I can't go back the way I came. As a new convert, my faith was sincere and zealous, but it was simplistic and tainted by pride. I embraced the most extreme, conservative version of Orthodoxy because I thought that was the way for me to be the best possible Orthodox Christian. I thought that if I followed the strictest fasting rules, the most conservative gender role, and the most rigorous prayer rule, I could flip a switch from sinner to saint, like St. Mary of Egypt whom I chose as my patron. It's an error many new converts make, I think.
As I said in my last post, I have been working on my review of Fr. Josiah Trenham's lecture series "The Good Wife." Those lectures greatly influenced my early understanding of Orthodoxy. I still want to do that review, but I have been too motivated by anger and a desire for some sort of revenge, as if through my insignificant blog I could strike back at Fr. Josiah for teaching me a version of Orthodoxy that ultimately backfired on me. Now, I think I need to approach this review with a different attitude, with humility and a desire for understanding. Not everything Fr. Josiah says in his lectures is wrong, even though I still think much of it is harmful.
If I have offended any Orthodox friends with my posts, I want to apologize. I hope you can understand that I am struggling in my faith and forgive me for my anger. I'm thankful to the friends who have reached out to me in kindness.
I'm a writer, and I work out my thoughts best through writing. Everything I have said represented my understanding and my emotions at the time. I don't want to recant or delete my past posts, because they are a record of my thought process. Maybe they can even help someone else who is struggling, if I am able to find my way back to the Church and show my path to others.
Thanks you to everyone who reads this-- even you Twitter trolls who only read it to find things to disparage. Knowing that a few people are actually reading my words makes me consider them more carefully, so that I can make my arguments understandable even to people who disagree with me.
I'll soon be posting my review of "The Good Wife, Part 1: The Good Wife as the Help-Mate." I hope it will be of interest to some of you. I value your feedback.
Thanks for reading.
Hello My Sister in Christ and follow struggler!
ReplyDeleteYou are not alone. Many have walked the same path you are walking now including myself. I know there is not much I can say to you other then Christ loves you! With the intercessions of Theotokos, of Saint Mary of Egypt and of all His Saints as long as you do not give up and keep a gentle heart God will lead you back into his Church.
Be gentle in your heart with yourself and others. We all are sinners priests and lay men and women.
This struggle might not be the last one.
Find a Priest that you can trust who is humble and has peace in his heart to help you when you need advise.
In Christ,
George M.
Thank you for your kind words, George. I am fortunate to know more than one such priest.
DeleteOne of the hardest things to do when you feel driven to life a righteous life and be aligned with the correct side, etc, is to forego having any culprits. Things are a mess. People's behaviors certainly are the day to day things that generate and regenerate the mess, but to identify them as culprits and blame them is sort of like blaming individual waves for their role in eroding the beach. They do what they do because they participate in Ocean. The ocean does what it does because of forces that act on it, too. However we came to the current state of things -- and this is true whether you call that current state "oppressive" or refer to it as "sinful" or consider it to be "selfish and worldly" or whatever -- it is unlikely to have been foisted upon us by anyone while the rest of us were just doing our innocent benign thing. Instead, we somehow all took a course that got us, collectively speaking, to this point, maybe even for reasons that were legitimate at the time, but we got ourselves here and nearly everyone agrees that our ways are not meeting our needs very well and that we need to understand our situation and change it.
ReplyDeleteYep. I can’t blame Fr. Josiah for single-handedly planting misogynistic teachings in Orthodoxy. That goes all the way back the early Fathers of the Church, even the New Testament and the Old Testament. For all the good in these sources of Orthodox Tradition, I can’t accept them as flawless anymore. What I’m trying to do is find a new understanding of Orthodoxy that allows me to accept that imperfection.
DeleteHowever, Fr. Josiah did have a particular role in influencing me, and I think I can blame him for the parts of his teachings that proved harmful to my faith and my relationships.
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ReplyDelete