St. John's Passion

Desert Fathers in the Desert

I’m lucky enough that when my last trip to France, meant to record with Jupiter, was cancelled due to COVID (the fourth trip I was meant to make since March), it actually gave me more time at this other gig, in Mancos Colorado, playing Philedor miraculously arranged for the cowboy band of violin, acoustic guitar, and bass. The project itself deserves its own post, but I’ve been deliriously happy here, using every possible minute to get my work done so that I can spend maximum time outside.

After my recent trip to Maine, which was prompted by a search for ecstasy, for finding deserted spots for contemplation, and for running in the most beautiful places I could find, this gig is a godsend. My first trip was to Mesa Verde National Park, where I toured the east side of the park. Despite its Disney atmosphere—or because of it—I was amazed, and mostly when I got away from the crowds looking at the Pueblo houses and into the depths. 

Of course the houses were amazing. 6th century kivas growing, growing, growing, until they explode in the remarkable Mesa Top cliff palaces, that all but speak of a city, from the 12th century. This was an important part of my first trip in, as were the three trails I ran (soda canyon, Petroglyph trail, and more). I interspersed my runs driving through fire fields and listening to Divna. Later, through a trip to Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, a trip to the Needles section of Canyonlands National Park in Utah, listening to Craig Child’s House of Rain and reading the more academic Anasazi America, I learned much more about Chaco Culture and its enormous reach over the Four Corners region, the Colorado Plateau, the San Juan Basin.

But to focus for a moment on my Petroglyph run in Mesa Verde. Yes, I found ecstasy on my run, and I won’t be shy about how it is achieved. Like the Greek oracles, it’s all about holy priming. This was a Sunday so I was well primed with some Christian texts, to open up my mind. Giant fat bowls of weed. The physical exercise of running in the altitude. The fucking views. Almost weeping with joy.

I read from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers in the shade of one of the Pueblo towers, as well as listening to John Cassian’s Conferences whenever I could in the desert. On my second trip to Mesa Verde I did the Overlook Trail as a run. At the top of the mountain, which is absolutely crumbing, I had a mediation on a precarious rock. I found the stroboscopic light that Wim Hof describes for the first time. It felt like touching goad. Look at the rock crumbling, look how it is over the road. You can see the erosion everywhere, perfectly natural and dangerous. You can also see the ancient seashore in a line of sandstone that stretches across the mountains. The more I learn about the geology of the region, the wider my mind becomes.

 Whatever is best in Christianity is found in the Desert Fathers. You don’t have to accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior to find deep and moving wisdom in these writings. I personally don’t believe that. But the writings give me electric feelings every time I dip in. They are ab out humility, more than anything, and discipline. My favorite runs something like this. A hermit is taking his baskets, the work of his hands, into the town market to sell them and buy his week’s loaf of bread. On the way he encounters a legless man who asks that the monk carry him into the market to beg. Of course the holy man does. Once there, he sells a basket. The legless man asks him to use the money to buy him something to eat. The monk sells more baskets, the legless man once again asks him to use the money to buy him something to drink. When he sells the last of his baskets, the legless man asks that he give him the rest of the money for tomorrow’s food. At the end of the day, after having consumed all the monk’s earnings, the beggar asks the monk to carry him back to where he started. The monk does all of this without complaining. When they get back to the road, the legless man becomes and Angel, and congratulates the monk for his infinite patience. I dream of possessing this level of self-control. Another story answers the question, when to rebuke your brother. The answer: not when he insults you, not when he cuts off your right hand, not when he scoops out your eyes. But when he puts his soul in danger.

I will say, after Mesa Verde I understand better how difficult it can be to find a truly DESERT place. It’s hard for we mortals. Sand Canyon is a better example, a place I explored on Ryan Brown’s suggestion. It is more truly a desert, with alien rock formations. Here there are Pueblo ruins too, but without all the fuss, the hand holding ,the tickets, etc. They are just there, to be stumbled over, with a little sign saying don’t get too close. Incredible, ancient, and to live here, in the DESERT. 

I get all the way to the deepest part of the canyon, where again I meditate. I have an incredible experience. I think to myself, ok, now I will try to see out of my Third Eye. I hear a voice: you don’t have to try, you just have to open it. Instantly my field of vision is filled with stroboscopic light. Unbelievable beauty. How I would love to spend my whole day here. But I’m a musician, that is how I earn my week’s loaf of bread. But I’ll try to take the desert’s patience back with me.

October 2, 2020

sources:

Childs, Craig: House of Rain (2007)

Stuart, David: Anasazi America. University of New Mexico Press: Albequerque, 2014

Trans. and ed. Ward: The Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Cistercian Publications, Kalamazoo: 1984

Me and White Supremacy

Blog Post #3

I recently finished Layla Saad’s 28-day anti-racist program, Me and White Supremacy, which was as challenging, eye opening, and discomforting as she warned me it would be in the introduction to her book. This blog post is my way of organizing my thoughts. 

Join me in repeating 15 times a day:

I will recognize my white privilege, and do all I can to direct it toward dismantling white supremacy.

I will transcend my white fragility so that meaningful criticism can be leveled, heard, and effected.

I will never tone police. I will listen.

I will be brave enough to step out of white silence, even when it puts me at a disadvantage to speak up.

I will train my mind to undo years of white superiority conditioning. 

I recognize that I am not exceptional, and that white exceptionalism is a disease. 

I recognize that the concept of “color blindness” is misguided and harmful.

I recognize that I have exhibited anti-black behavior toward black women, men, and children. I have fallen into typical patterns of white supremacy.

I have carried racist stereotypes my whole life, and I will work every day to reverse them.

I see how destructive cultural appropriation is. I regretfully admit to having engaged with it my whole life. I vow to think carefully about this in advance of any creative endeavors.

I confess to white apathy and perfectionism. I will get out and get my hands dirty with anti-racist work, even if it is uncomfortable, or I look foolish.

I vow to stop taking a white-centric view of the world.

I will be extremely vigilant for cases of tokenism in my life.

I will stop trying to be a white savior, and start looking for BIPOC-led projects that I can join. I will listen.

I will do everything I can to cease being an optical ally and be a true ally, someone who works every day to undo institutional racism.

I will be open minded and calm when I am inevitably called out or in. I will not be over sensitive. I will apologize.

I will make an effort to engage with and understand intersectionality. I will view feminism, LGBTQIA rights, etc, as broadly as possible. 

I will address white leaders as bravely as I can.

I will regularly talk anti-racism with my friends. I will be brave with them too.

I will try to talk about all these things, and be brave with, my family.

I will be honest about my values and stop being chicken shit about going after them.

I will be willing to lose privilege. 

I will regularly review this list, and remain committed daily to this cause.

Value Commitments:

I am committed to showing up for this lifelong work because I have done harm, but I want to become a good ancestor.

I will challenge my own fragility by standing up publicly for this work.

I will raise my voice with friends, on dates, and at work.

I will challenge leadership where I effect on-the-ground change.

I will uplift and center BIPOC work and BIPOC artists in my creative life. My hiring, my text choices, the stories I choose to tell and how I tell them. I will always consider the moral and ethical ramifications of who gets platform space. I will make room.

I will lend financial support to Black Lives Matter to the extant that I am able, and donate time to anti-racist work.

I will decenter my white privilege by expanding my learning program to include daily anti-racist work. I’m committed to daily work, on feminism and intersectionality too, forever.

I will break my white apathy by doing the work diligently and daily.

I will show up, even when I make mistakes, and especially when it will not benefit me to do so, socially or financially.

I will use my privilege to combat racism by creating space for other voices, and by shutting up and listening. 

I will take a hard and honest look at my actions and identify optical allyship. 

I commit to all of this in the hopes of one day being a good ancestor.

9.25.20 on the road between Kansas City, MO, and Mancos, CO

Does Merovingian Ontogeny Recapitulate Roman Phylogeny?

Maybe it’s a ridiculous question. But it’s not SO ridiculous to notice that social patterns sometimes repeat, albeit somewhat superficially and in different environments. The late Han certainly had its share of puppet emperors. But I was recently struck by the similarities between the last gasps of the Merovingians (under new Carolingian thumbs) and the kind of marionette-ing that took place during the fifth century Roman west; In particular the puppets Valentinian III, Honorius, and Romulus Augustulus. 

Merovingian politics is a wooly jungle of names, a condition exacerbated by names that often span generations, not unlike the family in Marquez. Clovis, Clothar, Clothild, Childebert, Dagobert; they all spangle the pages of Merovingian histories and hagiographies. I listened to Gregory of Tours’s Book of Histories once, and indeed I had the impression that I was listening to a Borges-ian work of magic realism, but somehow combined with the endless dramatis personae of Thomas Pynchon. It’s an incredibly satisfying way to experience the work, and I like to think that the whole piece could be rewritten as a contemporary drama in the city, or as a Game of Thrones style fantasy series. It has everything: miracles, murder, blood, incest, etc.

Everything, that is, except consistent character depth. Some of the figures named in passing (often achieving miracles in passing!) can be fleshed out with a little exploration, particularly in contemporary hagiography, both by Gregory himself and by the many other participants in this rich literary vein. But more often than not, names flit across the page; big names, names that lived entire lives, powerful lives, filled with kindness and cruelty. And we only get a few highlights. What would the one sentence version of your life be?

At any rate, after a few trips around the Merovingian playground, we get a good idea of the broad strokes: Clovis takes over the world with his epically awesome badassery. He chops heads (most famously over a treasure dispute, a revenge served cold) and he converts to Christianity. At his death, he divides the kingdom evenly among his four sons. This is Day One of a civil war that will last until the Carolingians take over, with only brief decades of respite. Somehow, despite pathological infighting, the kingdom achieves immense stability. It’s like Mr. Burns at the doctor: his diseases are blocking the door. “So I’m invincible?” “Not at all, in fact the slightest breeze…”

Pretty much everybody knows the story. The Merovingian kings get soft. Their long luxuriant hair is more fun to comb sitting on a luxurious throne than it is in a battle tent. The “majors”, or main administrators for the kingdom, are forced to pick up that slack, led but a series of Pippins (Pippin II seems to be particularly powerful). Finally, after a series of victories against the kingdom’s enemies, Charles Martel asks the pope for his blessing to be King, and so the Merovingians are deposed once and for all.

Most of the facts here seem to be true in broad outline, except perhaps for the Pippinid motivation. This was not “somebody’s gotta do this job, or everything’s gonna fall apart”. This was a rival faction suing for power, and sometimes collaborating with somewhat treasonous Merovingians to consolidate power. For decades, allies of the kingdom had to ask themselves which side of the debate they should fall on. In the last decades of the dynasty, the new Carolingians were propping up young and ineffective kings that were pliable and wouldn’t make waves. The fact that the Carolingians did this for so many years is proof of just how legitimate the Merovingians were seen to be.

If it reminds you of the fall of the Roman west, then we think the same way. Valentinian III was the same kind of “pliable” for years. He accepted the regency of senior military officers, and didn’t make waves. When he finally became a “real boy”, and tried to fire Arbogast, he was bullied into suicide. Being a puppet is much safer. Honorius and his brother Arcadius in the east were the puppets par excellence. There’s a reason so many historians describe them as “feckless”. Stilicho dominated Honorius until his death, at which point various military men from the west took over: Alaric of course, Constantine III, Constantius, etc. Arcadius had similar bullies in Rufinus and the eunuch Eutropius. And finally there is the ghostly Romulus Augustulus. The son of Orestes—who had an absolutely crazy life among the Huns—this waif of an emperor is practically faceless in the historic record. When Odoacer finally deposes him and puts him out to pasture in Campania, he is in fact disposing of the office of western emperor. Just as Charles Martel disposed of the office of Merovingian king.

What of it? Just that our American politicians are all in the pockets of big cracker, big oil, big greeting card, big everything. And what will we do?

9.16.2020 Stamford, VT

ed. 9.27.20 Mancos, CO

Proclus, Boethius, Cyril of Alexandria, Leo the Great

I’m going through one of those weeks where I’m finishing several books at once, and they are so interrelated that in putting one down and picking up the next, I don’t feel that I’m reading separate books, but rather looking at an event from different angles, or through different facets of a prism. 

Kathleen Raine: “Spokesmen of the now dominant culture speak of an “advance” from “ignorance” and magic to “knowledge” and material science; yet in terms of philosophy, religion , and the arts the same event can only be seen in opposite terms, as a decline from knowledge to ignorance.”

A striking thought, that carries me through Gibbon to the nuclear arms race: what some perceive to be a descent into hubric madness, others see as the height of civilization. A bit like the Fiddler Crab with the claw so big he can hardly carry it.

Proclus read Plato the way his contemporaries read the Bible. In fact, comparing Proclus to John Chrysostom would not be entirely inappropriate. They both take a no-nonsense approach to explaining a subtle and challenging text to the population at large. Of course, Proclus writes to the cream of the empire’s students, while Chrysostom speaks to the cream of Constantinople’s aristocracy, so the tones are slightly different. I have often thought, for example, that Chrysostom is like Preet Bharara, but when I put Proclus in that lineup, he is too sanitary and severe. Still they share an aura of divinity, the reflected light of which helps illuminate the life of we mortals.

So Proclus reads Plato deeply, and weighs every syllable. While Christians of his century read the apostolic and Nicene fathers as satellite material, our philosopher looked to the Mathematics of Nicomachus and the Astronomy of Ptolomy, not to mention Homer and Hesiod, which had been the “biblical texts” of the Greco-Roman world for so many centuries.

Proclus is a major influence on 6th century Roman-in-Ostrogothic-Italy Boethius, who also loved the works of Nicomachus and Ptolomy. In fact Boethius felt it was his obligation to translate works on all seven of the queenly scenes, the quadrivium (math, geometry, music, astronomy) and the kingly trivium (rhetoric, logic, grammar), as defined by Martianus Capella. But unlike Proclus, Boethius actually allows himself to comment on Christianity itself. 

It might not seem so strange at first; writing on Christianity was the activité du jour, and it was one ticket to being read by your peers. A noble writer could find success here, though an unordained laymen might not find as much of an audience as a trusted bishop. What’s remarkable is that, for me at least, Boethius is the aristocratic noble we are meant to think of when we hear of “conversions of convenience”. He spent his life immersed in the culture of his ancestors, adhering to an academic program whose roots lay decades before the birth of Christ. 

The second eyebrow-raising feature of Boethius’s work is the fact that he writes as a Nicene Catholic with the eyes of an Arian court watching him. To really understand the subtle interplay of Gothic-Roman relations in Ostrogothic Italy is a fascinating topic with complicated, interacting (and international!) levels; let it suffice to say that Boethius was exceptionally popular among his people, and was eventually executed by the Gothic regime he worked so hard to glorify (or so it would seem).

But let me stress, Boethius was not a card-carrying, Nicene pushing Christian. The five works of his opuscula sacra present us with the same logic-loving Boethius that would have made him a boon companion to Proclus had they been contemporary. No, though there is nothing to suggest that he is insincere, Boethius approaches Christianity cautiously. He seems to write about it because he knows it’s a topic he’s supposed to address. But the joy he feels is not for the ineffable mystery of Christ, but for the joy of athletic logic. As a result, we have an intellectual rigor that is rare in early Christian writers. Boethius is [a huge fan of]/[owes a lot to] Augustine, and the influence is clear both in the language and the thought process, but not even Augustine brings such naked logic to approaching a theological problem. But the caution is palpable; where the logical works of Boethius are presented with confidence, the theological works are big questions, and addressed to his friend John the Deacon, whom he earnestly entreats to read and to correct any mistakes he finds.

Boethius is singular in this Proclus-esqe approach to contemporary Christian debate (for example, in barely citing the Bible at all), but the Christological controversy he chooses to engage with had been raging since the time of Proclus himself: the exact nature and person of Christ, and specifically the heretical opinions of Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, who had said some inflammatory things on the subject. And nobody in the world was more offended by Nestorius than the pugnacious Cyril of Alexandria.

The debate is not quite as complicated as some would have you believe, though like the Arian controversy, it hinges on tiny words, syllables, sometimes one letter in a word, translations between Greek, Latin, and Syriac, and fine hair-splitting definitions. In a nutshell, Nestorius says that Christ is 2 persons with 2 natures: he is perfect man with a rational soul, and fully divine God. Cyril of Alexandria immediately starts frothing at the mouth, and says no, Christ is two natures in ONE person. The human and divine are intermingled but not mixed, fully united yet fully separate, in an unknowable way. This, he insists, is Nicene orthodoxy, and he quickly makes it clear that this is the hill he is ready to die on. Several similar heresies had been defeated over the past decades: Christ is a man piloted by a divine soul: heresy; Christ is fully divine, and does not suffer: heresy; Christ is fully human, and was adopted by God at his baptism: heresy. The unity of the church and the souls of every member of the empire were at stake. 

Cyril’s uncle Theodore had been bishop of Alexandria, and was largely responsible for the treacherously unfair treatment that ended up killing John Chrysostom, our passionate explainer of texts. Cyril inherited his uncle’s bulldog temper and elbowed his way into the bishopric of Alexandria after one intervening bishop. There, as the third most powerful Christian in the empire, he flexed his muscles. Nestorius, and his unacceptable theology, never stood a chance. 

I say without hesitation that Cyril was the third most powerful (and not the second, or fourth, or fifth) because he absolutely bullied the next most powerful bishop, John of Antioch, in an exceptionally public way. At Ephesus, where the assembled bishops of the empire were meant to convene and sort the whole mess out all out, Cyril got impatient and started the council without John of Antioch (who was actually intending to support Cyril). John was furious, and when he arrived he excommunicated Cyril. Names were called. Cyril whines like a little bitch over the tiniest phrases. Finally, Cyril buffalos John into condemning Nestorius (which, again, was his original plan) and publicly eating crow in front the entire Christian world. He even rejects John’s first apology, saying it isn’t humble enough. This is the sort of public browbeating that Cyril made his career on, ever since he and his “hospital workers”—read gangster monks—raised hell all through Egypt, breaking into heretical churches, breaking cups, and starting fires.

The Christological Controversy of the 5th century culminates in the Council of Chalcedon, 451, a few years after Cyril’s death. Of pivotal importance at that council is the Tome of Leo, a doctrinal letter by Pope Leo the Great, and the only contribution from the west. Italy, Gaul, and Spain, not speaking Greek and without an opulent glittering court as backdrop, did not care about the Christological controversy with the same bloodthirsty passion that the east did. To them, the Nicene Creed was enough, and why complicate anything with innovations? Leo didn’t want to go to Chalcedon just to listen to a bunch of fops and dandies fight about prepositions (the questions of Christ of vs. Christ in, which delighted Boethius). He sends, à la Elvis putting his car on tour rather than giving concerts, his Tome, which defines the western belief. Some love it, some hate it, but in the end the council accepts it as orthodox, along with the letters of Cyril that anathematized Nestorius so baldly. Cyril, the thug, becomes a saint.

But Leo did care about these issues. They were the issues of the day, as environmentalism or racism are for us. Leo also shared some characteristics with Chyrsostom, in the sense that, in their sermons at least, they both come across as friendly, good shepherds, working for the community. Although Leo doesn’t write hour long sermons like Chrysostom (Leo’s tend to clock in around 15 minutes), they are pithy, meaningful, and have a welcoming tone. But even still, during his Christmas Day sermon, he veers off into a catalog of heresies, and warns his flock against them with all the fear he can muster. He saves the worst heresy for last, the most dangerous, the most perverting, the most subtle and sneaky: that of Nestorius.

And so the last few days have been fascinating for me, as I finish each of these strands of reading and watch them all tangle up with each other. And I love it when that happens.

Boethius: De institutione musica

Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy. Oxford University Press, 1990.

Cyril of Alexandria. Letters Vol. 1 (J. McEnerney, trans). Washington D.C.: CUA Press, 2007

Proclus, Elements of Theology (T. Taylor, trans)

Leo the Great. Sermons A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. 28 vols. in 2 series. 1886–1889. 2nd series Vol. 12.

Marinus of Samaria The Life of Proclus; or, Concerning Happiness: Being the Biographical Account of an Ancient Greek Philosopher (K. Guthrie, trans). Grand Rapids, MI: Phanes Press, 1986. 

9.6.20, edited 9.10.20