The Venerable Bede
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Nashotah Anglican - Orthodox Conference
by 
nathanielkidd on 1255391810|%B %e
This weekend I had the privilege of witnessing what may very well have been an historic event. Nashotah House hosted an Anglican-Orthodox Ecumenical conference, which, besides being quite interesting and inspiring, was also quite well-attended by men who wear purple and tall hats. Seriously — I don't think I have seen so many Bishops in the course of my whole life — much less in one room.
There is certainly a lot of work left to be done in building ecumenical relationships and negotiating ecclesial structures toward unity, but I would say (with a little hard work) we could put full intercommunion on the fast track, and achieve it between the Orthodox Church and (some) Anglicans within the next couple hundred years.
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| Metropolitan Jonah, Archbishop Duncan, et al. |
Still, I enjoyed every moment of the conference. In particular, I enjoyed meeting Metropolitan Jonah, who is a Christian leader of the first order. (Anyone who can still take himself lightly after you dress up like the Byzantine emperor, and can casually direct the focus of any conversation to the Gospel is a person worthy of admiration and emulation.)
But on this side of things, I can't help but be a little confused. The discussions provided plenty of reason for hope, but also plenty of reasons for cynicism. We have a lot in common in mission, desire, governance, and outlook (and the people: something like thirty percent of the OCA are retreaded Episcopalians). Great. That can all serve as the basis for a lot of discussion and collaboration. And we have a sense of unity in Christ; a glowing ember that perhaps can be fanned into the flame of full fellowship.
But I couldn't help but come away with the impression that the Orthodox folks believe (on some level) that the best way to solve all our problems is if we all just become Orthodox. Here, I am less convinced.
Of course, one of my professors asked me during the conference when I was planning to become Orthodox. I guess I have a reputation (probably fairly enough) for being the most East-leaning of the Junior class. I don't have any particular doctrinal issues with Orthodoxy, and cultural barriers are ones I don't mind crossing. So if God called (and my wife also heard the call) we wouldn't have a problem becoming Orthodox. Or, even if we became convinced that it would be a better way to serve the Gospel. And quite frankly, all things being equal, I would be sorely tempted.
I love the depth and the beauty of the Orthodox tradition, in expressed in both its liturgy and its theology. And, there is certainly plenty to be discovered and re-articulated from that tradition that may serve us in sharing the Gospel with a postmodern world. John McGuckin expresses this reality particularly poignantly in Standing in God's Holy Fire, a short introduction to the Byzantine spiritual tradition.
"For a society that is in danger of losing even the distant memories of its root religious civilization, at a time when its preferred religions have shrunk back in the face of serious social decline, and its schools of political, philosophical, and artistic thought have elevated short-term, self-interest to new heights, the Church's task is not less than to show the way back to a renewed sense of the Beautiful. It will be in the Christian reinterpretation of the Greek notion of kalokagathon, no less than the ideal synthesis of a religious, mystical, and moral transcendental. … If the Church can find the wit, and the energy, for the task, then this pro-paideusis will be no less than the re-evangelization of the western world."
But I fear that attaching myself to the wonders and exotic splendor of Orthodoxy would only serve my own spiritual tastes, and would severely detract from my interest in and ability to minister to this broken world. Orthodoxy is an illumination of the Gospel: a beautiful and complex illumination, but not the only illumination. It is a legitimate and particularly deep and well-formed expression of the faith, but it is not the only expression. It's antiquity gives it authority and precedence over my own half-baked ideas, or those of the fashionable mega-church. It is a mature tradition, but that should not imply that other traditions cannot mature. And, we must bear in mind that there are peculiar benefits to youth that we ought not negate.
Thus, at the end of the day, I have the utmost respect and reverence for Orthodoxy, and I desire to learn as much as I can from it, even at the expense of a deeper exploration of the Western tradition. But I simply cannot cross the line. I do not need Orthodoxy to affirm the orthodoxy of my faith (although that would be nice.) Nor do I desire to be a part of a true, pure church, as Orthodoxy often proudly presents itself. Indeed, I need the brokenness and imperfection of my church to compel me outward for Jesus' sake and in his name.
So, for the love of the Gospel, I cannot become Orthodox—while, for the love of the Gospel, I find Orthodoxy deeply alluring. It is a creative and dynamic tension that I pray will propel us both forward in faith in love of Christ and service to the Gospel. I pray and hope fervently that God will lead us together in our mission, and I pray for the strength and courage to sustain this longing for unity in Christ — not just between Anglicans and Orthodox, but between all Christians, and indeed, all people. As always, however, the work is the Lord's — and the best I can do is maintain an open and listening heart, eager and expectant to receive his direction.
photo: Fr. Gregory Jensen
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Matriculation
by nathanielkidd on 1254684187|%B %e
Thursday night, I matriculated. That's right. I signed my name in the Book, and I'm now officially a Son of the House. Which means, among other things, I now have the opportunity to be buried in the Nashotah House cemetery. Not sure if I'll take them up on that, though—I think I wait till after graduation to decide. (Lord willing that I graduate, and indeed that I live that long.)
It was a solemn Eucharist, with all the usual Nashotah pomp and ceremony (plus an added dash for the occasion). Still, it was a little anti-climatic. I was hoping for some words of secret gnosis, or ancient cultic rite of initiation, or at least a secret handshake or something, All I got was the standard sacred wafer and a sip of wine. (We did get to sing the school hymn, though, which has a nice Latin chorus. That's kind of like a pagan incantation, if you believe some hard-core anti-Roman polemicists.) I did, however, feel as though sermon (which focused on last part of John 1) was being preached right at me!
Preceding Matriculation were three days of silent retreat, which most of us more or less kept most of the time. I enjoyed them immensely. I've reflected briefly, in moments of personal quiet, how compelling and powerful the wordless can be. Corporate silence is even more potent. It's impossible to not notice the deliberation of withholding speech. The result is a kind of pregnant absence, which heightens the awareness of all the little sounds of everyday life, and all the little whispers of the Spirit.
My poor wife, right? But I was not particularly strict about keeping the rule of silence at home. We're still working on this new reality, where we both have a lot of different activities going on, and don't have easy and immediate access to one another twenty four hours a day. It's a new challenge for us, but one I think our last year of full-time togetherness has prepared us well for.
Bishop Parsons, retired Bishop of Quincy, gave a series of talks on the Ascension to break up our long hours of silence. He managed to thoroughly and potently summarize Christian life and doctrine in his half dozen or so sermons on the subject, craftily weaving in wisdom about life in Christian leadership. He was an excellent and powerful speaker – although my attention wandered a bit.
Yes, my mind wandered – unfortunately, in my personal moments, I didn't make the best use of the precious hours of silence. Being quiet only served to aggravate the intellectual gluttony that has grown in me since getting back into class. I was going to settle in with rereading The Way of a Pilgrim, but reading that only prompted me to pick up the Philokalia. Which in turn took me to a book on the Byzantine idea of the heart, leading me to pick up Maximus the Confessor, leading back to Evagrius Pontus, which took me back to Syrian asceticism, and then the allure of Symeon the Stylite (and this whole network of ideas out of which I will ultimately be trying to distill some papers.) And there were probably another half dozen or so topics nipping at my attention, occupying my study carrel, sitting on my desk. A chapter here, a chapter there, bounding around the world and through Christian history with the turn of pages… It was, like the old adage goes, trying to get a drink of water out of a fire hydrant; or rather, out of several fire hydrants spraying in different directions in a dizzying deluge. In the end, a sort of word-bound baptism in the sheer force of the quantity of the psychospiritual wisdom in the Christian tradition.
On Wednesday night I finally closed all of my books and cleared my desk and rubbed my eyes and tried to get down to the real business of the retreat: identifying my spiritual state and trajectory, and regrounding myself in that sense of calling. Allow me to summarize some of those prayers and thoughts.
Even though I've only been at Nashotah House for a month and a half, my time here has already had a significant impact on my sense of calling and direction, both clarifying and transfiguring it.
The office I feel myself called to might be called something like “hiero-scholar.” I am deeply attracted to reading, to thinking, to writing, to the life of the mind, to language and linguistics. But none of these activities, for me, is something that can be safely or wisely isolated as an activity valuable in of itself. If it is not integrated into my (hopefully balanced) Christian life, it is useless, pointless, and boring to me. (This is why I was relatively lazy during my undergraduate, and why I didn't finish the Physics major.)
Furthermore, part of the character of Christian knowledge is that it is to be shared. I am coming more and more to a sacramental theory of knowledge – that this information I am receiving (and all information I receive) is to be ground up by meditation and prayer, carefully organized and flattened, cut into bite-size chunks, stamped with the Cross, and prayerfully distributed to the faithful. So planted and watered by grace, this knowledge does not does not puff up, but blossoms into wisdom, which is the fear of the Lord.
There seems to me to be a further parallel: our culture desperately needs both intellectually deep communities of faith and morally-spiritually vibrant communities of learning. Many churches seem to have given up on doing anything more than adding a little Jesus to the American good life, while most schools have ignored the role of character in the course of education. And both spheres have been torn apart by powerful social forces favoring individualism over interdependence and isolation over community, with the effect that many are alone, unhappy, and ill-equipped to do much of anything about it. Community building, further still, seems to be the kind of thing that Sarah and I work very well together at – our gifts and aptitudes dovetailing nicely to create atmospheres of hospitality.
Above all, my desire is to be a faithful and timely representative of the Christian faith and tradition in this age. This involves, first of all, the knowledge, love, and imitation of Jesus Christ the Son of God as he is revealed through the Scriptures; second, rootedness in and dedication to the history and devotions of the Church throughout time and space as an authentic but incomplete incarnations of the Christian life; third, an ear to a dark and hurting world in need of Gospel light, and the willingness to put aesthetic and theological concerns on hold to work in triage when God calls.
What will I do? Well, first of all, I will pray, and I will trust God to put the pieces together. There is plenty of work to be done, enough for many lifetimes: the harvest is indeed plentiful, and the workers are few. And this is not a particularly obvious trajectory in our culture, which means avenues of support (both financial and otherwise) are going to be difficult to find. Neither pioneering scholarship nor pioneering ministry has a lot of rewards attached in our culture. I have significant anxieties about finding the resources to follow my calling, which I am doing my best to bury under the (hopefully true) mantra that God will provide.
In light of all this, I am prayerfully preparing my application for Holy Orders with AMiA, which is where my relationships are, and where God is doing new things of the sort that I think intersect significantly with my own perceived calling. I was tempted for a time to perhaps look in another direction: but it occurred to me with reflection that my primary motivation for this was wanting a stable, definite job that would bring home a regular paycheck. This being not a very Christian motivation, I determined to remain in the station wherein I was called, even though there are some ambiguities and uncertainties there.
In any case, we are both enjoying and looking forward to God's unfolding plan in our lives. Please continue to keep us in your prayers.
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Starting Classes
by nathanielkidd on 1252875776|%B %e
After one (disorienting) week of orientation, and two weeks of classes at Nashotah House, I can report, quite gladly, that we are thoroughly enjoying ourselves. Thus far, life here is both what we expected and what we wanted. We are having a blast.
There is much to say about our life here, in all its color and variety. It’s quite different from the pace of normal life, or even normal studenthood. But I want to start with a general update and then later move into some of the specifics of our strange new world.
Life here is busy, but not stressful; communal, but leaves ample space for solitude; and all in all, deeply rooted in Christ through twice daily community prayer and daily Eucharist.
I know that part of this euphoria is the joy of starting something new; I guess we’ll have to see how we feel when this situation becomes the new norm. For better or for worse, our ideal world is now populated with human beings. Undoubtedly, this will yield unforeseen challenges down the road, but also unexpected rewards.
It’s strange taking six classes at once, particularly since CC only did one course at a time. This semester, I have Historical Theology, Ethics and Moral Theology, and Biblical Interpretation on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and Church History and Church Music on Tuesday and Thursday. And the Greek reading course meets on Wednesday afternoon.
So far, the instruction is great, the reading is well-selected, and the material is excellent. At last my interests compliment what I am supposed to be reading in class, rather than compete with it. I find myself reading not only what is required, but picking up titles on the recommended reading list, and listening for citations in class to track down in the library. Thus far, for every page of reading that has been required of me, I‘ve probably read at least two.
I end up doing almost all of my reading in the early morning and in the evening between dinner and bed. The morning class schedule is quite tight, and, although it seems there is little formal scheduling of the afternoon hours, they manage to fill up pretty thoroughly with the miscellaneous community requirements. We have work crew one afternoon, dish duty another, rehearsal for this or that procession, community choir rehearsal, etc. I have landed a position as a “choral scholar,” which involves several additional practices a week so that the handful of us can confidently lead the chapel music during daily prayers.
At home, we’ve put an emphasis on hospitality, usually around dinner time. In the course of these past three weeks, we’ve probably had people over for dinner a dozen times – basically every time we cook, we entertain. Lots of Indian food woven together out of whatever veggies we can find a deal on!
It works out pretty well. We’ve figured out how to work efficiently, simultaneously cooking and conversing so that it takes only slightly longer to have these meals with others (roughly two hours) than we would take on our own. And budget-wise, so far we’ve found that we save enough money cooking from scratch to make up for regularly adding heads around the table.
Sarah is still looking for a job; your continued prayers are appreciated. Money is a lingering concern, although we are perpetually prompted to live on faith and assured that things will work out. No one has ever left Nashotah for financial reasons. These assurances can only go so far against a dwindling bank balance and mounting bills. I try to remain helpfully worried – mindful of what I need to do and working on it without being overly anxious over things I cannot control.
Of course, we’re all in the same boat here. Very few people have any kind of financial security, and some are more challenged than us. Some of the older folks have already sacrificed a lot more than we have in choosing to come here, walking away from successful careers, businesses, and significant possessions. I should probably be grateful: Jesus asked many of his disciples through the centuries to embrace poverty. We only have to endure a little ambiguity and risk financial ruin for the sake of the Gospel (which, though bad, is definitely several steps above poverty.)
So what can I say? Life is good. Keep in touch. After a long battle with CenturyTel and Maintenance, we have at last secured internet for our apartment, so our Skype is now usually on so you can reach us at that number [(208)875.2534]. And physical mail can be sent to Nathaniel and Sarah Kidd, 2777 Mission Rd., Nashotah, WI 53058.
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Bumpy Beginnings
by nathanielkidd on 1250951428|%B %e
Sarah and I are on the road again. Well, sort of.
Don’t get me wrong. We’ve definitely come to a new chapter in our story. We have certainly entered a new stage of our journey, and this segment of the path we are on is very different from the last one. We’ve once again left the comfort, security, and familiarity of our families, our friends, and the communities we grew up in so that we can follow the Lord where he is leading us.
We will be three years at Nashotah House. Three years in one community, in one apartment – this is more stability than either of us have had in quite some time. It’s more time than we’ve ever stayed in one place as a couple; more time than we’ve even been married. Still, our time at Nashotah House is only a training, only a phase, only a preparation for what comes next. It is a new segment of our path, and will certainly be a formative one, but it is still but a segment.
When I say that we are only “sort of” on the road again, I am not doubting the fact that the Spirit of the Lord has moved us forward, nor I am not doubting that our next phase is but another transient moment in our lives of pilgrimage toward the eternal. When I say that we are only “sort of” on the road again, I am referencing the series of misadventures that greeted us only hours after pulling out from the driveway.
We packed our little borrowed Tercel to capacity, then strapped on a cartop carrier and kept packing it. Somehow, we managed to stuff most of our needs for the next three years into five suitcases, two backpacks, two shoulder bags, and three small boxes. People laughed at us when we arrived in India with four suitcases and thought we were “traveling light.” But we’ve learned a few things since then.
Still, the Tercel looked hilariously overburdened with the shell on its top and bicycles lashed to its back — like a child trying on his daddy’s suit.
“Get ready for a bumpy ride,” my father laughed at us, as we finished packing, “You’ve probably doubled the weight riding on those shocks.”
At midnight on Monday morning, a time that certainly presses the edge of sanity, we began our journey. Wisely, Sarah had been gradually adjusting her bedtime earlier and earlier, so that by Sunday night, she was able to hit the sack at six o’clock to be fresh for our nighttime departure. Unwisely, I had been sleeping less and less, trying to wring every moment out of my last few days with my family. On the night of our departure, I hadn’t slept at all. When we got into the car, I found I had developed an acute case of narcolepsy, prompting Sarah to adopt the heroic task of being the sole driver over our two-day excursion. (But this turned out to be just as well – as we discovered later, we had packed the car was so full only Sarah could fit in the driver's seat.)
At four in the morning, we made our first stop, a rest area in Sterling, Colorado. (This was an understandable necessity, given that Sarah had been pounding bottled frappachinos since we departed.) We intended it to be a quick in-and-out venture, but unfortunately, our little car had other ideas. Upon returning from the bathroom, we found that the engine would give us no more than a series of angry clicks when we turned the key in the ignition.
After an hour of thumbing the manual and fruitlessly staring into the foreign country hidden beneath the hood, we decided it was close enough to a reasonable hour to justify calling for some advice.
“Sounds like you have a problem with the starter,” my dad told me. At his suggestion, I tried hitting various things under the hood and beneath the car with a hammer. Not surprisingly, it didn't help. Nor did two more collect calls serve to improve my knowledge of engine taxonomy.
“Alright,” my dad said, “Even if you can't knock your starter back into place, you should be able to push start it. Give the hammer thing one more try, and then I'll call you back in five minutes.”
My final attempt to hit the right piece of metal with a hammer was just as unsuccessful as all the others. So we went back inside to wait for a phone call. Five minutes. Ten minutes. After fifteen minutes, our impatience finally outweighed our feeling of guilt for making yet another collect call. We picked up the reviver and…
The pay phone had died. The speaker was emitting an “error” beep, and faintly picking up a Country radio station. We had to laugh. It just wasn't our morning.
—
With not a lot else to do, we decided to try a push start. Fortunately, this worked.
That's the long and short of it, but try to imagine this for a moment. There, in the dim light of early dawn, pitifully augmented by yellow street lamps, a frumpy and bleary-eyed Nathaniel with his shoulder against the frame of the car. The thwap of thrice-repaired sandals against the asphalt rose to join the chorus of early morning insects, and – finally– the engine sputtered to life.
Surprised by our success, I didn't quite know what to do – and neither did Sarah. The car kept rolling forward, and I kept running. I tightened my grip on the frame of the car and leaped heroically into the vehicle, nearly losing a sandal in the process. After a few breathless moments, I pulled the door shut behind me, and we laughed and zoomed off into the sunrise.
It was quite a scene. The humor of the situation could have only been improved if I had been wearing my cassock.
After another hour and a half of smooth cruising, we reached Big Springs, Nebraska, and pulled off to get some gas. Unfortunately, though we had been driving without incident, our car problems had not fixed themselves – and indeed, they had gotten worse. This time, even a good push couldn’t convince the engine to start chugging. Even several good pushes, assisted by a couple of friendly Syrians didn't convince our engine to start.
“I'm no mechanic, nor a son of a mechanic,” the portly Syrian told me, as we all caught our breath, “But I think you have a problem with your alternator.” He nodded sagely as we stared under the hood and watched wisps of white smoke emerge from the battery every time Sarah tried to start the car.
Big Springs, Nebraska is not exactly noted for an urbane and educated population. As we scanned the faces in the parking lot, we began to feel a little anxious. These were not exactly the kind of people that four years of a Liberal Arts education and a year in India had equipped us to deal with, and, with our set of wheels inoperative, we were totally at their mercy.
Fortunately, however, Sarah and I were blessed to experience the lauded and elusive quality of small-town hospitality. Everyone was eager to share their automotive acumen, and our conversations ended with two guys from Truck Repair shop around back jump-starting the car and nodding over the sorry state of our alternator, which apparently wasn't moving at all.
“We can charge yer battery, and that should gecha to Ogalala,” the chief mechanic told us. “Thar's a mechanic thar who does alotta work with foreign cars.”
After tentatively pulling around the building, the mechanic lifted our hood and attached a device to our battery that might have been R2D2's rusty cousin. One hour and two hardy trucker breakfasts later, we were set to move on to our next mechanic.
“I ain't gonna charge ya nothin',” the truck mechanic said as we got back in the car, “'s just electricity, and tha's practically free. I know it sucks to get stuck like that when yer on the road.”
The ride to Ogalala was pretty uneventful. Well, it was uneventful for me – I fell asleep instantly. Sarah was a little more stressed. Between going over a bump that nearly knocked the bikes off and wondering if the car would start if she stalled out, Sarah felt that the car moved the twenty miles to Ogalala more by prayers than by burning gasoline. She didn't even stop to fix the bikes because she wasn't sure she'd be able to start it again.
Nevertheless, we made it, we made it in one piece, and we made it without losing any cargo. More than that, going over the severe bump seemed to fix our problem. When we pulled up at the shop behind the tourist-trap-faux-Old-West-town in Ogalala and popped our hood, our alternator was spinning away and our mechanic was a bit mystified that we had been experiencing such horrific problems.
Dave, our mechanic, struck us as a car-nerd version of Owen Cramer. He was a thin old man combining a sweet nature, extreme erudition in his craft, and an abundance of energy uncommon for his age. He spent his time abruptly teleporting around his shop, chain smoking into our engine, and brandishing a tool that made us cringe with memories of the dentist's office.
Dave agreed to take apart our alternator, but I think mostly to humor us. After dissecting it, he showed us how the mystical innards of this little cylinder were like new, if a little dirty. In reassembling our engine, however, he discovered that our issues were probably the result of a lose battery cable. He charged us thirty dollars for his diagnosis, which is not bad, considering the drastic and frightening nature of the symptoms we were experiencing.
This little side adventure stretched what Google thought would be an eleven hour day, and what we thought would be a thirteen or fourteen hour day, and made it a good nineteen hour day. If we had spent all that time on the road, we could have made it clear to Nashotah House, rather than to our stopover point at a friend's house in South Dakota.
Worse still, we left in the middle of the night to avoid driving in the heat of the day in our little air conditioner-less car. But not only did we do the bulk of our driving along sweltering, shadeless Nebraska highways, we also somehow managed the dubious pleasure of driving into both the sunrise, and the sunset.
Fortunately, the rest of the drive was pretty uneventful. Of course, I can only say that because of my tendency to fall asleep instantly when I wasn't specifically doing something else. Sarah got to enjoy many hours of tension, wondering if the car would keep moving, and at least one episode of road charades when a friendly couple in an SUV was kind enough to point out that we were close to losing the contents of our cartop carrier.
But we're here. We made it, not only through our first day of driving, but our first of settling in in our new community. We're tired, disoriented, and still recovering. But if we can survive India, a nomadic summer, and a cross-country marathon in a 94 Tercel loaded down with our belongings, surely the Lord is with us, we can certainly make it through seminary.
I'm not normally one for omens, but I think our bumpy beginning was, as a matter of fact, a good one. It was rough, but it could have been worse. It was rough, but the roughness was actually quite enjoyable. The roughness heightened our sense of adventure. To all those who have prayed for us, we are glad to report that, while our travels have not been smooth, they have at least been safe, and we have seen the fingerprints of Jesus along the way.
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