forgetfulness – The Tao of Holy Orthodoxy

March 7, 2018September 24, 2018

50. Remember Your Story, Our Story

pexels-photo-320265 Closed Book

You have a story, the story of your life. Whenever you tell your story, you choose certain important experiences and string them together from past to present. The story you tell reveals how you have grown up through the years to become the person you are now and may point to who you aspire to be. Your story is intertwined with the story of other people who have been a part of your life. Indeed, all of us in the whole world are intertwined.

Think of all the connected stories throughout the world – of people, families, and nations – as a long, thick rope of interweaving vines that stretches through time. At the heart of this rope is the glowing Golden Vine. Through this vine flows Life Itself (or rather, Life Himself), shining as pure Light. The Golden Vine is the Great Story at the center of all human history. It is the Story of God working within the world to create us and, when we had fallen into death, to heal us and bring us into the fullness of our potential.

When you are joined with Christ and received into His Holy Church, your life becomes interconnected with this Golden Vine. You share in the Great Story of God destroying death and bestowing Life on the world. This Story reveals your true identity, how you must live today, and how to proceed with your life into the future.

The Great Story begins in the beginning, unfolds through the Old Testament, is fulfilled in the New Testament, and seamlessly continues through the history of the Holy Orthodox Church until today. In past lessons, you have already been taught the Great Story. Now, under the guidance of your Priest, increase your knowledge. Read through the Old Testament, the Holy Gospel According to St. Mark, the shortest of the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and resources on the history of the Orthodox Church from the time of the Apostles onward.

Within the Orthodox Church, the Old Testament has been preserved, the New Testament written, and the whole canon (collection) of Scripture compiled. Both the text of Holy Scripture and the correct interpretation of Scripture have been inseparably held together in the Church. Holy Tradition includes both what the Scripture says and what it means. Through continued instruction, discover what the Holy Scripture, the writings of the Fathers, the prayers, the hymns, the icons, and the whole life of the Church reveal about the Story of salvation and your participation in it.

Do not forget, whether because of laziness or deception, the Truth about Who God Is, who you are, who you may become, and how to practically live faithfully as one who bears the Name of Christ. Remember the Story and your place in it. Keep the Story in your mind, heart, and action so that you remain on the Way of salvation.

Read: Deuteronomy 6.1-25; 8.1-20; Isaiah 17.10-11; Jeremiah 18.15; Joshua 4.19-24; Judges 2.10-13; Psalm 78.11-20; 2 Peter 1.1-21; 3.1-17; Revelation 2.2-5; 3.1-3

September 30, 2017October 16, 2018

13. Our Summary Diagnosis

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The disease of death shows itself through a variety of interconnected illnesses. Holy Scripture summarizes the effects of death on our human race by describing the how the various consequences affect humanity. These consequences include the darkening of the heart, pride and delusion, misuse of a rational mind disconnected from the heart, forgetfulness of God, the influence of chaotic passions that lead us toward suffering and death, and the struggle to choose good instead of evil.

Near the beginning of his Letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul summarizes the disastrous effects of sin and death on our ancestors in the past. Since we have inherited death, we still experience these affects today. This particular passage (Romans 1.18-32) explains that when our ancestors lost knowledge of the true God, they forgot what it means to be true human beings, made according to the image of God with potential to become like Him. Relationships between the Creator and His creatures, relationships among human beings, the relationships between males and females descended into chaos.

When reading Holy Scripture, understand that the sacred writings sometimes attribute human characteristics, including emotion, to God. The language of God’s wrath in this passage, for example, provides an image humans can understand to describe a Mystery that is beyond understanding. God does not really have anger or wrath, which are human passions, as we do. God is passionless. Besides, the “wrath” of God mentioned is not turned against human beings. The divine wrath is turned against the unnatural sin and death afflicting humankind, which prevents us from receiving the Love and Grace of God and keeps us from following the Way toward our healing, purpose, and potential. Holy Scripture says that God gave us over to do evil, which means that God allowed human beings to turn away from Him and His Way. (God created us with the freedom to choose.) Men and women wanted to follow their own desires, so God permitted them to do so. God is Love. The human being decided to forsake God in order to pursue his own opinions and follow the passions, which lead toward chaos, suffering, and death. (Throughout history, God sent his prophets to remind people that He loved them and desired for them to return from the path of destruction so that they might enjoy goodness and life in relationship with Him.)

If you want to be healed, you need the One Physician who knows your diagnosis perfectly and possesses the Power to cure you from death in both soul and body entirely.

Read: Romans 1.18-32

September 25, 2017September 24, 2018

10. Forgetfulness

Chinese moon cakes filled with lotus-seed paste deliciously point us to an old story from Homer’s Odyssey. The hero, Odysseus, and his crew took their ship to land after several days of rough voyaging at sea. Odysseus sent a few men from the ship to meet the natives. The kind inhabitants treated their visitors well and gave them some lotus to eat. The crewmen found the lotus so delicious that they lost all desire to go back to the ship. They stopped caring about returning home. In their dreamy, blissful state, they forgot about everything else except remaining in that same place and eating lotus perpetually.

Odysseus sent a team to retrieve their shipmates from among the Lotus-eaters. Carried back to the ship and tied down, the wayward crewmen bitterly cried at their separation from the lotus. Odysseus ordered the rest of his men back on board quickly. They hurriedly pushed off into the sea to get away from the land of the dangerous, but pleasantly nice, Lotus-eaters.

The lotus in the Chinese mooncake and the lotus in the Greek epic may have nothing in common except a name, but the lotus (whatever kind) serves to remind us of another part of our experience of death – forgetfulness. We have forgotten God in our hearts.

When our ancestors lost the knowledge of God in their hearts, they kept only rational knowledge about God. Over time, this knowledge too slipped away. Within societies and cultures spread throughout the world, human beings developed philosophies, mythologies, religious rituals, and spiritual ideologies. In the place of Truth, they answered their questions about human existence, the seen universe, and the unseen the spiritual realm based on human reason, imagination, and their interaction with their environments. Men and women substituted the Creator’s revelation with their own opinions and mistook the deception of demons for spiritual enlightenment. Our forgetfulness of God has produced spiritual confusion in human history, but also in our own souls and the souls of those around us.

Since God made the human being according to His own Image, how can we know what it means to be true human beings if we have forgotten the true God? How can we become like God if we don’t know who the One is we are supposed to be like? If we do not remember the true God, we also forget what it means to be human beings. We also forget how to relate to other human beings properly. This forgetfulness creates chaos in relationships, which are intended to nurture love and peace.

In Chinese mythology, Meng Po, the Lady of Forgetfulness, collects a variety of herbs on earth to make her Five-Flavored Tea of Forgetfulness. This Goddess of Amnesia provides her tea to those souls passing through Diyu, the realm of the dead, so that will not remember their previous lives when reincarnated, according to traditional belief. While amnesia forgetting the past, is an important concept in this myth, the practice of anamnesis, remembering or recollecting the past, proves central to a healthful spiritual life.

A relatively similar Greek myth tells of a river called Lethe. This is the River of Oblivion, that is, the River of Forgetfulness. A river associated with sleep and death, those who drink from its waters forget their lives on earth. The Greek word for forgetfulness (lethe) is the opposite of the word for Truth (aleithia), which means no forgetfulness.

When we forget God, we forget the Truth. We forget the truth about our identity, our purpose, and our potential. If we do not remember, we fall into delusion and error.