I go to a Serbian parish here in SE Wisconsin, and since we now have a priest whose English is terribly shaky at best, and a parish council who stresses the "Serbian" part of that phrase, there is very little English used in services these days. To continue to go there, I've had to find another local priest who will hear my Confession. He's fantastic, and become more than a confessor, but it's definitely a weird situation.
I would not choose a non-English parish for my regular church. Once while traveling I went to the Sunday liturgy at a Greek church in North Carolina, and every last word was in Greek, even the sermon and the announcements-- and a joke the priest told during the latter. I felt utterly alien and out of place.
I wonder if this is an example of how willing one is to learn the local language. With my small knowledge of Spanish, I was able to follow 20-30% of the priest's sermon when I visited a Catholic church in Medellín. I think a foreign church is doable, but you gotta put in the effort to learn the common tongue.
My spiritual father, Fr George Calciu (died 2006), told me of a visit he paid to Eliade in old age. He said his fingers were crippled such that he couldn't work at a typewriter, but he had put a pencil in his fingers and had wrapped and tied them together. "And he was *pushing* with the pencil," Fr George said. His urgent need to write, to communicate, was that strong.
Yeah, if suffering had no meaning and no resolution (other than death), I would find that hard to handle!
Rod, about Lent, I'm fuzzy about how the Orthodox do Lent. I don't even know if they do Ash Wednesday. Maybe journal your experience of an Orthodox Lent?
Since this year's Eastern and Western Easters (or Pascha as it's known) coincide, it's actually a bit easier to explain.
We start with several weeks of preparation.
About 5-6 weeks out (this varies between jurisdictions) we have Zaccheus Sunday - it's the first liturgical warning that Lent is coming. We also have the Sunday of the Caananite Women, depending on timing of other Sundays and feasts. 4 Sundays out we enter the Triodion period ("Triodion" refers to the structures of certain hymns that begin at this time) with the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican, on which we should be reflecting and praying (spiritual house-cleansing) on the pride of the Pharisee (even though he did do the right things), and the humility of the tax collector. This is followed by a week of no Wednesday or Friday fasting, so that we do not carry empty pride over such matters.
Then we have the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, with the reminder that no matter how deeply we sin (and the Epistle reading is from Corinthians about fornication), we can always repent if we swallow our pride and face our shame. Regular W/F fasting this week (but do try to use up or freeze meats).
After this we have the Sunday of the Last Judgement (from Matthew 25) - often the emphasis here is on acts of mercy and proper use of what we have been given. This is also Meat Fare Sunday - the last day of meat until Pascha (which was this past Sunday). Since the Orthodox are supposed to keep a more or less vegan diet (with some odd exceptions for shellfish), these last couple of weeks before Lent are so that we also clean out the pantry and don't waste food. We're in the last week of preparation now, where fish, eggs, and dairy are still allowed, so we can use those up too.
The final Sunday is Forgiveness Sunday - reading from Matthew 6, 14-21. Either at the end of Liturgy, or at a special Sunday Vespers, we have the prayers of forgiveness, and then all present are to ask for forgiveness from each person present. "Forgive me, a sinner" we say, and then "God forgives, and I forgive." is the response. Parents and children, clergy, young and old. It is a beautiful service. It is also known as "Cheesefare" Sunday because it's the last day for dairy and eggs.
That Monday (which is right before the Western Ash Wednesday), we're in Great Lent.
As for Lent itself, as noted we fast from fish, eggs, dairy, and meat until Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday, when fish are allowed, but then Holy Week is back to strict fasting until Pascha. Money you're not spending on food you're supposed to be using for alms.
All services incorporate the Prayer of St. Ephrem a lot too.
O Lord and Master of my Life, take from me the spirit of Sloth, Envy, Lust for Power, and Idle Talk. (make a prostration)
But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love for they servant. (prostration)
Yea or Lord and King, Grant me that I may see my own sins, and not to judge my brother, for Thou art Holy now and ever, and unto ages of ages, Amen. (prostration)
The Divine Liturgy may not be offered on weekdays during Lent, but most parishes will have at least one Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, which uses a saved portion of the prior Sunday's Eucharist. Often this is an evening service, and is quite somber and penitential. On Fridays many parishes will offer the Akathist to the Theotokos (an early 5th century ode to our Mother Mary) as part of a Great Compline service.
Each week of Lent has a different theme. The first week we read from The Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, which is a very penitential service lots of prostrations. This is spread out over several nights as the Canon is quite long.
The first Sunday of Lent is Orthodoxy Sunday, which commemorates the ending of the iconoclasm period and the restoration of iconography.
The 2nd Sunday commemorates St. Gregory Palamas, who you might say is treated rather like Thomas of Aquinas in terms of theological synthesis. Sunday 3 is the Sunday of the Cross, and echoes the Elevation of the Cross great feast of September. Sunday 4 is The Ladder of Divine Ascent, commemorating the work of St. John Climacus, and the final Sunday is for St. Mary of Egypt.
Short version: no meat, no dairy, no eggs, lots of church.
None of what Skip writes is as complicated to follow as it may sound, by the way. You have a church calendar with the various days marked and you simply follow what is given there, subject to your own parish's individual schedule of services.
Ah, but does the Orthodox church calendar have recipes for Lent, so that we're not all suffering to eat raw vegetables and nuts? Or is that the whole point?
I heard the really hardcore have to give up olive oil for lent as well, I don't know how else you'd make vegetables half-way appetizing.
Every year the ladies of our parish do a Lenten soup and salad luncheon. There are usually at least seven or eight different kinds of soup, and a half-dozen salads, none of which contain any meat, dairy, or eggs. They're always very good.
One of my favorites during Lent is tuna salad made with hummus and olive oil instead of mayo. Quick and easy!
When Catholic (Western) and Orthodox Easters coincide, Orthodox Lent begins at sundown of the Sunday preceding Ash Wednesday. In the Latin West, until the Seventh Century, Lent would begin at sundown of the Sunday following the Wednesday that later became Ash Wednesday - the difference being that Saturday counted as a fasting day in the West but it never did in the East (except for the Saturday preceding Pascha). It was a desire to have a full forty "fasting days" in the Western Lent that caused its beginning to be moved back to the Wednesday of the preceding week. For more detail, see my article, "The Making of Lent:"
The Sexual Revolution occurred because people who had fallen away from religious restraint decided to enjoy the physical pleasures of sex whenever they damned well wanted. I was just listening to a CD of The Mamas and the Papas the other day and I thought about Michelle Phillips. Michie Phillips was the new woman freed to do as she wished because she was free of religious restraint and she had birth control pills. She was free to be as promiscuous as she wished and she was notorious for her sexual affairs. Many of the songs of The Mamas and the Papas are about Michie's escapades. I don't think Mircea Eliade's views on the Sexual Revolution are pertinent other than as obscure philosophizing.
I'd say the sexual revolution happened because the hoi polloi became prosperous enough to indulge in those vices which the elite classes has always given themselves too. We're all nobles at Versailles nowadays.
Agree of course which is why I said it. Of course condoms existed before antibiotics, and they also could prevent pregnancy. But they're cumbersome, prone to failure, and may not be used correctly which is why sex pre mid 20th century was always a bit risky. (It still is, but much less so than in the past).
People had been trying to contracept throughout recorded history. Coitus interruptus was practiced in Italian cities in the 14th C and perfected at the French court in the 16th. Condoms were invented in 1600 by an Italian doctor named Fallopius and came into popular use by the 18th C at least in France and England. But they were not the only method of contraception available. In addition there were herbal concoctions that acted as early abortifacients, although the users didn't think of them that way.
They can cure until the bacteria becomes resistant. It is probably a truism that people who can’t follow the ‘rules’ regarding risky sex probably can’t follow prescription requirements either.
What we will eventually have to come to terms with though, is that sex also invokes mutual respect, or disrespect. Marriage customs and covenants and limiting sexual contact within social frameworks and constructs promote a mutually supportive bond rather than simply making use of each other. Are we animals or are we human? I suspect God had that in mind all along -- its not just about obedience but its actually better for us in the long run.
All the Mamas and the Papas were one hot mess sexually. When they weren't sleeping with each other, Papa John allegedly molested his daughter (although when that allegation was made, she was already strung out on drugs).
I have always been of the opinion that sensual movements (sex, drugs) are attempts to re-enter the Garden of Eden. Antibiotics and contraceptives convinced many to believe that the angel with the flaming sword had been banished. That didn’t work out, did it?
It strikes me the sexual was about doing what gave you pleasure in an age of contraception, anti biotics and abortion.(I saw her again last night- good catch),
Michelle almost justifies her behavior in the documentary you posted. She says that she was denied high school Homecomings and Proms and dating because she met John. So her adulterous behavior made up for missed high school romance.
Very glad, Rod, that the EMDR seems to be helping untangle some of the trauma. How it works is somewhat unclear, but that it works is not at all surprising.
Last time you wrote about going to Vienna, I mentioned why it seemed almost elementary that such an approach might work. As you likely didn't see those comments, I'll bore others here by reposting them.
----Such therapy is not so much a matter of dwelling on or of returning to traumatic memories, but of processing them.
The psyche in this way is like the body. As follows: If I seriously injure part of my body, the trauma is real, and in order even to move around I’ll have to, say, heavily favor one leg, or otherwise twist myself. I will hobble. Problem is, without therapy, it often happens that this twisted manner of movement becomes a new norm. In order to avoid the hurt, I avoid fully healing it. I don’t stretch, because I don’t dare, or because I forget I even can.
Upon suffering a serious emotional trauma, one feels one won’t survive it. The psyche sets up myriad defenses in order to keep one from touching the sore spot. But the fact is, one begins to get over it. Or at least one is no longer at risk of drowning. One will survive.
Yet the same thing often happens. One goes about twisted. One doesn’t dare stretch the damaged limb, and so one doesn’t actually heal.
If this therapy manages to allow the patient to do the needed psychic “stretching”, it is parallel. It’s not *dwelling on*, but a working out of frozen psychic content.----
Interesting you're doing this therapy in Vienna. Freud's own city!
The Robin Phillips piece linked yesterday proved very worthwhile, once the long read was undertaken. Regarding *apkallu* and the Mesopotamian links of so many Silicon Religionists and others, I've a theory you may or may not go for. In comment thread yesterday.
Thank you for the transcript of your interview with Sarah Alexander! Her perspective on the healing tones of the harp is fascinating. My wife (whose Magurie origins are deeply rooted in County Fermanagh) learned to play the harp while in High School but she has short fingers, so the spread of her fingers was always a stretch (so to speak) for a full-sized harp. The Irish harps Sophia and her husband are helping to create look to be a much better scale for my wife’s hands — and the connection with her heritage is a bonus. So, thank you for including all the contact URLs as a part of your segment on her and her work.
I am curious to know what EMDR therapy hopes to accomplish. Does it reconcile a person with a painful event or series of events from the past? Does it alleviate the trauma? Are you hypnotized in a way that you recall events from your past that you have forgotten?
No, it's not hypnosis, and the memories remain intact. It's all about causing your brain to process (re-process?) them in a way that takes away their malign power over you. For me, anyway, it's not like, "Wow, I was seeing in black and white, and now I see in color!" It's more like a more general calm ... but I guess I'll see the results the further I get from the therapy. I was noticing just this afternoon that when I think about certain events from the last decade of my marriage, I don't get tense like I used to. It's a small thing, I guess, but my therapist said to refuse to dwell on those memories. She explained that it's fine to bring them to mind, but if you hold them there too long, you run the risk of falling prey to them again. Until yesterday, thinking about those dark days was painful. Now it's like flipping through a photo album of them, and feeling nothing. And THAT feels good.
I have a very close relative who suffers from crippling anxiety attacks that can last from hours to weeks. I've likened it to their brain going into a bad groove on a record, as the same neural pathways turn into ruts that they cannot jump out of. It is always characterized by returning to the same certain fear / affirmation loops, and OCD attempts to somehow nullify the fear response.
Medication can help, but only by dulling and blunting the fear response, which sadly blunts all other emotions too. But the duller fears also mute the OCD drives. All told, medication only really serves to let them function instead of staying stuck paralyzed in place. This does open up space too to let therapy work.
And therapy in this case is very much about teaching them to stop dwelling on certain thoughts, and to divert away from those thoughts in their early stages before their brain slips back into the rut.
The OCD / Anxiety natural response, though, is to instead keep trying to face and battle those thoughts and fears reliving them again and again and again and again, as though somehow the next loop will be the one they jump out of (which never happens because the fears are themselves irrationally large).
I don't know if EMDR is indicated for this kind of thing, and anxiety is, in large part, something that actually starts as biological (the rest of the brain senses a fight or flight adrenaline rush, and then post-facto needs to justify and so latches onto irrational fears). But the doom-looping sure sounds familiar - just with traumatic memories instead of irrational fears.
But heed your therapist: do not keep revisiting this stuff. And that goes double for other fears you may have built up around the memories - these things entangle with each other, and my anxiety-ridden dear relative will tell you that you have to be constantly vigilant about addiction not only to the fears per se, but to substitutions or accretions. Put another way: you're used to a trauma response, and while you may correct the particular cause, you've still got that machinery ingrained, and it's very easy to let it start grinding on other things instead. I speak from the hard experience of the last dozen years trying to help.
Thanks for this, Skip. My younger brother suffers from OCD, which is getting worse, despite therapy & meds. I've forwarded Rod's link above from the Cleveland Clinic to some family members, who know more about therapy than I. Maybe EMDR could prove beneficial...
OCD is so difficult because it carves such deep neural ruts, and is tied heavily to other anxiety disorders. Treating it is like trying to untangle a bad knot made of different types of twine - some of which have glass shards.
One thing I can recommend: anti-anxiety meds have 2 major things to watch for:
First, over time they lose effectiveness. My own relative is on their 3rd. They started with one of the "standards" (I forget which at the moment) which worked for 2 years, then just stopped working, then actually made their anxiety worse. They switched to Pristique, which worked at treat for a good 3 1/2 years, then it too stopped working. I forget the one they're on now.
Second. Many people have issues with many of the meds out there, and staying on certain ones can have other bad knock-on effects. Your brother may want to take a DNA test, as my relative found out that a couple they tried early on (other field standards), they were contra-indicated for, which explained why those early ones they tried actually made things rapidly worse, while others in another class (of which Pristique is one) showed promise. I'll warn you, though, that the insurance companies are bastards about paying either for DNA screening for medication, or paying for anything but the generic versions of the "standards".
My wife has read this book and I've heard about it over the years. One of the main texts of the self-help genre. Although I'm wary of this sort of literature, I really should check it out. Thanks,
Good for you. Most people have traumatic experiences in their lives, even small ones. Putting it behind you is easier said than done. How did Berlin women gangraped in April 1945 put that behind them? How does a soldier like Audie Murphy put the war behind them? Some events must sear until death.
Re: This holy terror, this fear of God, is not like what it means to be scared by an encounter with a bear in the woods.
Which is why I think modern English "fear" is not really a good word choice. Fear is for dangerous things whether real or fictitious (coiled rattlesnakes, tornadoes, a thug with a gun, terrorists, vampires, malignant ghosts, a bad nightmare. etc.). IMO, "Awe" is better for what should be feeling in the presence of the power of God.
Eliade's focus on Time strikes me as right, though I wouldn't say "killing time", which has a rather different metaphorical meaning. Perhaps "transcending Time"?
Re: The highest human power is not found in technological prowess, the scientific method, or material wealth.
Nor, quite importantly, in mastery over the will and lives of others.
And Rod, at the very least get a church calendar (in English of course) and keep it somewhere very noticeable-- your bedroom, or by your working space. I would advise following the indicated readings and taking note of the saint's feasts.
Re: I do believe he was right in interpreting the Sexual Revolution in religious terms — not just as a rejection of the God of the Bible, but the worship (conscious or not) of pagan gods of the Ancient Near East
OK, this loses me. I believe it is impossible to worship anything (including the Lord God) without deliberate intent to do so. That is after all what we Orthodox insist on when Iconoclasts accuse us of committing idolatry because we venerate (but not worship!) icons. And I'm much closer to Dante when it comes to sex stuff: it's a natural and normal impulse, so sexual sin is excessive and/or misdirected attention to it, similar to gluttony with food, though more complex since another person is in the mix.
Re: He means precisely the gods of the Ancient Near East,
Oh good grief! Why not the Greek gods? The gods of the Vikings or ancient Slavs? The Shinto or Hindu or even Native American gods? Most of us are many degrees of separation, by lineage and by culture, from old Sumerian or Babylonian deities. Shouldn't it be the gods of our own heritage which lurk in the background, if only by cultural inertia-- or maybe gods we somehow became consciously interested in, maybe through mythology or literature or even temptation to follow some revived pagan cult? Note that the Nazis, as mentioned here, didn't try to revive the worship of Baal, but rather the worship of Wotan and his kin.
Re: The German people gave themselves over to the occult because they no longer believed that Christianity
I find that too vast and general a statement, hardly applicable to all or even most Germans of a century ago. Also, note that the Nazis had their highest support (initially at least) in the most Catholic of German Länder: Bavaria. (I'm glad you saw the Pew survey. I saw it too and meant to bring it to attention yesterday)
You might be interested in the work of Therese Schroeder-Sheker a harpist and pioneer in the field of music thanatology. She's a Catholic and has based her work on medieval Benedictine healing practices.
I have looked into EMDR for my youngest, who was adopted from a background of extreme trauma, but it's prohibitively expensive in the US and not covered by insurance.
Dr. Alex Loyd, a Christian energy psychologist, has a healing modality that is called rapid eye stress release, which is basically EMDR you do for yourself. He has some techniques that are paywalled, but many of them are available on his website and on YouTube. Maybe you’d want to check it out? He lives near me in Franklin, TN and I have used several of his techniques to heal memories and just get my vagus nerve to calm down so I can pray and meditate more effectively/easily. I consider him a trusted guide in energy (frequency) healing. As Sophia said, this information is ours and has been co-opted by the New Age. I’m praying for you both.
One of the funny ironies of modern living: My friends whose religion is what they insist is "science" firmly believe that there must be life on other planets -- though there is no evidence of such life. At the same time they scoff at the idea of supernatural beings -- in spite of abundant evidence.
Re: My friends whose religion is what they insist is "science" firmly believe that there must be life on other planets -- though there is no evidence of such life.
We know a bit (but far from a lot) about the other planets and moons in our solar system. What we know about the planets we've detected elsewhere in our galactic neighborhood is quite minute.
An Irish reader just emailed me to say that Sophia gets aspects of Irish history wrong. Me, I dunno -- I just reported what she said. I also don't know anything scientific that could confirm or refute her claims about hertzes and healing. My point was not to do a "gotcha" interview, but just to talk with an accomplished musician about her work, and why she considers it to be healing, in a direct way.
Well, for starters, 440 concert pitch does not mean modern music is played at a different Hertz.
Hertz is a measurement of frequency, which is the pitch, the note bring played. 440 describes a single note, A above middle C. It is the standard note used by musicians to make sure all their instruments are in tune with each other.
I guess she was saying that since 440Hz is the central A in the piano keyboard, modern music is centered around that note. But this has it's origin in nature. If you plot the human hearing frequency range (20 to 20k Hz) on a logarithmic scale you'll find that the center is at about 500Hz. The human hearing system has a logarithmic response to sound. But, as I said above, Sofia was using Hertzs in spiritual terms, not in physical ones, so we must not delve too much on the subject.
There's a thing going around where people believe that tuning that A to 432hz instead of 440 allows for healing. You can find plenty of YouTube videos where people take music and tune it down.
In Italian we call focusing on details rather than on substance "to crap pins" :D I don't care whether Sophia's Acoustics is right or wrong, to her that's a spiritual metaphor, and it should be read as such (PS my academic background is Physics...)
I was trying to find words to say the same thing. Even if she herself is obsessed with herzes, its not really the main substance. The music is beautiful, can be healing or at least inspiring, and it can't be reduced to a science.
Rife machines, eh? We've one here in the office. I haven't used it, but some have told me of its' benefits. I can see how it works in theory. Everything vibrates at a frequency, everything. I think this is clearly Ohm, or in the beginning was the word. I conflate them, to me they are one and the same thing. The beginning, the infinite and eternal vibration, and the word.
You know, there's also clearly a demonic aspect to music, and I think that's what most people have been trained to expect from a musician, these days. I say that out of practical experience. People want the demon. God forbid, should you offer them beauty. Because f*ck art, let's dance rules the day. You gotta know, I was taunted for the 13th. A beautiful chord. That would be how I connect with the divine. Or maybe a chord with the 9th in the bass. Sublime. I think Mayfield used that one in People Get Ready.
Music and the demonic. I don't know if unser Wirt ever finished The Magic Mountain, but in my opinion Doktor Faustus is Mann's masterpiece. And that's what it's about, partly.
Go ahead. Plato bashed almost all the popular music of his day, and the Puritans sometimes disapproved of just about anything except theologically correct hymns. Don;t get me started on old timey Baptists and their hate for dancing.
I'm halfway through it! Just finished the chapter where Adrian is visited by the Devil (or a devil; I was kinda thinking Sammael is like an insurance agent for Ol' Scratch).
Adam Neely has a refutation of this on his YouTube channel.
I'm a musical semiliterate, but was given ( and gratefully accepted ) a friend's keyboard eight years ago. Occasionally, I will stand there and hit a tritone. It always sets me to cackling like an idiot, but then, Wagner does that to me, in general.
:) This tritone thing is one of the only things I remember from my one and only music theory course. Well, that and the fact that whenever basketball crowds chant “air ball, air ball” they everywhere do it in the same key.
Speaking of music being able to heal I strongly suggest watching this movie from Mongolia, if you can find it , it truly is remarkable: https://youtu.be/aDpneKa9YxA
Brian Boru (d. 1014) was the last uncontested high king, Ard Ri, of Ireland, but the last "claimant" one was either Rory O'Connor (d. 1198) or perhaps Brian O'Neill (d. 1260):
There was also an anti-treaty IRA Rory O'Connor whom the Free State executed in 1922, arking the beginning of the Irish Civil War. There are some who think that the punning names may be one of the keys to Finnegans Wake, but nobody knows.
To very few would I recommend this, even if they were Joyce devotees ( which I am not ), but you might enjoy (?) Raymond Queneau's ( not sure about the spelling ) "We Always Treat Women Too Well."
I didn't need to get the Joyce references to enjoy it.
There's not one. I am considering moving, despite loving Budapest. I cannot live without being a real part of a church.
You should move. Religious life is vital.
I go to a Serbian parish here in SE Wisconsin, and since we now have a priest whose English is terribly shaky at best, and a parish council who stresses the "Serbian" part of that phrase, there is very little English used in services these days. To continue to go there, I've had to find another local priest who will hear my Confession. He's fantastic, and become more than a confessor, but it's definitely a weird situation.
I would not choose a non-English parish for my regular church. Once while traveling I went to the Sunday liturgy at a Greek church in North Carolina, and every last word was in Greek, even the sermon and the announcements-- and a joke the priest told during the latter. I felt utterly alien and out of place.
I wonder if this is an example of how willing one is to learn the local language. With my small knowledge of Spanish, I was able to follow 20-30% of the priest's sermon when I visited a Catholic church in Medellín. I think a foreign church is doable, but you gotta put in the effort to learn the common tongue.
My spiritual father, Fr George Calciu (died 2006), told me of a visit he paid to Eliade in old age. He said his fingers were crippled such that he couldn't work at a typewriter, but he had put a pencil in his fingers and had wrapped and tied them together. "And he was *pushing* with the pencil," Fr George said. His urgent need to write, to communicate, was that strong.
That's going to be me one day, you watch.
Yeah, if suffering had no meaning and no resolution (other than death), I would find that hard to handle!
Rod, about Lent, I'm fuzzy about how the Orthodox do Lent. I don't even know if they do Ash Wednesday. Maybe journal your experience of an Orthodox Lent?
Since this year's Eastern and Western Easters (or Pascha as it's known) coincide, it's actually a bit easier to explain.
We start with several weeks of preparation.
About 5-6 weeks out (this varies between jurisdictions) we have Zaccheus Sunday - it's the first liturgical warning that Lent is coming. We also have the Sunday of the Caananite Women, depending on timing of other Sundays and feasts. 4 Sundays out we enter the Triodion period ("Triodion" refers to the structures of certain hymns that begin at this time) with the Sunday of the Pharisee and the Publican, on which we should be reflecting and praying (spiritual house-cleansing) on the pride of the Pharisee (even though he did do the right things), and the humility of the tax collector. This is followed by a week of no Wednesday or Friday fasting, so that we do not carry empty pride over such matters.
Then we have the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, with the reminder that no matter how deeply we sin (and the Epistle reading is from Corinthians about fornication), we can always repent if we swallow our pride and face our shame. Regular W/F fasting this week (but do try to use up or freeze meats).
After this we have the Sunday of the Last Judgement (from Matthew 25) - often the emphasis here is on acts of mercy and proper use of what we have been given. This is also Meat Fare Sunday - the last day of meat until Pascha (which was this past Sunday). Since the Orthodox are supposed to keep a more or less vegan diet (with some odd exceptions for shellfish), these last couple of weeks before Lent are so that we also clean out the pantry and don't waste food. We're in the last week of preparation now, where fish, eggs, and dairy are still allowed, so we can use those up too.
The final Sunday is Forgiveness Sunday - reading from Matthew 6, 14-21. Either at the end of Liturgy, or at a special Sunday Vespers, we have the prayers of forgiveness, and then all present are to ask for forgiveness from each person present. "Forgive me, a sinner" we say, and then "God forgives, and I forgive." is the response. Parents and children, clergy, young and old. It is a beautiful service. It is also known as "Cheesefare" Sunday because it's the last day for dairy and eggs.
That Monday (which is right before the Western Ash Wednesday), we're in Great Lent.
As for Lent itself, as noted we fast from fish, eggs, dairy, and meat until Lazarus Saturday and Palm Sunday, when fish are allowed, but then Holy Week is back to strict fasting until Pascha. Money you're not spending on food you're supposed to be using for alms.
All services incorporate the Prayer of St. Ephrem a lot too.
O Lord and Master of my Life, take from me the spirit of Sloth, Envy, Lust for Power, and Idle Talk. (make a prostration)
But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love for they servant. (prostration)
Yea or Lord and King, Grant me that I may see my own sins, and not to judge my brother, for Thou art Holy now and ever, and unto ages of ages, Amen. (prostration)
The Divine Liturgy may not be offered on weekdays during Lent, but most parishes will have at least one Liturgy of the Presanctified Gifts, which uses a saved portion of the prior Sunday's Eucharist. Often this is an evening service, and is quite somber and penitential. On Fridays many parishes will offer the Akathist to the Theotokos (an early 5th century ode to our Mother Mary) as part of a Great Compline service.
Each week of Lent has a different theme. The first week we read from The Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete, which is a very penitential service lots of prostrations. This is spread out over several nights as the Canon is quite long.
The first Sunday of Lent is Orthodoxy Sunday, which commemorates the ending of the iconoclasm period and the restoration of iconography.
The 2nd Sunday commemorates St. Gregory Palamas, who you might say is treated rather like Thomas of Aquinas in terms of theological synthesis. Sunday 3 is the Sunday of the Cross, and echoes the Elevation of the Cross great feast of September. Sunday 4 is The Ladder of Divine Ascent, commemorating the work of St. John Climacus, and the final Sunday is for St. Mary of Egypt.
No Mardi Gras?
Cheesefare and meatfare Sundays tend to be a bit festive, but our Paschal parties, feasting amd shouting “Christ is Risen!”, beat all.
Short version: no meat, no dairy, no eggs, lots of church.
None of what Skip writes is as complicated to follow as it may sound, by the way. You have a church calendar with the various days marked and you simply follow what is given there, subject to your own parish's individual schedule of services.
True. But they help mark the journey along the way. They are the story we live through inside of Lent.
Right -- I meant complicated to follow. Will edit that.
Ah, but does the Orthodox church calendar have recipes for Lent, so that we're not all suffering to eat raw vegetables and nuts? Or is that the whole point?
I heard the really hardcore have to give up olive oil for lent as well, I don't know how else you'd make vegetables half-way appetizing.
Not only recipes, but books of recipes.
Thank God!
Every year the ladies of our parish do a Lenten soup and salad luncheon. There are usually at least seven or eight different kinds of soup, and a half-dozen salads, none of which contain any meat, dairy, or eggs. They're always very good.
One of my favorites during Lent is tuna salad made with hummus and olive oil instead of mayo. Quick and easy!
When Catholic (Western) and Orthodox Easters coincide, Orthodox Lent begins at sundown of the Sunday preceding Ash Wednesday. In the Latin West, until the Seventh Century, Lent would begin at sundown of the Sunday following the Wednesday that later became Ash Wednesday - the difference being that Saturday counted as a fasting day in the West but it never did in the East (except for the Saturday preceding Pascha). It was a desire to have a full forty "fasting days" in the Western Lent that caused its beginning to be moved back to the Wednesday of the preceding week. For more detail, see my article, "The Making of Lent:"
https://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=22-02-009-v
Thanks! I will read that.
Thank you, that was a helpful post and article that you wrote.
Uh no one has a calendar that covers these things?
My parish has a color coded calendar that is on the website and easy to follow
The Sexual Revolution occurred because people who had fallen away from religious restraint decided to enjoy the physical pleasures of sex whenever they damned well wanted. I was just listening to a CD of The Mamas and the Papas the other day and I thought about Michelle Phillips. Michie Phillips was the new woman freed to do as she wished because she was free of religious restraint and she had birth control pills. She was free to be as promiscuous as she wished and she was notorious for her sexual affairs. Many of the songs of The Mamas and the Papas are about Michie's escapades. I don't think Mircea Eliade's views on the Sexual Revolution are pertinent other than as obscure philosophizing.
I'd say the sexual revolution happened because the hoi polloi became prosperous enough to indulge in those vices which the elite classes has always given themselves too. We're all nobles at Versailles nowadays.
The advent of The Pill helped.
Absolutely.
Ditto the advent of antibiotics.
You are the only person besides me who acknowledges that truth.
Well, I didn't really think of it, but that makes sense.
So antibiotics do many things but they can cure many bacterial STDs such as gonorrhea and syphilis etc. That alone made sex less consequential.
Agree of course which is why I said it. Of course condoms existed before antibiotics, and they also could prevent pregnancy. But they're cumbersome, prone to failure, and may not be used correctly which is why sex pre mid 20th century was always a bit risky. (It still is, but much less so than in the past).
Yep.
People had been trying to contracept throughout recorded history. Coitus interruptus was practiced in Italian cities in the 14th C and perfected at the French court in the 16th. Condoms were invented in 1600 by an Italian doctor named Fallopius and came into popular use by the 18th C at least in France and England. But they were not the only method of contraception available. In addition there were herbal concoctions that acted as early abortifacients, although the users didn't think of them that way.
They can cure until the bacteria becomes resistant. It is probably a truism that people who can’t follow the ‘rules’ regarding risky sex probably can’t follow prescription requirements either.
Point. Antibiotics work best for intermittent serious episodes, not for continuous use. Same with use in agriculture of course.
What we will eventually have to come to terms with though, is that sex also invokes mutual respect, or disrespect. Marriage customs and covenants and limiting sexual contact within social frameworks and constructs promote a mutually supportive bond rather than simply making use of each other. Are we animals or are we human? I suspect God had that in mind all along -- its not just about obedience but its actually better for us in the long run.
Valid point, Jon.
All the Mamas and the Papas were one hot mess sexually. When they weren't sleeping with each other, Papa John allegedly molested his daughter (although when that allegation was made, she was already strung out on drugs).
MacKenzie Phillips may have made the accusation to sell books. Her career has been pretty much kaput for forty years and more.
The Philips family were a multi generational mess, a kind of horror story.
I have always been of the opinion that sensual movements (sex, drugs) are attempts to re-enter the Garden of Eden. Antibiotics and contraceptives convinced many to believe that the angel with the flaming sword had been banished. That didn’t work out, did it?
Temporary fixes don't work for eternity.
It strikes me the sexual was about doing what gave you pleasure in an age of contraception, anti biotics and abortion.(I saw her again last night- good catch),
Michelle Phillips and Denny Doherty had an affair as John fell asleep after drugs and alcohol. They lived in the same house for a while.
He met her when she was 16. He was 26 and married. "Behind the Music" has an interesting documentary about them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxITux6fSjc
Thanks for providing. The documentary was fascinating.
Wasn't it though? Michelle Philips was very good looking and got whatever she wanted in those days.
Michelle almost justifies her behavior in the documentary you posted. She says that she was denied high school Homecomings and Proms and dating because she met John. So her adulterous behavior made up for missed high school romance.
Very glad, Rod, that the EMDR seems to be helping untangle some of the trauma. How it works is somewhat unclear, but that it works is not at all surprising.
Last time you wrote about going to Vienna, I mentioned why it seemed almost elementary that such an approach might work. As you likely didn't see those comments, I'll bore others here by reposting them.
----Such therapy is not so much a matter of dwelling on or of returning to traumatic memories, but of processing them.
The psyche in this way is like the body. As follows: If I seriously injure part of my body, the trauma is real, and in order even to move around I’ll have to, say, heavily favor one leg, or otherwise twist myself. I will hobble. Problem is, without therapy, it often happens that this twisted manner of movement becomes a new norm. In order to avoid the hurt, I avoid fully healing it. I don’t stretch, because I don’t dare, or because I forget I even can.
Upon suffering a serious emotional trauma, one feels one won’t survive it. The psyche sets up myriad defenses in order to keep one from touching the sore spot. But the fact is, one begins to get over it. Or at least one is no longer at risk of drowning. One will survive.
Yet the same thing often happens. One goes about twisted. One doesn’t dare stretch the damaged limb, and so one doesn’t actually heal.
If this therapy manages to allow the patient to do the needed psychic “stretching”, it is parallel. It’s not *dwelling on*, but a working out of frozen psychic content.----
Interesting you're doing this therapy in Vienna. Freud's own city!
The Robin Phillips piece linked yesterday proved very worthwhile, once the long read was undertaken. Regarding *apkallu* and the Mesopotamian links of so many Silicon Religionists and others, I've a theory you may or may not go for. In comment thread yesterday.
Thank you for the transcript of your interview with Sarah Alexander! Her perspective on the healing tones of the harp is fascinating. My wife (whose Magurie origins are deeply rooted in County Fermanagh) learned to play the harp while in High School but she has short fingers, so the spread of her fingers was always a stretch (so to speak) for a full-sized harp. The Irish harps Sophia and her husband are helping to create look to be a much better scale for my wife’s hands — and the connection with her heritage is a bonus. So, thank you for including all the contact URLs as a part of your segment on her and her work.
I am curious to know what EMDR therapy hopes to accomplish. Does it reconcile a person with a painful event or series of events from the past? Does it alleviate the trauma? Are you hypnotized in a way that you recall events from your past that you have forgotten?
No, it's not hypnosis, and the memories remain intact. It's all about causing your brain to process (re-process?) them in a way that takes away their malign power over you. For me, anyway, it's not like, "Wow, I was seeing in black and white, and now I see in color!" It's more like a more general calm ... but I guess I'll see the results the further I get from the therapy. I was noticing just this afternoon that when I think about certain events from the last decade of my marriage, I don't get tense like I used to. It's a small thing, I guess, but my therapist said to refuse to dwell on those memories. She explained that it's fine to bring them to mind, but if you hold them there too long, you run the risk of falling prey to them again. Until yesterday, thinking about those dark days was painful. Now it's like flipping through a photo album of them, and feeling nothing. And THAT feels good.
I have a very close relative who suffers from crippling anxiety attacks that can last from hours to weeks. I've likened it to their brain going into a bad groove on a record, as the same neural pathways turn into ruts that they cannot jump out of. It is always characterized by returning to the same certain fear / affirmation loops, and OCD attempts to somehow nullify the fear response.
Medication can help, but only by dulling and blunting the fear response, which sadly blunts all other emotions too. But the duller fears also mute the OCD drives. All told, medication only really serves to let them function instead of staying stuck paralyzed in place. This does open up space too to let therapy work.
And therapy in this case is very much about teaching them to stop dwelling on certain thoughts, and to divert away from those thoughts in their early stages before their brain slips back into the rut.
The OCD / Anxiety natural response, though, is to instead keep trying to face and battle those thoughts and fears reliving them again and again and again and again, as though somehow the next loop will be the one they jump out of (which never happens because the fears are themselves irrationally large).
I don't know if EMDR is indicated for this kind of thing, and anxiety is, in large part, something that actually starts as biological (the rest of the brain senses a fight or flight adrenaline rush, and then post-facto needs to justify and so latches onto irrational fears). But the doom-looping sure sounds familiar - just with traumatic memories instead of irrational fears.
But heed your therapist: do not keep revisiting this stuff. And that goes double for other fears you may have built up around the memories - these things entangle with each other, and my anxiety-ridden dear relative will tell you that you have to be constantly vigilant about addiction not only to the fears per se, but to substitutions or accretions. Put another way: you're used to a trauma response, and while you may correct the particular cause, you've still got that machinery ingrained, and it's very easy to let it start grinding on other things instead. I speak from the hard experience of the last dozen years trying to help.
Thanks for this, Skip. My younger brother suffers from OCD, which is getting worse, despite therapy & meds. I've forwarded Rod's link above from the Cleveland Clinic to some family members, who know more about therapy than I. Maybe EMDR could prove beneficial...
OCD is so difficult because it carves such deep neural ruts, and is tied heavily to other anxiety disorders. Treating it is like trying to untangle a bad knot made of different types of twine - some of which have glass shards.
One thing I can recommend: anti-anxiety meds have 2 major things to watch for:
First, over time they lose effectiveness. My own relative is on their 3rd. They started with one of the "standards" (I forget which at the moment) which worked for 2 years, then just stopped working, then actually made their anxiety worse. They switched to Pristique, which worked at treat for a good 3 1/2 years, then it too stopped working. I forget the one they're on now.
Second. Many people have issues with many of the meds out there, and staying on certain ones can have other bad knock-on effects. Your brother may want to take a DNA test, as my relative found out that a couple they tried early on (other field standards), they were contra-indicated for, which explained why those early ones they tried actually made things rapidly worse, while others in another class (of which Pristique is one) showed promise. I'll warn you, though, that the insurance companies are bastards about paying either for DNA screening for medication, or paying for anything but the generic versions of the "standards".
Start with "The Body Keeps the Score," by Bessel vander Kolk, M.D.
My wife has read this book and I've heard about it over the years. One of the main texts of the self-help genre. Although I'm wary of this sort of literature, I really should check it out. Thanks,
Good for you. Most people have traumatic experiences in their lives, even small ones. Putting it behind you is easier said than done. How did Berlin women gangraped in April 1945 put that behind them? How does a soldier like Audie Murphy put the war behind them? Some events must sear until death.
Audie Murphy did not have a tranquil postwar life.
I think he stayed drunk for about four straight years until he straightened out enough to have an acting career.
Re: This holy terror, this fear of God, is not like what it means to be scared by an encounter with a bear in the woods.
Which is why I think modern English "fear" is not really a good word choice. Fear is for dangerous things whether real or fictitious (coiled rattlesnakes, tornadoes, a thug with a gun, terrorists, vampires, malignant ghosts, a bad nightmare. etc.). IMO, "Awe" is better for what should be feeling in the presence of the power of God.
Eliade's focus on Time strikes me as right, though I wouldn't say "killing time", which has a rather different metaphorical meaning. Perhaps "transcending Time"?
Re: The highest human power is not found in technological prowess, the scientific method, or material wealth.
Nor, quite importantly, in mastery over the will and lives of others.
And Rod, at the very least get a church calendar (in English of course) and keep it somewhere very noticeable-- your bedroom, or by your working space. I would advise following the indicated readings and taking note of the saint's feasts.
Re: I do believe he was right in interpreting the Sexual Revolution in religious terms — not just as a rejection of the God of the Bible, but the worship (conscious or not) of pagan gods of the Ancient Near East
OK, this loses me. I believe it is impossible to worship anything (including the Lord God) without deliberate intent to do so. That is after all what we Orthodox insist on when Iconoclasts accuse us of committing idolatry because we venerate (but not worship!) icons. And I'm much closer to Dante when it comes to sex stuff: it's a natural and normal impulse, so sexual sin is excessive and/or misdirected attention to it, similar to gluttony with food, though more complex since another person is in the mix.
Re: He means precisely the gods of the Ancient Near East,
Oh good grief! Why not the Greek gods? The gods of the Vikings or ancient Slavs? The Shinto or Hindu or even Native American gods? Most of us are many degrees of separation, by lineage and by culture, from old Sumerian or Babylonian deities. Shouldn't it be the gods of our own heritage which lurk in the background, if only by cultural inertia-- or maybe gods we somehow became consciously interested in, maybe through mythology or literature or even temptation to follow some revived pagan cult? Note that the Nazis, as mentioned here, didn't try to revive the worship of Baal, but rather the worship of Wotan and his kin.
Re: The German people gave themselves over to the occult because they no longer believed that Christianity
I find that too vast and general a statement, hardly applicable to all or even most Germans of a century ago. Also, note that the Nazis had their highest support (initially at least) in the most Catholic of German Länder: Bavaria. (I'm glad you saw the Pew survey. I saw it too and meant to bring it to attention yesterday)
Thanks for the linked harp piece!
You might be interested in the work of Therese Schroeder-Sheker a harpist and pioneer in the field of music thanatology. She's a Catholic and has based her work on medieval Benedictine healing practices.
I have looked into EMDR for my youngest, who was adopted from a background of extreme trauma, but it's prohibitively expensive in the US and not covered by insurance.
Steve Terrell look him up for trauma therapy for adoptees
Thank you for this! He looks great. I'm nowhere near him but I'll try to find out if he does this work remotely.
Dr. Alex Loyd, a Christian energy psychologist, has a healing modality that is called rapid eye stress release, which is basically EMDR you do for yourself. He has some techniques that are paywalled, but many of them are available on his website and on YouTube. Maybe you’d want to check it out? He lives near me in Franklin, TN and I have used several of his techniques to heal memories and just get my vagus nerve to calm down so I can pray and meditate more effectively/easily. I consider him a trusted guide in energy (frequency) healing. As Sophia said, this information is ours and has been co-opted by the New Age. I’m praying for you both.
Thank you 🙏❤️
One of the funny ironies of modern living: My friends whose religion is what they insist is "science" firmly believe that there must be life on other planets -- though there is no evidence of such life. At the same time they scoff at the idea of supernatural beings -- in spite of abundant evidence.
That's why there's all this hoo hah about water on Mars.
Ray Walston will always be my favorite Martian.
Mr Hand
My favorite Walston:
https://youtu.be/Ljm9CDRAhMQ?si=fIp4X33z9Nmx5lK8
Re: My friends whose religion is what they insist is "science" firmly believe that there must be life on other planets -- though there is no evidence of such life.
We know a bit (but far from a lot) about the other planets and moons in our solar system. What we know about the planets we've detected elsewhere in our galactic neighborhood is quite minute.
Got her name wrong - twice! Sophia Abraham :^{
An Irish reader just emailed me to say that Sophia gets aspects of Irish history wrong. Me, I dunno -- I just reported what she said. I also don't know anything scientific that could confirm or refute her claims about hertzes and healing. My point was not to do a "gotcha" interview, but just to talk with an accomplished musician about her work, and why she considers it to be healing, in a direct way.
Ted Gioia wrote a whole piece about music and healing on this exact topic: https://open.substack.com/pub/tedgioia/p/doctors-raise-a-patient-from-a-deathlike
and here’s one about singing: https://www.honest-broker.com/p/the-dying-singer-who-cured-himself
Well, for starters, 440 concert pitch does not mean modern music is played at a different Hertz.
Hertz is a measurement of frequency, which is the pitch, the note bring played. 440 describes a single note, A above middle C. It is the standard note used by musicians to make sure all their instruments are in tune with each other.
I guess she was saying that since 440Hz is the central A in the piano keyboard, modern music is centered around that note. But this has it's origin in nature. If you plot the human hearing frequency range (20 to 20k Hz) on a logarithmic scale you'll find that the center is at about 500Hz. The human hearing system has a logarithmic response to sound. But, as I said above, Sofia was using Hertzs in spiritual terms, not in physical ones, so we must not delve too much on the subject.
There's a thing going around where people believe that tuning that A to 432hz instead of 440 allows for healing. You can find plenty of YouTube videos where people take music and tune it down.
But I do find harp music to be very calming. As are some piano pieces, but those are harp-like - I usually describe them as sounding like water
In Italian we call focusing on details rather than on substance "to crap pins" :D I don't care whether Sophia's Acoustics is right or wrong, to her that's a spiritual metaphor, and it should be read as such (PS my academic background is Physics...)
"To crap pins" is a great saying!
I was trying to find words to say the same thing. Even if she herself is obsessed with herzes, its not really the main substance. The music is beautiful, can be healing or at least inspiring, and it can't be reduced to a science.
Rife machines, eh? We've one here in the office. I haven't used it, but some have told me of its' benefits. I can see how it works in theory. Everything vibrates at a frequency, everything. I think this is clearly Ohm, or in the beginning was the word. I conflate them, to me they are one and the same thing. The beginning, the infinite and eternal vibration, and the word.
You know, there's also clearly a demonic aspect to music, and I think that's what most people have been trained to expect from a musician, these days. I say that out of practical experience. People want the demon. God forbid, should you offer them beauty. Because f*ck art, let's dance rules the day. You gotta know, I was taunted for the 13th. A beautiful chord. That would be how I connect with the divine. Or maybe a chord with the 9th in the bass. Sublime. I think Mayfield used that one in People Get Ready.
Music and the demonic. I don't know if unser Wirt ever finished The Magic Mountain, but in my opinion Doktor Faustus is Mann's masterpiece. And that's what it's about, partly.
Pop music is overflowing with overt "Satanism." The music is demonic liturgy and we're not supposed to take it seriously.
One should be wary of specific songs and artists (Li'l Nas X comes to mind), but it's tarring with a vast brush to indict all music.
I just so happen to have the vastest brush, so I'm tarring away.
Have feathers, will assist. For snacks & refreshments.
Go ahead. Plato bashed almost all the popular music of his day, and the Puritans sometimes disapproved of just about anything except theologically correct hymns. Don;t get me started on old timey Baptists and their hate for dancing.
J Geils introduced us to pornography with Angel is a Centerfold.
I'm halfway through it! Just finished the chapter where Adrian is visited by the Devil (or a devil; I was kinda thinking Sammael is like an insurance agent for Ol' Scratch).
Yes.
Tritone considered demonic: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritone#Historical_Uses
The beginning of Purple Haze. Yup, there it is.
One might as well consider logarithms or the red wavelengths of the visible spectrum demonic.
Adam Neely has a refutation of this on his YouTube channel.
I'm a musical semiliterate, but was given ( and gratefully accepted ) a friend's keyboard eight years ago. Occasionally, I will stand there and hit a tritone. It always sets me to cackling like an idiot, but then, Wagner does that to me, in general.
:) This tritone thing is one of the only things I remember from my one and only music theory course. Well, that and the fact that whenever basketball crowds chant “air ball, air ball” they everywhere do it in the same key.
You want demonic and Wagner. Listen to the Prelude to Act II of Parsifal.
Well, what's evil if not the perversion of the good? This applies to beauty, music, etc.
Speaking of music being able to heal I strongly suggest watching this movie from Mongolia, if you can find it , it truly is remarkable: https://youtu.be/aDpneKa9YxA
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_the_Weeping_Camel
Good movie. Watched it twice.
Re: Mircea Eliade and time. Plotinus’ whole philosophy was centered on defeating time.
Brian Boru (d. 1014) was the last uncontested high king, Ard Ri, of Ireland, but the last "claimant" one was either Rory O'Connor (d. 1198) or perhaps Brian O'Neill (d. 1260):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruaidr%C3%AD_Ua_Conchobair
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_O%27Neill_(High-King_of_Ireland)
There was also an anti-treaty IRA Rory O'Connor whom the Free State executed in 1922, arking the beginning of the Irish Civil War. There are some who think that the punning names may be one of the keys to Finnegans Wake, but nobody knows.
To very few would I recommend this, even if they were Joyce devotees ( which I am not ), but you might enjoy (?) Raymond Queneau's ( not sure about the spelling ) "We Always Treat Women Too Well."
I didn't need to get the Joyce references to enjoy it.
Not to be read during Lent.