Call No Man Father

Perhaps you have seen this meme above? Talk about butch! It’s pretty much the religious equivalent of this:

I have often wondered from where such a masochistic sensibility arises. It is very perplexing, but there does seem to be something in the human psyche that craves discipline and bowing to authority, despite the simultaneous triggers that resist the same. In watching the Christian, and especially Orthodox and Catholic traditionalist, landscape over the past decade, I am starting to come up with a theory of why this is.

You may not have noticed, but over the last decade or fifteen years a surprising number of millennials and post-millennials have been drawn to Orthodoxy and Traditionalist Catholicism. I certainly understand the attraction of beautiful liturgical structures, especially considering most forms of Christian worship these days (including the Novus Ordo of the Catholic Church) range from a kind of ceremonial brutalism to a flaccid “infomercial-for-Jesus” aesthetic to the pop-culture appropriation of the praise band and hi-tech inspirational graphics. So I get that young people, starved for something authentic, would turn to the great works of art of the past—and the Divine Liturgy and Tridentine Mass are nothing if not great works of religious art.

But part and parcel with this attraction to the beautiful often comes a doctrinaire fundamentalism which, for me anyway, destroys the very beauty of Christianity it seeks to exemplify. Suddenly the world (or, more properly, the internet) is populated with self-appointed heresy hunters and inquisitors.

So here’s my theory: I think the attraction to traditional Christianity for a number of millennials and post-millennials (mostly male, from what I can tell), as it is manifested in Eastern Orthodoxy and Tridentine Catholicism is at its core a search for the missing father. According to this website, 57% of millennial mothers are single moms and as of 2019 15.76 million children in the US were living with single mothers. That’s a lot of missing fathers.

It seems to me, then, that a factor in the attraction millennials and post-millennials feel toward the traditional churches is a psychological need to connect with the father. Both forms of Christianity are also heavy on rules and laying down the law concerning what is allowed and what is not—precisely what many children miss in a relationship with a father. I’m not, of course, saying that mothers don’t have rules, but it’s a different dynamic with a father—and a father a child only sees on Wednesdays and every other weekend does not offer the same guidance. So Traditional Christianity comes in to fill the void in the soul. And you get to call the spiritual leader “father” as an added bonus.

This has been particularly apparent to me in the phenomenon (“fad” is not quite the right word, but it is close) in some Eastern Orthodox circles for millennial and post-millennial converts to seek a “spiritual father,” as if their own priest were not enough. This arose, according to my understanding, with the appearance of Ephraimism in the last decades. An Orthodox priest friend of mine is exasperated by such converts and their “spiritual fathers.” “You’re not a monk. You don’t have a ‘spiritual father,’” he tells them, “you have a father confessor: me. If you want a spiritual father, memorize the psalter and then we’ll talk.” I think almost zero of them memorize the psalter.

This is a very understandable phenomenon. People like clear rules and like to follow the directions (as we have seen all too often over the past sixteen months), and the burden for discernment can then be outsourced to the authority. But this comes with all kinds of spiritual dangers as well.

One of these dangers is surrendering agency to a monastic sensibility that is in no way healthy for life in the day-to-day, whether in terms of one’s job or in parenting. Man was not made for monasticism; monasticism was made for man (and I even have my doubts about that).

What results is described by the 20th century Russian religious philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev as a “false asceticism.” “This type of asceticism,” he writes, “with its hostility to man and to the world, may obscure the true end of mysticism, which is transfiguration in God. It may place upon men burdens too heavy to be borne and also produce a great deal of tension in the soul.” [1] Thank you, sir; may I have another?

Of course, the phenomenon is not only one-sided. As with the example of the Elder Ephraim, the temptation for the clerical order is to become precisely this type of “holy father” none of us have had—and that the holy fathers themselves could never, ever be (outside of the imaginary of puerile fantasy). Not all priests do this, to be sure, but it is an element of the clerical environment. Matthew 23 speaks directly to this, Jesus railing against the Scribes and Pharisees:

For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.

But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments,

And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues,

And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi.

But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren.

And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.

Neither be ye called masters: for one is your Master, even Christ.

But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. (4-11)

You know it and I know it that we have a couple millennia of apologia telling us that Jesus didn't really mean what he said here. But okay.

An Illustrative Digression

One Easter about twelve years ago I was attending liturgy with my family, three of my six sons serving on the altar. Our pastor had been very ill, and he looked horribly weak at the altar, his face ashen. Just prior to Communion, one of the older altar servers, a young many of about eighteen, came to me to ask if I could distribute Communion—Father was too weak to continue. I did my best, but was so nervous I was shaking. It must have been noticeable because in the hall for the blessing of baskets afterwards a friend of mine took a can of beer out of his basket and handed it to me, saying, “Maybe this will help you with those shakes.” I continued to assist our pastor for the next seven years, until he died. He was often too weak to even stand for long.

At his funeral, I served along with our bishop and a number of other priests, as well as a deacon or two and two of my sons as altar boys. At the Kiss of Peace, usually reserved only for the clergy (not by law but by custom) a friend of mine, a married priest with seven children, came to me to offer the kiss. He said, “None of these guys here understand what you’ve done for this place. You deserve this more than they do.” He did me a tremendous favor, not by honoring my service, but by destroying the Myth of Holy Stratification. For all of you are brethren.

I would love to see a meme that said, Christianity—Life... Only More Alive.

Another guy looking for a father:

Michael’s latest books are an edition of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz and Transfiguration: Notes toward a Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything. He can be reached at director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com See also The Center for Sophiological Studies' available courses. Also check out the latest volume of Jesus the Imagination: The Divine Feminine.

Nikolai Berdyaev, Freedom and the Spirit (New York, 1935), 265.

The Vulnerable and the Powerful

There are lots of ways in which one could describe the cultural metamorphoses of the past year. “The Year of Plague,” for example, or “The Rise of the Archons” (much more accurate than “The Great reset”) would be good choices, though I also find delight in calling it “The Revenge of the Nerd in the Pastel Sweater.” But I think the most accurate description would be to call this “The Time of the Vulnerable and the Powerful.”

That might seem pretty simple and straightforward, but it’s not. Since the beginning of lockdowns and various mandates and restrictions, I have been more concerned about the threats to working people and the working poor than I have been about the threat or spread of illness. Not that I’m not unconcerned about illness. My eighty-four-year-old mother, a vulnerable though scrappy auburn-haired Irishwoman who suffers from dementia, lives with me and I was concerned early on that she might get ill. Thankfully, she hasn’t—not even a cold—but living on a farm, eating organic food, drinking clean water, and being around children with sketchy hand-washing habits all the time seems to have bolstered her immune system. When she was in a nursing home before she moved in with us six years ago, she was ill all the time and in the hospital almost quarterly—the caretakers thought she’d die within months under our “unprofessional care.” It’s more than possible that she would have died, of loneliness if not illness, had she still been in the hands of “the professionals” over the past year. But I have also seen friends and family members profoundly impacted, if not permanently damaged (time will tell), from the psychological ramifications of the past year’s events. This is to say nothing of the countless numbers of people who lost businesses (my favorite music store in a nearby town not the least among them) or livelihoods due to the issue of our times.

I know many people, dedicated people of all faiths among them, who know we have a mandate to protect the vulnerable and the powerless. Psalm 82 is explicit about this mandate, employing the imperative tense:

Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy.

Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked.

They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness:

all the foundations of the earth are out of course. (3-5)

All the foundations of the earth are out of course.

What bothers me, though, is how this desire to protect the vulnerable has resulted in the surrender of the wills and intellects of so many to the dictates of governments, NGOs, and other professional international bodies and authorities. The result is that many who profess a concern for the vulnerable now look as though their real allegiance is with the powerful. And don’t think the powerful haven’t noticed. We all know about the great transfer of wealth (bottom to top) that occurred over the past year. But people seem to be okay with that in order to have the illusion of safety. They might grouse, of course, do a little social media posturing, but nobody seems to care enough to act against, or at least to resist, the ever-increasing power and insatiable appetites of the archons.

So I guess my problem is that I don’t see how giving the powerful more power protects the vulnerable. Shouldn’t the vulnerable be the ones gaining more agency and power? They’re not. And now even those in the middle—not the most vulnerable (though still vulnerable) but lacking in any kind of power—are likewise under threat from the powerful.

For these and other reasons, I prefer a kind of Christian anarchism, similar, but not identical, to that of my Amish neighbors (I write about this in my book Transfiguration) that while it doesn’t completely destroy the concept of power at least dilutes it by distribution—a very communitarian/distributist ethos. We don’t have that. Still, as I have been arguing for a long time, we can inculcate such a sensibility at the micro-level. That is, not by trying to change “The System,” but by changing ourselves and our relationships to the worlds around us.

Power is a tool of Satan (it was what he used to tempt the Master), though people, as they mobilize and think in groups, tend to like the idea of a strong authority. It gives them a feeling of security (how often that word comes up as of late!) The ancient Israelites, looking around the cultures of the Levant, saw that their neighbors had strong kings, and, in their mimetic desire, the Israelites wanted one, too. After their begging and pleading (or, better, whining) Yahweh gave them enough rope to hang themselves, but not without a warning:

“These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers. He will take one-tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and his courtiers. He will take your male and female slaves, and the best of your cattle and donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take one-tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; but the Lord will not answer you in that day.” (1 Samuel 8:11-18)

They hung themselves, and we are pretty much following suit. This is also why I think those Catholic traddies out there styling themselves “monarchists” (particularly those in the New World) are completely full of you-know-what and cling to their bogus idea of “Christendom” out of an impoverished notion of what it means to be a Christian. Jesus didn’t come as a king. His kingdom is not of this world (and by “this world,” please don’t make the mistake of thinking he meant the created world—he was talking about the realm of Satan and those in league with him to gain control over the vulnerable and everything else. I’m sure you can find fitting examples in your social media feed). People have often asked me over this past strange year what we should do. In fact, I hear from people on this topic almost daily. To quote J.C. Crawford’s legendary introduction to the MC5 on their classic album Kick out the Jams (I am from Detroit, after all), “The time has come for each and every one of you to decide, whether you are gonna be the problem, or whether you are gonna be the solution.” You must choose, brothers and sisters, you must choose.

But I don’t think this is a political problem at all (politics, actually is the problem). As my beloved Simone Weil observed, “It is not religion but revolution that is the opium of the people.” Ours is a spiritual problem, and a pressing one at that. This kind can only be cast out by prayer.

It is in this register that I believe the invocation of St. Michael the Archangel, called by Valentin Tomberg “the Archistrategist,” is more than appropriate at our moment. The Celtic tradition relied upon the intercession of the archangel, as in these lines from the Welsh “Litany of Creation”:

I beseech you by the tenth order on the compact earth. I beseech praiseworthy Michael to help me against demons.

Together with Michael, I beseech you by land and by sea unceasingly; I beseech you respectfully by every quality of God the Father.

I beseech you, O Lord, by the suffering of your body, white with fasting; I beseech you by the contemplative life, I beseech you by the active life.

I beseech the people of heaven, with Michael, for my soul; I beseech the saints of the world to help me on earth.

I beseech the people of heaven with bright-armed Michael; I beseech you by the triad of wind, sun, and moon.

Note the yoking of the contemplative and active lives.

Another useful prayer is the Byzantine Akathist to Michael the Archangel. We prayed this prior to one Michaelmas festival in our barn a couple years ago. It is intense. Here’s a passage:

“Standing before the Throne of God, O Archangel Michael, you are entirely in the heights and yet you are not far from men and women below on the earth. You ever fight against the enemies of mankind’s salvation. It is fitting, for all who wish to reach the long-desired homeland of Heaven, to call on you with one accord:

“Hail, leader of the thrice-holy hymn of the angels.

Hail, ever-ready advocate and guardian of those on earth.

Hail, mighty defender of those who speak truth and live by mercy.

Hail, for in a strange manner, you struck down Pharaoh with his faithless Egyptians in their ponderous pride.

Hail, for you gloriously led the Jews in their wandering through the wilderness.

Hail, for you quenched the flame of the fiery furnace of Babylon for the three youths.

Hail, Michael, Supreme Commander with all the hosts of Heaven.”

There are other prayers, of course. Besides Psalm 82, there are also St. Patrick’s Breastplate and, obviously, the secret weapon of the rosary—and many others. If you want to align yourself with power, this is the place to look, not to archons growing fat and rich on your fear.

Fear, to speak plainly, is a luxury of the faithless and if unchecked it only spreads like a cancer. As you can no doubt see, it has metastasized all over the planet. But this is not a luxury the Christian can afford. We cannot avoid that messengers of Satan will torment us, with fear as much as disease; it is part of the human condition this side of the Parousia. Saint Paul found this out through experience, not theory:

“...I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)

We are all vulnerable, praise God. So take up your armor of light.

Michael’s latest books are an edition of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz and Transfiguration: Notes toward a Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything. He can be reached at director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com See also The Center for Sophiological Studies' available courses. Also check out the latest volume of Jesus the Imagination: The Garden.

Lady Day = Sophia Day

March 25th, as many people are no doubt aware, is the Feast of the Annunciation, known in much of the Anglosphere as Lady Day. It’s an important feast in the Christian year, marking, as it does, one of the quarters along with St. John’s Day, Michaelmas, and Christmas. The feast is so important that from early on in Christian history (6th century or thereabouts) the calendar year changed at Lady Day (and not on New Year’s Day) since the Annunciation recalibrated both history and time itself. It was sort of a Cosmic Reset Button, when salvation had at last come to the household of mankind. In the Eastern churches, if the Annunciation falls during the Holy Week its observation is not transferred (as it is in most Western churches), even if it falls on Good Friday or Easter. John Donne, a great lover of paradox, wrote of this great paradox in one of his finest poems, “Upon the Annunciation and Passion Falling upon One Day”:

All this, and all between, this day hath shown, Th' abridgement of Christ's story, which makes one— As in plain maps, the furthest west is east— Of th’ angels Ave, and Consummatum est. How well the Church, God’s Court of Faculties, Deals, in sometimes, and seldom joining these. As by the self-fix’d Pole we never do Direct our course, but the next star thereto, Which shows where th’other is, and which we say —Because it strays not far—doth never stray, So God by His Church, nearest to him, we know, And stand firm, if we by her motion go.

As anyone familiar with this blog or my published work knows, the essence of Sophiology is, for me, centered on the recognition of the inherent unity of the natural and supernatural orders; and the metaxological center of that reality is the Virgin Mary, the incarnation of Sophia: she who makes the invisible Godhead manifest to the senses. The Annunciation is the feast celebrating this reality in harmony with the Feast of the Nativity—and it’s no accident that March 25th falls exactly nine months before Christmas. It’s a witness of nature’s marriage to the supernatural. This is spirituality. This is biology.

In the writings of Jacob Boehme, the role of the Virgin in the Incarnation is an office engaged in the regeneration of all things—nature as well as the human soul—an absolute participation in redemption. As he writes in Signatura Rerum:

“God became man and made man to God, the Seed of the Woman, that is, of the Heavenly Virginity, which disappeared in Adam, and also corrupted man’s Seed in the Anger, that is, Mary’s Seed, were formed into one Person, which was Christ; and the Seed of the Woman, that is, of the Virgin of God, understand the Heavenly Essentiality, should bruise the head of the Serpent, understand, the wrath of God in the Corrupted man; the head is the might of God’s Anger; the Divine man, understand the Divine property, should change the earthly into itself & turn the earth to heaven.” [1]

And he explicitly identifies the Mother of Jesus with the Sophia of Proverbs:

“Therefore we set it down here (according to our knowledge) that the pure chaste virgin (in which God was born [or generated]) is the chaste virgin [that is] in the presence of God: and it is an Eternal virgin; before ever Heaven and Earth was created, it was a virgin, and without blemish; and that pure chaste virgin of God put itself into Mary, in her Incarnation, and her new Man, was in the holy Element of God; and therefore she was blessed among all Women, and the Lord was with her, as the Angel said.” [2]

This sensibility is found throughout the sophiological literature—poetry as well as prose, science as well as mysticism—and sweetly phrased in these lines from William Everson’s (aka Brother Antoninus) “Canticle to the Great Mother of God”:

Clearly you are to us as God, who bring God to us.

Not otherwise than of those arms does grace emerge, blessing our birth-blank brow.

Wombed of earth’s wildness, flank darked and void, we have been healed in light,

Traced to the sweet mutation of those hands, a touch closing the anguish-actual stripe,

Whip-flashed the sin, lip-festered on our soul.

So much of our culture and times distances us from the Real that shimmers beneath above and between All Things, as infinity is found at both ends of a number line and between every number, every fraction. Our task, most especially now under the threat of an absolute technocracy, is to participate in the regenerative actuality of Christ and Sophia. This is our Annunciation, our affirmation, our entrance into the Mysterion of the Real.

Michael’s latest books are an edition of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz and Transfiguration: Notes toward a Radical Catholic Reimagination of Everything. He can be reached at director@thecenterforsophiologicalstudies.com See also The Center for Sophiological Studies' available courses. Also check out the latest volume of Jesus the Imagination: The Garden.

1. Jacob Behmen (Jacob Boehme), Signatura Rerum: Or the Signature of all Things…translated by J. Ellistone (London, 1651), 11.11.

2. Jacob Behmen [Jacob Boehme], The Third Booke of the Author, being The High and Deepe Searching out of The Threefold Life of Man through [or according to] the Three Principles, translated by John Sparrow (London, 1650), 22.31.