Notes from faraway places

New Miss Iris weblog to debut in November

2008-10-30T14:32:00.000-07:00

The newly re-vamped Miss Iris weblog starts on Nov. 1, 2008 with a very different format. Stay tuned.

Avatar and incarnation

2008-10-12T15:14:00.001-07:00

In response to Miss Georgina McCobb (http://www.mother-god.com/mother-god-blog.html#Our-Lady---Incarnate-avatar-or-Eternal-Savior?): I recommend the book, Avatar and Incarnation, by Edward G. Parrinder (Oxford University Press, 1970).

A Collyridian eucharist liturgy is here.

2008-10-12T13:45:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to announce that the latest (and more complete) revision of a Collyridian eucharist liturgy is now released on the Commission for Liturgy and Worship website. This liturgy is also rewritten in a contemporary North American English language.

http://collyridianliturgies.wikispaces.com/Holy+Eucharist+A

Rosales pipe organ at the Trinity Episcopal Cathedral (Oregon)

2008-08-12T14:23:00.000-07:00

http://www.trinity-episcopal.org/sections/Music/Organ.htm

This organ, one of the best in North America, is played weekly in the 10 a.m. Holy Eucharist service.

Come down, O Love Divine

2008-08-12T13:49:00.000-07:00

Come down, O love divine, seek Thou this soul of mine,
And visit it with Thine own ardour glowing.
O Comforter, draw near, within my heart appear,
And kindle it, Thy holy flame bestowing.

O let it freely burn, till earthly passions turn
To dust and ashes in its heat consuming;
And let Thy glorious light shine ever on my sight,
And clothe me round, the while my path illuming.

Let holy charity mine outward vesture be,
And lowliness become mine inner clothing;
True lowliness of heart, which takes the humbler part,
And o’er its own shortcomings weeps with loathing.

And so the yearning strong, with which the soul will long,
Shall far outpass the power of human telling;
For none can guess its grace, till she become the place
Wherein the Holy Spirit makes Her dwelling.

#516 in the Hymnal 1982

Words: Bianco da Siena, d. 1434;trans. Richard Frederick Littledale, Jr., 1867
Music: Down Ampney, North Petherton
Meter: 66 11 D

A bottomless well of love springing up in our own hearts

2008-08-11T13:23:00.000-07:00

The Most Rev. ++Rowan D. Williams at the Lambeth Conference on the feast of St. Gregory of Nyssa.

Memorare, more

2008-08-11T12:57:00.000-07:00

Memorare

2008-08-08T14:26:00.000-07:00

Soloist: Racquel Mansukhani; pianist: Alejandro Consolacion; conductor: Jonathan Ayson

Sung here in English:

Remember, O Most Gracious Virgin Mary,
that never was it known that anyone who fled to Thy protection,
implored Thy help or sought Thy intercession,
was left unaided.

Inspired by this confidence,
I fly unto Thee, O Virgin of Virgins, my Mother;
to Thee do I come, before thee I stand, sinful and sorrowful.

O Mother of the Word Incarnate,
despise not my petitions,
but in Thy clemency, hear and answer me.

O Mother of the Word Incarnate,
despise not my petitions,
but in Thy clemency, hear and answer me.

New York Philharmonic plays Arirang

2008-08-08T14:01:00.000-07:00

Beautiful. Arirang is perhaps one of the most famous Korean folk songs. Aside from the national anthems, it may be said that Arirang is the de facto quasi-anthem of the Korean peninsula.

Of course, the NYP played the Joseon Minju-juui Inmin Gonghwaguk Aegugga (i.e. the North Korean national anthem) as they were performing in Pyongyang...

...and perhaps one of the rarest occasions in which the Star-Spangled Banner was performed on the DPRK soil!

"What do you think of Jesus?"

2008-08-03T13:32:00.000-07:00

It almost seems like forever since I was able to believe in something without a trace of cynicism. Yes, at one point in life I was literally naive and gullible: I desired for an ability to believe, and did believe in one thing or another singlemindedly. This meant I was also persuaded by a number of scams, pyramid schemes, network marketing schemes, conspiracy theories and urban legends.

Over the past 10 years I have gone through much to "grow out" of that.

I spent two and a half years in bible colleges -- evangelical types -- and the more I studied what I once believed as an academic subject with an objective scholarship, the less I was able to believe anything that I once did.

Then I went through many years of hardship -- soul-killing, spirit-wrecking hardship -- I went from being a spoiled brat of a wealthy (but not aristocratic; just nouveau riche) family to a street-bum living behind a dumpster in a matter of four years. I have experienced first hand what the privilege meant, and what the oppression and injustice meant.

Then I rose up from the ashes, I felt God's calling to bring healing to the marginalized and oppressed. Yes, I was idealistic. Soon I realized that churches can be some of the ugliest, least civilized and craziest places on earth.

I think through all this, I have learned -- or perhaps, been conditioned -- to survive. The other day I realized how poverty mentality became such a "stronghold" (a Pentecostal jargon here) in my life. I stopped dreaming big, and I was no longer able to aspire to the greatness.

Saturday night there was this outdoor concert at the Pioneer Courthouse Square--I just walked by and I heard this music coming from the square.

A beautiful blonde girl (who is she anyway) asks me out of the blue: What do you think of Jesus?

Well, what does she expect me to say. I know exactly what to say and pretty much know (like those masters of test-taking) what the expected answer was. But do I really follow that line of argument, and if not, would I be a bit dishonest?

I don't know. I frankly do not know. What. To. Say.

If I say one thing, that may please her, but will offend someone else. If I say something else, that would please someone else, but will alienate someone else.

Perhaps this is at the heart of the problem. After having spent years in a number of denominations, trying to work with them to achieve my vision while still being part of a collaborative community, I learned the hard way that I have to often just shut up and let others believe whatever they do--in effect, leaving such matters up to each individual.

To make matters more complicated, what is up in my brain may not be the same as what is in my heart, and as what is experienced. The Rev. John+ Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Episcopal Church, used his quadrilateral of revelation, reason, experience and tradition to explain the ways he learns about God. It is a relative recent phenomenon especially in the American evangelical Protestantism (and the mainline liberal Protestantism, two sides of the same coin) that focuses solely on reason (the former on a "rational" hermeneutics of the Bible, the latter on the "rationalist" theological understanding based on the higher biblical criticism and Darwinism).

As much of a complex personality that I have, it is difficult to elaborate on what I believe.

I tend to believe in Christ in a manner similar to the christology of C. S. Lewis and Frithjof Schuon*, both writers with deep roots in traditional education. At the very least, I think it is a big loss to the cause of Christianity that we demythologized the Scriptures and degraded the Bible to the level of a scientific or historical non-fiction book. The Church has not always saw the Bible in a way that today's evangelical Protestant apologists do. To the traditional churches, whether there was a Jewish man by the name of Yeshua ben [or bar, in Aramaic] Yosef of Nazareth existed as a historic person in a historic event was a less of the concern. To them, the story of the eternal truth embedded in the Gospel narratives (and the values, ethics, philosophy and cosmology they conveyed) was much more important, and formed the centre of the Church's teachings.

If you look at the old Christian art, very little to no care was taken to make the paintings and the icons of Christ, the holy family, and the biblical saints look "authentic" in terms of geographical and historical contexts. Many medieval European paintings illustrated the Gospels with pictures of a typical German or French village with a white, West European Jesus. Likewise, in many parts of Africa today, Christian artists depict the scenes from the Bible as though they all took place in Africa--complete with a black Jesus in a traditional African garb.

I do not think that God had just chosen the Israelites and gave them the messiah while neglecting people of other nations--and other time periods. If such is the case, people who lived before the Common Era would be by default burning in hell (according to the evangelical belief system) and so would be southern Africans, Pacific Islanders and Native Americans who were far from any Christian presence until the 19th century.

On the contrary, in every land, in every language, in every culture, and in every time, the Holy One has revealed about God, about the truth, about the redemption, and so on, in the manners and language consistent with the audience. It is time that the Christian community once again returned to the understanding of the tradition and recognized that. In early history of European colonism, Christian missionaries were hell bent on destroying indigenous cultures, on forcing the natives to speak English, French, Spanish, Portuguese or Dutch, and adopt the European (Western) Christianity complete with its cultural trappings. Now even the conservative evangelicals know that it would not work. The Native American Christians use the culture and language of the indigenous America in their worship of the Great Spirit, while the Maori people pray to Te Atua (n.b. Te Atua was feminine until about five centuries ago) using the New Zealand Prayer Book, and liturgical churches in India celebrate the holy eucharist as a traditional puja.

This having said, I take Christianity seriously. As I age from adolescence (when being a certain kind of Christian was being cool) to mid-30s I have come to appreciate many expressions of the faith, developed more appreciation for traditional liturgies, and found home in the beauty and breadth of Anglicanism for the most part. In fact, not very many years ago I could not sit through 15 minutes of a low-liturgical (that is, a mainline Reformed Protestant service, which is hardly liturgical or sacramental) service. Now, while I am a great fan of Hillsong and likes still, I would probably find a typical mega-church/charismatic/evangelical service less than satisfying (it feels more like a rock concert to me, actually).

All this perhaps also reflects the recent trend in emergent church movement. In this regard, perhaps I am as much a product of the contemporary Christianity as a traditionalist-yet-broad-church Anglican.

--
* See also http://www.cutsinger.net/pdf/mystery.pdf

Offline for a while

2008-07-31T12:03:00.001-07:00

I will be mostly offline for the next two to three weeks while dealing with some problems in the home front and straightening out the financial affairs in order. Please expect up to three days of delay if you need to contact me during this period. I will not be available on the phone until further notice, although you may leave a voicemail message at any time.

A virtual Collyridian church

2008-07-28T15:18:00.001-07:00

St. Lydia's Mission is being inaugurated on Sunday, August 3, to respond to the growing interest in the Collyridian Britannic Episcopal Church. The mission, functioning as an all-virtual, all-ladies proto-parish, will allow those who have been unable to become part of the CBEC community (the canons of the CBEC allows only bishops and abbots/abbesses as its members; non-clergy persons had to join a parish or a mission).

While St. Lydia's is open to ladies only at the moment, there is a general-audience discussion list at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/philomarianites, which may or may not eventually turn into another virtual congregation. The Philomarianites list is run by Markus Moessner, a candidate for transitional diaconate in the Episcopate of St. Brigid.

Rise of an empire: Aristasian edition

2008-07-24T13:05:00.001-07:00

Rising from the ashes, Aristasia.net is back!

Fall of an empire: Aristasian edition

2008-07-22T15:52:00.001-07:00

...well, not really. Some readers however must have noticed that both aristasia.net and aristasia.co.uk domains have been blocked by SupaHosts pending renewal. In fact all pages other than the main pages are accessible as usual at least for now. But if you fear that this treasure box of materials may be lost, go there quickly and copy pages for your record (http://www.furl.net ).

Rationalism's true nature

2008-07-22T13:51:00.001-07:00

This article appeared earlier this month in the Aristasian Treasure Trove.
http://aristasia.wordpress.com/2008/07/09/irrational-rationalism/

"It is important to understand that rationalism is not itself rational. Rationalism cannot be derived from the reason. It is an arbitrary dogma. And yet it is upon this dogma that the outlook of the post 17th-century Western world has based itself...That is precisely what the doctrine of rationalism consists of: the illogical and arrogant denial that anything exists outside the material world of the five senses. Has she any rational reason for denying what all tradition tells her to be true? She has not. She merely repeats: 'I have not seen it, so it does not exist.' That is why rationalism is inherently irrational: and, frankly, naughty. A world based on the rationalist denial of higher Reality is like a group of naughty children who have got together to deny what all the grown ups tell them because they have not seen it for themselves and cannot bear that anyone should know better than them."

Unauthorized scriptures?

2008-07-20T06:58:00.001-07:00

Apparently there were no less than a few complaints about the Collyridian Britannic Episcopal Church's making available the Creation-Daughter Mythos online. They came from two different sources with their texts being identical. No "censorship" or any form of textual criticism has been made, so odd words such as goddess and genia are kept therein. They are thought to have been compiled by the Lux Madriana sect in the 1970s England or Ireland. Readers may see parallels to Genesis and the Gospels.

Collyridian eucharist for the devotees of the Queen of Heaven

2008-07-19T20:02:00.001-07:00

Some may wonder how we place such an importance upon the celebration of the holy eucharist, perhaps thinking that we are some bizarre forms of "Christ-free Christianity." The prototypal eucharist obviously predated the appearance of Jesus Christ (note Melchizedek). Likewise, a feminine version of the myth behind is also told in the seventh chapter of the Mythos of the Divine Maid (available for download at http://www.collyridian.info.ms/ ).

An alternate form of the Liturgies of the Hours

2008-07-18T16:53:00.001-07:00

http://www.mother-god.com/canonical-hours.html

Two new paintings

2008-07-18T16:35:00.001-07:00

These and three other (will be uploaded soon) paintings were done in a period of under 18 hours while I was in the woods near Mt. Hood in Clackamas County, Oregon.

Water, Fire and Wind: http://lov.li/products/838885

St. Brigid of Kildare: http://lov.li/products/838886

Forever and a day

2008-07-17T19:52:00.001-07:00

This is one of those songs that belong to the category of contemporary (1990s style) "praise and worship." There are a handful of songs that would be appropriate for an Anglican-Collyridian "contemporary" worship services and this is probably one of them that can be used without modification: http://www.lyricsdownload.com/hillsong-united-forever-and-a-day-lyrics.html

Syrian Orthodox and feminine pneumatology

2008-07-17T13:32:00.001-07:00

In my graduate Semitics program at UCLA, one of the languages I had to study was Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic written with rounded letters reminiscent of modern Arabic. Syriac was the language of people living in northern Mesopotamia, from at least 300 BC until the time Arabic became dominant in the region, around 1000 AD. Most of the Syriac documents available today were produced by a Monophysite branch of Christianity, today known as the Syrian Orthodox Church (monophysitism is the belief that Christ had but one nature). One striking puzzlement of the texts, at least to me, was the constant reference to the Holy Spirit as "she". I was aware, of course, that in Aramaic (and hence in the dialect known as Syriac) the natural gender of the word "spirit" was feminine; however, I was surprised to discover that this accident of grammar had resulted in a whole theology constructed around the femininity of the third person of the Godhead.
An example of Syriac theology is found in the apocryphal Acts of Thomas; it is usually assumed that this particular work was influenced by speculative gnostic Judaism because it contains the notion, that associated with God was a wisdom, or creative power - a spirit - which was feminine. In an invocation accompanying baptism, Thomas calls for the Holy Spirit:
Come, holy name of Christ that is above every name;

Come, power of the Most High and perfect compassion;

Come, thou highest gift;

Come, compassionate mother;

Come, fellowship of the male;

Come, thou (f.) that dost reveal the hidden mysteries;

Come, mother of seven houses, that thy rest may be in the eighth house.

(Acts of Thomas 2:27)

Come, silence that dost reveal the great deeds of the whole greatness;

Come thou that dost show forth the hidden things

And make the ineffable manifest;

Holy Dove that bearest the twin young;

Come, hidden Mother;

Come, thou that art manifest in thy deeds

and dost furnish joy and rest for all that are joined with thee;

Come and partake with us in this Eucharist

Which we celebrate in thy name,

and in the love-feast in which we are gathered together at thy call.

(Acts of Thomas 5:50)

After reading such materials I decided that Syrian Orthodox Christianity was somewhat heretical (though perhaps only through an accident of grammar), and so I wanted nothing to do with Syriac literature. I would find something else on which to do my dissertation...

-- http://www.theology.edu/theology/pneumato.htm

In the Aristasian Catechism:

10. What are the three Forms of Dea?
Our Celestial Mother, Her Divine Daughter and the Dark Mother who is Absolute Deity.

17. Who is the Dark Mother?
She is Absolute Deity, Who existed before the beginning of existence and is beyond being and unbeing.

18. What is Her Nature?
She is outside space and time; She is all that is and all that is not.
19. What are Her Acts?
The exhalation of Her breath or Spirit is our Mother, the Creator of the world. Of Her other Acts, our minds cannot conceive.

Collyridian pneumatology

2008-07-16T15:47:00.000-07:00

In response to the trial Liturgies of the Hours recently published, Mother-God.com today posted a response.

It seems to us that they may be broadly accepted on the same basis as the "translation" of the Catholic Rosary prayers. A few phrases, however, may give us pause. Blessed Mother, Divine Daughter and Holy Spirit Is not quite how the Trinity is defined in The Filianic Creed. Can Absolute Deity, the Dark Mother, be called the Holy Spirit? It is often said that all we can know of the Dark Mother is that She outbreathes the universe at the beginning of time and breathes it back into Herself at time's end. Since in many languages the word for breath and Spirit is the same (L. Spiritus, Skt. Atma, Heb. Ruach,Gk. Pneuma etc.) there would seem to be a certain case for this assimilation. The phrase: O Mother of the Word Incarnate also raises some questions. Can the Daughter be referred to as "the Word Incarnate"? And even if so, does not this expression derive from the Christian "reduction" of Our Divine Mother to the mere "carrier" of God? We would say that the doctrinal danger of such a phrase was at least as great as that of "the Great Self that is Thee". For Filianic use, therefore, we should suggest a few adjustments, but we should certainly recommend these Liturgies to the attention of all who are interested in the "Catholic" Western approach to the worship of Our Mother God.

I have also addressed the importance of pneumatological emphasis in a Collyridian theology in the pastoral letter, "Uniting convergent people under Our Lady."

We are also Trinitarian in theological formation. This means we are monotheist (and importantly we do believe that the Mother God created us, not the other way around) who worships a deity that manifests herself eternally in three eternally-existing and co-equal persons. As with the ancient Judeo-Christian feminine spiritual traditions as well as with the modern Aristasians and Madrians, we hold a very strong emphasis on what is known in Christianity as the Holy Spirit. At CBEC she is not merely the “third person” of the Trinity that almost appears in Christian literature as an afterthought that follows Christ as a “fill-in” survival gear between the first and second comings; rather, she is the “Beginning and the End; the First Principle and the Final Cause; the unoriginated Origin of being.” (The Filianic Creed.)

Finally, we are an experiential spiritual community. As Frithjof Schuon succinctly summarized, we believe that Our Lady became a Maid (“incarnation”) so that the Maid may come to her (“redemption”). As a church we are an incarnated body of the Eternal Daughter, the Princess of the Universe, and accordingly our sacraments and ministries are practices and manifestations of this incarnational principle. We thus place an importance in the spiritual experience mediated to us in sacraments and in church life, instead of merely debating and discussing theology, philosophy or doctrines.

This point may appear on the surface as though it is where we have a major disagreement with the religious Aristasians, who tend to follow an approach much similar to that of Hinduism. Yet, beyond the surface differences in semantics, I am confident that any difference there may be is minimal, and mostly aesthetic to maintain the liturgical language of traditional Anglicanism and Catholicism.

I am opening up this thread for discussion in the CBEC/SALT forum. Your participation is encouraged.

Uniting convergent people under Our Lady

2008-07-16T15:34:00.001-07:00

This is the very first pastoral letter I sent out officially today. I discuss the matter of unity and diversity, creating an environment that is welcoming to all. I welcome follow up discussions in the forum.

http://thecbec.wordpress.com/2008/07/15/uniting-convergent-people-under-our-lady/

a biscuit kitty

2008-07-14T13:45:00.000-07:00