healing of hurts

One very pressing issue that hasn't gotten the attention it deserves in Orthodox theology is that of healing anger and bitterness borne by people who having been wronged in one way or another, great and small.

How, in other words, do we forgive our enemies and set down burdens of hate, bitterness, resentment? It is true that these poison the heart of the one who bears them. But how to draw the poison out and heal the wounds hurt has caused?

church responses to xenophobia?

I read in the papers these days that polls are projecting a big win for the anti-immigrant, anti-European True Finn party (in Finnish, Perussuomalaiset, which oddly enough the party itself wishes to translate into English as The Finns, a rendering which to me begs a host of questions).

The rise of this party is linked to a number of causes, including xenophobia.

Has the Orthodox Church of Finland spoken out against the growing xenophobia in Finnish society?

Christology and birthdays

My son turns ten today. Many years! :-) The day's celebrations turned my mind to the humanity of Christ. We have the narrative of the wedding at Cana, and there are narratives of Jesus being present at meals. He comes upon people getting ready to bury someone, and brings Lazarus back to life from his tomb. But no birthdays. If birthdays were celebrated by Jews in the Second Temple period, it's not unreasonable to think that Jesus celebrated the birthdays of family and friends. The only birthday we have in the gospels is Jesus' own. Second-century texts such as the Protevangelium of James sought to fill in the gaps in the gospels' narratives of Jesus' life. The stories in such works have often been dismissed as fanciful storytelling, and it's not hard to understand the critique. At the same time, behind them is, I think, a desire to preserve the humanity of Christ. As Christology developed, sometimes the church lost sight of Christ's humanity. Perhaps the relative silence of the gospels about Christ's early life also partly explains the doctrine of recapitulation set forth by Irenaeus. Thus every human being, as she or he grows and matures, supplies the missing pieces in the narrative of Christ's life, since his own life sanctified every age of human life.

silence

I'm tired today and my brain is functioning at a low level.

As I write this I hear the sound of the gusty rain falling.

For some reason I began thinking about silence. As you know, silence can signify many things, it has many different functions. Sometimes, perhaps too often, silence walks hand-in-hand with judgement, with weighing others and finding them wanting. It's the silence of disapproval, of censure.

There is another silence too. Think of Christ's silence before the woman caught in adultery and facing death by stoning. This is an enigmatic silence, for it is accompanied by Christ's drawing or writing on the ground - the narrative doesn't reveal what.

Whatever he was writing or drawing in his silence, he concludes it not with condemnation but with a word of mercy and freedom.

No wonder this pericope has been so controversial in the history of the church.

responses to fascism today?

What has been the response of the Orthodox church in Greece to the beating, terrorizing, and murder of immigrants? To the growing power of the Golden Dawn party there?

an Orthodox catechetical school for Finland?

Is there room in Finland for an Orthodox catechetical school?

I know, you can study in Joensuu to be a church educator, and there's the school at New Valamo. I'm talking about something different from both.

I dream of a place where people can come together to learn, ask questions, think creatively and fearlessly about theology, church life and practices, the problems and challenges the church faces today. Where new ways of engaging the tradition could emerge. A place for the life of the heart, a place to learn something of wisdom.

theology for Finland

Theology lives in a tension between the catholic and the local. How does the local express the catholic, and how is the catholic rooted in the local?

If we think about Orthodox theology here in Finland, what are the local issues we need to be addressing?

love casts out fear

What are the theological grounds for openness to the strangers we encounter in our lives? How do we convince people that fear of, even hostility towards, the Other are profoundly un-Christian responses?

Labor Day

Ok, so tomorrow's not Labor Day here in Finland. It is back home, though. As I read some articles today on the state of American labor this Labor Day, I thought about Catholic social teaching and its support for labor and labor unions.

Off the top of my head I couldn't think of anything comparable in modern Orthodox social teaching. Are readers aware of any patriarchal or episcopal teaching on labor and unions?