Orthodixie

The following repost from a couple years back is due to several factors: 1) tmatt’s not only right about the anti-Christmas hoopla dying down, it seems the whole Christmas spirit is a bit weak this year (maybe it’s just me); 2) I’ve added an “Orthodox addendum” to this story, and 3) I needed a blog update. 🙂

By the way, Mom – if you’re reading this, you know what a vivid imagination I have. (For the rest of you: wink, wink).

My friend, Walt, and I moved out to Southern California in the fall of 1983. My plan was to become filthy rich and adorably famous. Walt just wanted to be a waiter. He fulfilled his goal; I did not.

Anyway. His sister had a condo for sale that wasn’t moving and we lived there free of charge. We were both right out of college and owned, well, nothing. Nothing that is, but a huge collection of record albums, a powerful stereo, a decent TV, and some clothes. The condo was unfurnished so we bought two school room napping mats to sleep on. We had no refrigerator; couldn’t afford to have the gas line hooked up – thus, only cold water.

But what did we care? We were striving to live our dreams in Southern California. We were young, stupid, and glorious. We had decided not to find jobs until after about 3 weeks of vacation. (See what I mean?) So we did the touristy things, the beachy things, Hollywood, Malibu, Big Sur, Disney …

After about a week, we ran out of money.

We both ended up working at Movie Land Wax Museum in Buena Park. Food services … You know, where all the other soon-to-be-famous people worked.

It would be our first Christmas away from home. A long way away from home. Our families were none too happy about it. We didn’t give it much thought. Both of us were happily agnostic, quasi-new age and complacent. We were sort of looking forward to not being part of that Season Which Must Be Obeyed.

And so we existed … on Peanut Butter, Löwenbräu, Macaroni & Cheese, and as many free meals as we were able at scarf at work.

In case you’re wondering, I wanted to get into writing for radio and television. My entry stage was to be Stand Up comedy. My dad looked for me, or so he said, each week on Star Search. But that’s a story for another time …

Christmas approached. Walt and I volunteered to work all the days everyone else was taking off. It was Christmas, but our life was to remain unchanged. Gifts. We were opposed to it all.

Until December 22, 1983.

That was the day a coworker asked if I needed a bed.

The condo had two bedrooms upstairs that, except for the closets, were completely empty. My roommate and I both slept downstairs on those kindergarten mats because (remember young & stupid) that’s where the TV was.

“Yes!” Of course I could use a bed!

I’d decided not to tell Walt ‘cause I knew he’d be jealous. To my surprise he said, “Guess what? I’m getting a bed!” Turns out he’d had the same offer from someone else that same day.

So it was that we arranged a pal with a truck to carry us to get our gifts on December 23rd. On the way to our destinations we passed some discarded furniture in another neighborhood. There was a big black couch … heave ho! And a nice old recliner … got that, too.

In one night our Orange County condo ended up with somewhere to sit downstairs and somewhere to sleep upstairs!

We thought it couldn’t get any better.

Christmas Day. The doorbell rang. It was one of our obnoxious neighbors. I say this because he was always the one wanting someone to move their car, turn down the stereo, etc. We had sufficient evidence that he didn’t care for us. Yet he cared enough about his wife to have surprised her with a new refrigerator for Christmas. He wanted to know if we would be interested in their old one.

Christmas 1983, two Southern boys in their twenties sat smoking clove cigarettes and sipping Brandy — humming fridge in the background, holiday TV in the foreground — on free furniture in a free condo in Southern California.

Though a far cry from normal, and nowhere near family traditions, in a very, very strange way

it was almost like being home.

Addendum: Fr Michael Nasser, formerly of Antiochian Village, now with Project Mexico, visited St George earlier this year. When I asked him where he was from, he said California. I asked where in California? When he said near LA. I asked where? When he said Orange County. I said I used to live in Beuna Park. When he found out that I’d worked in food/entertainment services at Movie Land Wax Museum, he asked what year? When I told him I’d left there in February of 1984, he said if I’d held on a couple months longer I’d have been present at his senior prom!

Small world. (We were both kinda glad we’d not met 20 some years ago 🙂

Glory to God for all things!

Christ was like a man “who perceived a weak person carried away by a raging current. He knows that he himself will be sucked up by the whirlpool, wounded and lacerated by the rocks, swept away by the water. But pity for this man in danger stimulates him. He does not hesitate to throw himself into the current.” He enters, therefore, without reservations into the flow of duration. But in order to save the one who is drowning, he must “jump” from on high, that is to say, he must bring us the integrity of our own nature. It is very much a necessity that he not be born of a mortal man who is subject to the “passions” but that he bring us that nature that is antecedent to the “passions” (which, indeed, as we know, are linked in a mysterious way to sin). It is equally necessary that Mary should be a virgin, so that in this pure relationship the prodigy of the burning bush might be fulfilled: unity without blemish. It is a “new birth”, a “new order of nature”, finally a “new creation”, the “beginning of the world”. It is, in the final analysis, the “day when the true man is created … he who is in the image and likeness of God”.

— Taken from Presence and Thought – An Essay on the Religious Philosophy of Gregory of Nyssa by Hans Urs von Balthasar, (pp.135-136).

The husband and wife must lay virtue, and not passion, as the foundation of their love, that is, when the husband sees any fault in his wife, he must nudge her meekly, and the wife must submit to her husband in this. Likewise when a wife sees some fault in her husband, she must exhort him, and he is obliged to hear her.

— St. Tikhon of Zadonsk

Thanks to FWD from Fr Josiah Trenham.

The Huneycutts went camping over the Thanksgiving Break at the state park at Martin’s Creek Lake, near Tatum, Texas. The weather was absolutely perfect, with temps in the 70s/40s. (Hover your cursor over pics for captions; click to enlarge.)

It is the peculiar genius of Byzantine history that its glory reached its apogee in the era known to the West as the Dark Ages. It has no great literary heritage — a half-millenium of Muslim domination ensured the annihilation from memory of its major works beyond the Alexiad of Anna Comnena, the anonymous epic of Digenes Akritis, and various religious texts. The latter survived because the Church survived, even as the Empire did not. Chief among them are the great liturgies, and chief among the great liturgies is the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom. It is the queen of liturgies: a Greek epic of its own, also of the Western Dark Ages, emphatic and deliberate in its insistent worship of Christ. The liturgy has a heavenly glory in its song and prayer. It also has a mundane length to it. Properly done, it lasts hours. Yesterday, it lasted five hours, from 8am to 1pm. It’s a feat of endurance for the best Christian — particularly as the great majority of it has one standing. I am not among the best Christians. But yesterday, I did it …

You can read the whole article by Joshua Treviño HERE.

If nothing else, read the ending …

Bartholomew ascends to the iconostasis and welcomes Benedict in Greek. Benedict, aware of the cameras surrounding him, replies in English. We must, he says, recall Europe to its Christian heritage before it is too late — and we must do it together. Then they emerge into the cold sunlight of a cold day. They ascend to a balcony overlooking the courtyard where we gather in expectation. They speak briefly. And then, they clasp hands, Pope and Patriarch, smile and raise their arms together. Tears come to my eyes, and I am shocked to see several media personnel crying openly. For an instant, the Church is one. For a shadow of a second, the dreams of Christendom are again real. Under the Turkish guns, the Christians roar.

Thanks to FWD from Fr Miguel Grave De Peralta.