Backstory

Ascesis

Everyone has a struggle. Everyone has a cross. I don’t remember who said it, but every Saint has a backstory, and every sinner has the possibility of a glorious future. Part of my struggle has been writing about it. The website is over 25 years old and my electronic journalling started five years or so before that. So, yeah. That’s like half my life at this point. It’s all out there. And so, now I’m gathering a bunch of it here. The best resource is the Internet Archive. This page is under the patronage of Father Seraphim Rose. He started my journey… and, uncanonized though he may be, I believe he still is praying for me. His writings – controversial though they are – are as full of wisdom for me now as they were when I first read them nearly a quarter of a century ago.

“Never have such weird and unnatural manifestations and behavior been accepted as a matter of course as in our days. Just look at the world around you: what is in the newspapers, what kind of movies are being shown, what is on television, what it is that people think is interesting and amusing, what they laugh at: it is absolutely weird…
“The Apocalypse is now.”

(This essay continues at the bottom of the page)

I was in Hell

This is the first essay I wrote on this topic that went viral, back in 2002. I wrote it when Gene Robinson was elected as the “first openly gay” bishop in the Episcopal Church. It’s in quotes because there were several before his time – some who enjoyed the “open secret” of their life. The Bishop of XYZ who took his “driver” everywhere – even when a car wasn’t needed; or the Suffragan Bishop of Thus and Such with a chain of boyfriends… Gene was just honest at the get-go. The idea that it would do something wonderful for the Church was such an obvious lie that when I heard him say it (I was sitting in an airport listening to CNN) I was angry and started to rant. The rant grew until it was this essay. When I blogged it on 6 Aug 2003 it was posted and commented and shared. Later appeared, greatly edited, in Touchstone magazine.

Four Essays (+1) on Ontology

A month or so after I published “I was in Hell” I moved, with the blessing of my Spiritual Father, from San Francisco, CA, to Asheville, NC. I worked full time at a help desk and part time at a fur coat store. Living at a guest house, I spent the winter wondering what was to become of me if I ditched a “self invented definition” I had adopted in the early 1980s. What does it mean to “be”? Look Homeward Angel was actually published between Nos 3 & 4, but it’s clearly on the same thread.

• Ontology I – “Being gay” as a category of Revealed Ontology does not exist.
• Ontology II – I’m not a gerund
• Ontology III – responding to a old homily in which I was a gerund…
• Look Homeward Angel – “it is unjust to encourage someone to live driven by desires that pull one into immorality.”
• Ontology IV – (a decade later) What does it mean that Gay is not like Gender (God-given) and is more like Race (social construct)?

 

“Once one’s heart grows hard, one does not accept Christ even though one knows that one should repent, that this is one’s last chance. Pride gets in the way.”

— Father Seraphim Rose

Hell Reconsidered

This was not at all as popular as the Earlier Essay. And caused no great amount of distress among my “fans”. See, the thing about the first essay was it blamed all the Liberal Christians for my problems. That’s not Christian at all: my sins are mine not someone else’s. The first, greatly edited as I mentioned, was published in no small part because it made other people look bad. What if that wasn’t the problem at all?

“It is later than you think. Hasten to do the will of God”

— Father Seraphim Rose

My connection with the Church began with reading Fr Seraphim Rose. That fact will stress out any number of folks: Fr Seraphim, who died in September, 1982, has a strong community of followers in the “trad” world of the Orthodox. One might say he is the “trad’s trad”. But that would be unfair. Father Seraphim went deep into the world in the course of his life and found there a sickness that he, himself, had contracted. He found a cure fo the sickness in the Church and – like a man going to Chemo – he decided to go all-in, even if it meant falling to pieces so that he might come back together again healed and stronger. This means Father Seraphim also has a backstory.

And when I was searching on the internet, back in 2004 or 5… I came across a bit of his backstory: he experienced same-sex attraction. In fact, it was this attraction that brought him into the church. His lover at the time was fascinated with Russian Orthodoxy and brought the young man (named Eugene) into the Russian Cathedral out on Geary. God’s grace builds on nature: he heals and moves us forward. To use Pope Francis’ language, God’s action is one of Accompaniment. Eugene became Orthodox, began to grow in his faith, and moved away from his past life and then – as all Christians should – entered deeper into the ways of repentance. In his case, by way of founding a monastic community.

One’s past… what should one do with one’s past?

Fr Seraphim’s past is recorded only in his personal letters to his friends. But there are those for whom it is troubling. They spend much of their time scrubbing his past off their pages – and the pages of the wiki. They are horrified that such a holy man had such a past.

But what if that past becomes the very gateway for others to find salvation? That would seem to be the very meaning of the words of the Prophet David in the Psalter:

“Turn your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from your presence and take not your holy Spirit from me.
Give me the comfort of your help again and establish me with your governing spirit.
Then I shall teach sinners your ways and the wicked will be converted to you.”
(Psalm 50:9-13)

That is the path of salvation – one’s own through repentance leads to the salvation of others. “Acquire the Holy Spirit,” says St Seraphim of Sarov. “And thousands around you will be saved.”

God will use even one’s past if one entrusts it all to him. Even sin will be made into salvation – that’s the meaning of the sacrament of confession. Even the steps we took away from God are turned into the steps he uses to bring us close to him. Give it all to God. Let him do as he will.