I have been absent from the Orthodox Church for most of 4 years, which means that I have been absent from her for longer than I was present. And yet Orthodoxy has an undeniable claim on me. After four years of avoiding the Church, of wrestling with complex waves of longing, despair, and mistrust of Orthodoxy in America I have arranged a meeting with my old priest, now retired, to see how I can set my relationship with the church to rights. From this step alone I have experienced an amount of peace.

In coming to Orthodoxy, I was responding to an entirely new landscape, a new view of heaven and of the Kingdom of God which completely transcended any experience I had known prior to this. And yet, as I became Orthodox, as I joined myself with Orthodoxy I failed. For a long time I battered myself against an impassable obstacle -- I tried to be Orthodox through thinking and to some extent through doing. It became a framework upon which to hang my life, with which to identify myself, all the while I was growing increasingly despondent as I experienced one devastating disillusionment after another.

In my recently renewed zeal for the Church, for God as made present within the Church, it suddenly dawned on me -- I habitually "nest"; I almost obsessively surround myself with Orthodox "things" books, music, icons, prayers. It is as if I am trying to find God through the addition of things, a sort of spiritualization by acquisition and accumulation. And yet, all these things, however good they may be, do not make God more present to me. It is as if I am blindly groping and grasping at straws, trying to force God to be present to me, or to force myself to be present to Him. And in realizing this, I realize that at the core of all this is a deep and insatiable longing to be aware of God, to be assured of His love for me, to be assured of His goodness and his involvement with the world, to find myself not an alien to Him, not at odds with Him. I long for peace, for a sense of His love. I long for His presence.

There are moments when I feel blessed, when I feel the immediacy of God, his immanence. And yet, most often, he seems to me to be a concept, an abstraction, a possibility, an idea to be considered. Those moments when God "appears" seem to be at odd moments, completely beyond my grasp, completely beyond my ability to control. The rest of the time it is as if I was groping aimlessly, looking for something lost, misplaced. It is as if, on my own, my faith is still intellectual and emotional, psychological, but at moments the reality of God exhibits itself. How can I have more of God without self delusion? How does one go beyond psychology and moral, pious actions? How does one become truly a child of God?

I read a great deal of Mother Theresa's letters in Come Be My Light and have to admit that after a while I grew sick of it, despondent with her darkness, self-accusation, self-hatred. She was convinced of God almost, as it were, through her own doubt and darkness. I put it away. Her darkness and conviction spurred her on to great works of love and charity. But I can only think that it's all rather beside the point when God seems so far off, so distant and vague. So dark.

By night on my bed,
I sought him whom my soul loves.
I sought him, but I didn't find him.
I will get up now, and go about the city;
In the streets and in the squares I will seek him whom my soul loves.
I sought him, but I didn't find him.
The watchmen who go about the city found me;
"Have you seen him whom my soul loves?"
I had scarcely passed from them,
When I found him whom my soul loves.
I held him, and would not let him go,
Until I had brought him into my mother's house,
Into the chamber of her who conceived me.
I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem,
By the roes, or by the hinds of the field,
That you not stir up, nor awaken love,
Until it so desires.

When he is found -- how do we not let him go? When he makes himself present in our lives, how do we hold on to that closeness? How does one grasp at light so that darkness remains at a distance? How do we keep our souls from retreating back into the abyss?

Update: For those of you who care, I've been back in church for a while now (today is September 19, 2008). I've found a parish I'm can live in. A place to put some roots. I'm glad to be back. I'm glad that being back, I am not what I was before I left.

The Fathers take almost literally the fact of putting on Christ and see in it a projection or, more exactly, a prolongation in man of the incarnation of the Word, perpetuated especially in the eucharist. That is why they teach us not to "imitate" but interiorize him. This inwardness is not a simple metaphor which would force the meaning; it has its roots deep in God himself. If the incarnation reflects a certain anthropomorphism of God (a mysterious primordial conformity), it reveals above all and assuredly the theomorphosis of man. From the biblical point of view, the incarnation brings to perfection our nature, which is made to the image of God, and it reveals the manifestly Christological structure of the spiritual life.

Man then traverses an immense distance to the interior of his being. St. Paul quotes a primitive hymn charged with almost explosive dynamism. "Awake, sleeper, and arise from among the dead, and Christ will enlighten you." A variant reinforces its meaning: "You will touch Christ." This passage from the state of death to the state of life, from hell to the kingdom, is precisely the itinerary of the spiritual life.

Moralizing spirituality reduces salvation to the forgiveness of disobedience. Now biblical ontology, vigorous and exacting, leads from a moral catharsis (purification) to an ontological catharsis. This represents a very real change in the whole human being--body, soul and mind. It is the strongest affirmation of patristic exegesis, stressing the Gospel's call to metanoia or conversion. "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." It would be more exact to say: "Change yourself", become a new creature, for it is a question of a repentance in the full meaning of the word--a complete turning about of the mind and of the whole human being.

The encounter with God could not be effected in the state of fallen nature; it presupposes a previous restoration of this nature in the sacrament of baptism. For baptism, according to the Fathers, is a true re-creation of the redeemed man. Repentance, metanoia in its complete meaning, goes to the roots of all mental faculties, volitional and affective, and even to the heart of the entire being, body and soul.

Struggle With God, Part I, Chapter 6.

http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/blog/index.php?p=493

In an interesting article which argues that Bush is more a "positive thinking", New Agey Christian rather than a fundamentalist, Jeff Sharlet has the following to say about (Protestant) Christian fundamentalism:

Christian fundamentalism, meanwhile, is the child of the Enlightenment, a functionalist view of faith that's metaphorically "scientific." It's scripture as read by a cranky engineer who just wants to know how God works. The Bible, for a fundamentalist, isn't powerful literature demanding our ever-changing discernment; it's an instruction manual. And fundamentalists think that's a good thing.

Jeff Sharlet. The Revealer, Our Magical Persident, October 22, 2004

Of course he then goes on to quote Dostoevsky's The Possessed and afterwards calls D. a "proto-fundy". Eh, I still like the "cranky engineer" line.

Faith. From my current perspective it looks as if it is this which lies at the heart of my spiritual crises. And my approach to the problem has been rather analytical, a matter of sorting through mental and emotional associations to isolate the key issues -- if only I can find a definitive answer on "this" then I can walk forward, establishing myself in a framework of faith, and "life will then be good". Of course, I rarely admit to myself that I am quite so naïve, but at some level there is this child-like hope that if I can only have this one thing -- the answer to my question -- then all will be well. Call it "mental acquisitiveness".

Let's take a look at Abraham -- this time straight from Genesis 22:

Continuing on with the theme of Abraham and faith, here are two patristic quotes:

And who does not see whose figure Abraham's only son was, he who bore the wood for the sacrifice of himself to that place whither he was being led to be offered up? For the Lord bore His own cross, as the Gospel tells us.

St. Augustine of Hippo. Homily IX on John II, 12.

Great indeed was the faith of Abraham. For while in the case of Abel, and of Noah, and of Enoch, there was an opposition of reasonings, and it was necessary to go beyond human reasonings; in this case it was necessary not only to go beyond human reasonings, but to manifest something more. For what was of God seemed to be opposed to what was of God; and faith opposed faith, and command promise. I mean this: He had said, 'Get out of your country, and from your kindred, and I will give you this land' (Gen. 12:1,7). 'He gave him no inheritance in it, no not so much as to set his foot on' (Acts 7:5). Do you see how what was done was opposed to the promise? Again He said, 'In Isaac your seed shall be called' (Gen. 21:12), and he believed: and again He says, Sacrifice to Me this one, who was to fill all the world from his seed. You see the opposition between the commands and the promise? He enjoined things that were in contradiction to the promises, and yet not even so did the righteous man stagger, nor say he had been deceived.

St. John Chrysostom. Homily XXV on Hebrews XI, 1., http://ccel.org/fathers2/NPNF1-14/npnf1-14-118.htm

I have been seeking for some little project, and in the process I have landed upon Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. In this book, Johannes de Silentio[1] is considering the Biblical story of the testing of Abraham.

I would like to quote two sections: the first is from the Preface, and has to do with the nature of faith, that it is a lifetime's work and not some small act like passing through a gate; the second is from the Preliminary Expectoration, and has to do with the real anxiety (or "dread") of the story.