Farr, Dr Irini Draghici-Vasilescu, Father Stephen Maxfield and from several post graduate and post-doctoral student participants.

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Food for Thought.

The Seven Deadly Sins according to Mahatma Gandhi.

   1. Wealth without work
   2. Pleasure without conscience
   3. Knowledge without character
   4. Business without morality
   5. Science without humanity
   6. Worship without sacrifice
   7. Politics without principle


Visit to Iona

Fr David with John and Tatiana Butler will visit Iona during the third week of September. Reader Ignatios Bacon of the Scottish Orthodox Community has rented a house for three weeks in September. He and others hope that in due course if will be possible to establish a Retreat House on Iona for Orthodox Christians. This is a foretaste.

The Friends of Iona will organize a pilgrimage during 2010

Father Denis or Father George of the Doncaster Parish will serve the Liturgy on Sunday,. 20th September at St Leodegarius. Fr. David will serve in Iona.

Still time to book!
www.iona-orthodox-retreats.org.uk


A contribution from Deacon Ian

Let me begin with a true story.

In the early 1920s, a gifted student, the son of a Lincolnshire vicar, wrote a letter of enquiry to Lincolnshire Notes & Queries. He drew attention to a local tradition that a woodland spot called Seven Springs, at Hemswell, near Lincoln, had once been the site of a church dedicated to St Helen. He wanted to know if readers could provide any evidence that such a church had ever existed.  Nobody could.

The student in question was called Peter Binnall. He was immensely interested in local history, and by searching among old documents he managed to unearth many long-forgotten facts. Among other things he discovered that a country house near Scunthorpe had been an important meeting place for the Gunpowder Plot conspirators. It was his student discoveries that first awakened my own interest in local history. Little did I then know that he would one day become my friend.

Peter left university and entered the Anglican ministry. Eventually he became Sub-Dean of Lincoln, and a much-loved member of the Cathedral staff. When he retired in 1975, he bought a cottage in (of all places) Hemswell, and began to write a history of the village. He spent much time searching through documents in the Cathedral Library and the Lincolnshire Record Office and eventually he found something quite extraordinary. There had been a St Helen’s church at Hemswell, and the last incumbent had been inducted in 1367! Shortly afterwards the church fell into disuse, doubtless owing to depopulation caused by repeated outbreaks of the Black Death.

Human testimony is very fallible, and humans love to invent myths and legends. But human memory can be very tenacious. Who would have believed that the memory of a vanished church could survive by word of mouth, from the time of the Black Death into the twentieth century? Yet seemingly it did.
Now here is something to set beside that story. In about the year 540 a monk called Gildas, a Briton, a man whom we would nowadays think of as a Welshman, wrote a diatribe against bad government. In doing so he tried to give an account of British history, piecing it together from books, oral tradition and old people’s memories, and one of his statements makes compelling reading. He said that Christianity first came to Britain ‘as we know, in the last years of the emperor Tiberius, at a time when Christ’s religion was being propagated without hindrance.’  He didn’t elaborate because at that time, and as he remarks, everybody knew – or thought they knew – the details. We don’t, of course, and we are apt to find his lack of precision infuriating. The point is that Tiberius Caesar died in AD37, or to put it another way, just seven years after the Crucifixion, and six years before Britain began to be Roman! Could it be true? If Christianity came to Britain at that time it must, one would think, have been brought by somebody who had known Jesus personally, and almost certainly by somebody mentioned in the New Testament.  Needless to say, historians have pooh-poohed the claim, arguing that human memory only extends to what grandparents can remember. But against that we have the Hemswell story. Now Gildas and his fellow Christians may have been mistaken, but we have no right to dismiss his statement out of hand. Just possibly he knew something very exciting that we don’t.

Increasingly, I find, I have to distinguish between textbook history – the tiny fragment of the past that gets written about – and actual history; most of which gets forgotten. There are very many things about the past: important things, that we shall never know or discover. But just occasionally, as with Hemswell, a forgotten aspect of the past does resurface. It is only very recently for example, that we have been able to prove that certain holy wells really were used by the saints whose names they bear. The saints in question were Celtic hermits, and one of their favourite locations was where a spring gushes out of a bare rock face (recalling the miracle wrought by Moses in the wilderness).

Now it just so happens that the biggest of the Seven Springs at Hemswell also flows out of an outcropping rock – a highly unusual thing in flat old Lincolnshire. And thanks to Peter Binnall we know that early in the Middle Ages there was a church there. Could the church have been founded on that spot because a hermit had once lived there? If so, it would make Seven Springs the oldest known hermit site anywhere in eastern England, dating back to about 500AD or before.

Time destroys, but time can also preserve. Perhaps that is the case with Hemswell. Or Gildas. What we can never say is that we have heard the last word – about anything.

Deacon Ian.