Grape Juice and Wafers

That’s about enough posts on sexism in Orthodox Tradition, don’t you think? Let’s turn to a more palatable topic.

No, I said palatable

Closer...

TOO FAR. GO BACK

 

Shun the apostate!

I have a confession to make. I received Communion at a Methodist church this morning. And on Orthodox Easter too! Oh how far I have strayed.

Receiving Communion at any non-Orthodox church is strictly forbidden to Orthodox Christians. That makes me officially Not In Good Standing with the Orthodox Church, in case I wasn’t already a pariah for neglecting to receive Communion for over a year, publicly criticizing a priest, and (worst of all) listening to Pussy Riot.

I guess I'm a sucker for angry female vocals

The Lord’s Snack Time

I was aware that today was Communion Sunday, but as I walked up the steps to the church I still hadn’t decided whether I was going to participate.

The Orthodox heart that still stubbornly beats in my chest suffered temporary arrhythmia the moment I entered the church, when an usher held out a basket of what I can only describe as Eucharistic snack packs.

They're only missing a trademarked cartoon character

The Communion-To-Go cups were right there in the open for anyone and everyone to grab as they walked in. The usher didn’t ask any questions about your church affiliation or whether you had fasted that morning or the state of your soul. No one’s fingers trembled as they reached into the basket.

My 5-year-old immediately wanted to eat his. The usher joked, “Sorry, you have to wait until snack time.” His joke struck me as being very close to the truth. We had to hang onto them until the end of the service, so I just set them beside me on the pew, where they sat next to my purse and the order of worship like they were ordinary objects.

Everyone was treating the Holy Gifts as if they were mere grape juice and wafers-- because, of course, that’s what they were. The Body and Blood of Christ existed only in the minds of the communicants, who saw no impropriety in their handling of the lowly, material signifier.

This anti-materialist, "symbol only" approach to Communion is not totally alien to me. I grew up in the Southern Baptist church, where the Lord's Supper usually took the form of Styrofoam-flavored discs and thimbles of grape juice served in brass trays. Individually packaged wafers and juice are just the logical next step. During the COVID-19 pandemic, sanitation concerns have greatly increased demand for these all-in-one snack packs “Fellowship Cups.”

The Mystical Supper

In contrast, Orthodox Christians believe that the Bread and Wine truly become the Body and Blood of Christ. Well, what does that even mean?

“THEY JUST DO, OK” —St. John of Damascus

Unlike Catholics, the Orthodox have no dogmatic formulation to explain exactly how the material elements of the Eucharist become the Body and Blood of Christ. They only insist that it is real, mystical, not merely symbolic.

Orthodox practice reflects this doctrine. There are a lot of rules about who may receive Communion, and when and how they may receive it. From a Protestant point of view, these rules probably seem unnecessarily restrictive; what right does the Church have to keep anyone away from the Lord's Table? From an Orthodox point of view, the rules are necessary to protect the Holy Gifts from mishandling-- and to protect would-be communicants from the spiritual and physical consequences of receiving the Holy Gifts unprepared.

A few of the rules: 

• Only members of the Orthodox Church who have recently been to Confession, have no grave unconfessed sins on their consciences, and have fasted since midnight may partake.
• No one but the priest touches the Holy Gifts with his hands. The faithful all receive from a single communal spoon, which the priest dips into the chalice containing the intermingled Bread and Wine.
• When a communicant approaches, the priest’s assistants hold a red cloth between the chalice and the communicant’s chin, lest any precious drops should fall to the floor. Proper form is to open one’s mouth wide so that the priest can transfer the Holy Gifts without actually touching the spoon to the lips.
• When all the faithful have Communed, the priest consumes what remains in the chalice. It would be unthinkable to throw it out like last week’s leftover lasagna.

 

I can hear my non-Orthodox readers saying, “One spoon? Ewww! Gross!” Indeed, the Orthodox communal spoon became a subject of controversy during the pandemic when the Orthodox Church refused to modify its practice.

Our old friend Fr. Josiah Trenham, human incarnation of the Grumpy Orthodox Cat meme, stirred the pot when he delivered a sermon condemning Orthodox who fear using the shared spoon due to COVID concerns:

[A]nd if you have a thought at all, “Oh my gosh, someone who was sick went up and took the Eucharist off the same spoon, I shouldn’t go,” banish the thought from your mind. It is a thought of unbelief sent from the devils. If you can’t banish it, by no means approach Communion, then or ever, because you are unworthy. You do not believe in the life-giving Eucharist if that is a thought that you actually embrace.

Fr. Trenham, along with several of his parishioners, later tested positive for COVID. Thanks be to God, he appears to have recovered, since he continues to post inflammatory sermons on his podcast The Arena.

That means I can make fun of him again.

As usual, Fr. Trenham’s statement was unnecessarily judgmental but otherwise not far outside standard Orthodox belief. How could the Eucharist, the Fountain of Immortality which heals our souls and bodies, transmit illness?

A devout Orthodox Christian might still wonder: does the mystical anti-microbial property of Holy Gifts extend to the spoon, the cup, the cloth, the icons, and the cheeks of our fellow parishioners?

 

The Orthodox really like to kiss stuff

 

Is there no room for altering non-essential aspects of Church practice without denying the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist? Some Orthodox argue that there is, noting that Orthodox practice (not doctrine) regarding the Eucharist has evolved throughout the Church’s history to meet the needs of the time.

So, who’s right?

If you’re asking which form of Holy Communion the Lord prefers, heck if I know. I hope, in any case, that He forgives us for imperfect celebration of His Sacraments, or else we are all in trouble.

As an English Lit major, though, I can't help but critique the symbolism embedded in the various Eucharistic forms. I think symbolism matters, whether in a novel, a poem, or real life. I think it works on us whether we know it or not, and whether the symbolism is intentional or not.

I think the symbolism of the wafers and juice thimbles is all wrong. The Lord’s Lunchables Fellowship Cups are even worse. I understand the pragmatic appeal, but they're individualistic and sterile, the very opposite of communal. We the Universal Church are supposed to be one Body— Christ’s Body.

I consumed my merely symbolic grape juice and wafer today, anyway. Grumpy Orthodox Cat would definitely disapprove. But I hope God will be pleased that, after a year of abstaining from Communion, I tried to find a way back to His Table—however hesitantly I did it and however inelegant the form. I’d like to believe that our Lord, Who descended all the way down to Hell and conquered it, can reach me where I am.

Surely this Methodist church is at least a few levels above Hell?

Kidding. I really like this new church we been visiting, despite their cringey Dunkaroos Fellowship Cups. They have an organ and they play traditional hymns.

I can deal with the snack packs as long as I get to sing “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” on Easter

Good Bread

Christian belief and practice is diverse, so I’m sure there are many methods of celebrating Communion besides the ones at Orthodox, Methodist, and Baptist churches that I’ve attended.

I once got a taste of an entirely different Communion service when I was a volunteer in a Catholic Worker soup kitchen. It was the last time I received Communion outside of an Orthodox Church, up until today. Despite the name, the organization was not particularly Catholic. What I remember most vividly is the bread: a big, round, marbled loaf fresh from the soup kitchen’s oven. We passed it around and tore off chunks with our hands.

In retrospect, I think this experience combined the openness of the Methodist Communion with the solemnity of the Orthodox Eucharist. I touched the Bread with my own bare hands, but I believed it was more than just bread. No one demanded proof of membership, but I felt connected with everyone else there. We were literally breaking bread, eating from the same loaf. It probably helped that we were all there laboring together in Christian service.

I think the bread itself had something to do with why this experience of Communion was so powerful to me. It mattered that the bread was GOOD bread. When Jesus performed His first miracle, He didn’t just turn water into wine— He turned it into GOOD wine. The wedding guests had already gotten sloshed on Barefoot when He brought out the Louis Jadot. (That’s the fanciest wine label I know of, sorry. You get the point.)

I’m just saying, if Christ Himself has good taste, maybe we should too. Good bread might be good for our souls.

The Social Contract of Thrift Stores: Do Resellers Go to the Bad Place?

In which we decide the eternal fate of Macklemore’s soul

I scored big at my local thrift store today. I found a gallon Ziplock bag stuffed full of L.O.L. dolls and accessories. If you have a daughter under age 14, you’re well aware that a 3-inch L.O.L. doll in its original (and excessive) packaging costs around $12. Since the dolls are a “surprise” (a nifty Skinner Box trick that compels people to keep buying and buying in hopes of completing their collection), people frequently resell duplicate dolls for around $10 each.

And I got the whole bag for 50 cents.

If I were a reseller— someone who scours thrift stores for hidden gems in order to resell them at a huge profit— I could have made upwards of $100 from this find. But I’m not. I just want to bribe my stubborn 3-year-old to poop in the potty.

Right after I made this fortuitous discovery, an old guy started chatting with me about the comparative merits of the local thrift shops. I like talking with weirdly enthusiastic strangers, so I didn’t mind. Midway through the conversation, though, he casually mentioned that he is a reseller.

Now, I am a very nice person. If someone unexpectedly revealed to me that they were a convicted murderer, I would tilt my head sympathetically and say, “That must be hard.” So I did not tell this man that he is a leech on society, the trailer-trash equivalent of a hedge fund manager who moves money around the stock market but contributes nothing of practical value to humanity.

I have no idea what hedge fund managers actually do, but I’m pretty sure I don’t approve of it.

There he was, scrounging around in the kitchenware section amongst the mismatched utensils and the knob-operated microwaves, while I had a hundred bucks in glittery baby-sexpot dolls in my cart. If he only knew what I snatched right from under his nose! He lacked the expertise necessary to recognize the dolls’ value, expertise which only comes from the lived experience of trying so desperately to appease a fiery 21st-century girl-dragon that you abandon all your pre-parenthood ideals about feminist toys.

I’m just really tired of cleaning up poop, OKAY?

The very pressing question I wish to address is this: what is the social contract of thrift stores? And do resellers violate it?

I’m no expert in social contract theory, but I did skim a Wikipedia article about it a few minutes ago. I’ve also watched The Good Place several times, so I’m familiar with Chidi’s summary of T. M. Scanlon’s book What We Owe to Each Other.

I think it had something to do with chili recipes.

To begin, we might ask, for whom do thrift stores exist? When I first started thrifting, I felt a little guilty about it because I wasn’t sure it was meant for me. I grew up as a member of the socioeconomic class that only donated to thrift stores. We certainly never shopped there, except perhaps to piece together a hobo costume for Halloween. Goodwill was the place you dropped off all your old junk when your mom went into a Spring Cleaning frenzy. We felt very good about giving our junk to The Poor who, if not for our generosity, would probably have to fashion loincloths out of dirty McDonald’s bags they found beside the highway

I don’t exactly need to shop at a thrift store. I could supply the necessities of life for my family by shopping at the mall, or at least at Target. But I like it. It allows me to indulge my consumerist impulses without aggravating the husband too much. (His main complaint is that our house becomes cluttered with thrifted toys and decorations, so our agreement is that I have to donate as much as I buy. I don’t do a great job of sticking to this agreement.) I also love the thrill of a good find. It’s the closest a housewife can get to digging up pirate treasure.

Yarrr! ‘Tis a genuine Lacoste polo in 4T!

I instinctively dislike resellers because their interests run counter to mine. They take the good stuff before I can get to it. I find time to go thrifting maybe once a week, and then I only have time to visit one or two shops. I search the specific sections where I hope to find items of use or enjoyment for myself and my family. The serious resellers are there every day. They know which shops have the best selections of which items, and they know when the sales are. They search the whole place and fill their carts with anything they can hock on Facebook Marketplace. Aren’t my motives purer than theirs?

If the purpose of thrift stores is to clothe the naked, as some donors suppose, then both I and the resellers are in violation of the social contract. If that purpose extends to anyone who thrifts items for their own personal use—including middle-class housewives—then I’m in the clear, while resellers are still bound for an eternity of butthole spiders and penis-flatteners.

You’re going to miss a lot of my references if you haven’t watched The Good Place, sorry.

Maybe this theory is all wrong, though. Maybe thrift stores don’t exist for the poor at all. Maybe they exist to give us a place to dump our junk without feeling guilty about our own wastefulness.

In that case, it doesn’t really matter what we do with the detritus of consumerism. If we put it to any use at all, that is noble and rebellious, a slightly more sanitary version of Dumpster diving.

Slightly

Perhaps resellers take maximum advantage of the wasteful rich by turning around and selling their own trash back to them.

To be fair, thrift stores often give part of their proceeds to charity. There is a grain of truth in the humanitarian fantasy of thrift store donors. They think they are clothing the naked with their outgrown Lululemon leggings, when actually they are clothing me, while only incidentally providing the homeless with a fraction of a bowl of soup and a free Bible. This veneer of charity can be pretty thin. Some thrift stores are for-profit businesses that exaggerate their charitable mission in order to provide a warm-fuzzy incentive to their customers.

I do think supporting thrift stores through donations AND shopping--moreso the shopping--is morally good, but not because they clothe the naked and feed the hungry. It's because they provide a buffer between the back of your closet and the landfill. They give us the chance to rescue valuable items from the trash and reduce our demand for new goods.

Maybe I and the resellers are violating the social contract that donors believe they are entering when they magnanimously deposit their trash bags full of mangy stuffed animals and "skinny clothes" they've given up ever wearing again at the back door of the Salvation Army. But it's a social contract based on a false premise of the true function of thrift stores, so I don't really care.

This brings us to the most important question: where will Macklemore’s soul spend eternity?

Let’s take a closer look at the lyrics of “Thrift Shop.”

Draped in a leopard mink, girls standin' next to me
Probably shoulda washed this, smells like R. Kelly's sheets
(Piss)
But shit, it was ninety-nine cents! (Bag it) Coppin' it, washin' it
'Bout to go and get some compliments
Passin' up on those moccasins someone else's been walkin' in them
Bummy and grungy, fuck it man, I am stuntin' and flossin' and
And savin' my money and I'm hella happy that's a bargain, bitch

 [ . . . ]

Thank your granddad for donating that plaid button-up shirt
'Cause right now I'm up in her skirt

In these passages, the speaker reveals that his motivation for thrift shopping is to attract members of the opposite sex with his original style while saving money.

But that’s not his only objective:

I could take some Pro Wings, make them cool, sell those
The sneaker heads would be like Aw, he got the Velcros

Although the speaker seems primarily interested in thrifting items for his own personal use, he doesn’t hesitate to use his street-fashion savvy to refurbish and resell his finds for a profit.

Macklemore is both a personal-use thrifter AND a reseller.

Towards the end, he reveals another, more political purpose to his thrifting:

They be like, Oh, that Gucci. That's hella tight
I'm like, Yo that's fifty dollars for a T-shirt
Limited edition, let's do some simple addition
Fifty dollars for a T-shirt, that's just some ignorant bitch (Shit)
I call that getting swindled and pimped (Shit)
I call that getting tricked by a business
That shirt's hella dope
And having the same one as six other people in this club is a hella don't
Peep game, come take a look through my telescope
Trying to get girls from a brand? Then you hella won't
Then you hella won't 

Watch the music video if you somehow haven’t already. Observe his jubilance as he bounds across tufted armchairs, his fur coat streaming majestically behind him. This is a man who has tapped into the deep heart of thrifting and found a well of joy. We should heed his wisdom.

Housewives, resellers, frugal fashion visionaries: we all engage in a radical and commendable act when we find value in the debris of our throwaway culture.

Conclusion: Macklemore belongs in the Good Place.

Ora pro nobis 

Anyway, this is what I like to believe, because it makes me feel better about all the thrifted L.O.L doll accessories littering my living room floor.

On the Ever-Virginity of Mary

In Orthodox iconography, the three stars on Mary's veil represent her virginity before, during, and after the Nativity of Christ

 

Given my past writings, you might expect me to reject the Orthodox doctrine of the Ever-Virginity of Mary. In my post The Problem with Orthodox Tradition on Female Virginity, I argued that the Church's obsession with the virginal status of female (and only female) saints is fetishistic and demeaning. You might infer that Mary is another saint in this category--perhaps even the quintessential example.

But I think Mary is different. There are reasons besides misogyny why Christians up until the Protestant Reformation universally affirmed her Perpetual Virginity. I would like to explain why this doctrine makes sense to me, despite all my skepticism about Orthodox Tradition around women and virginity.

But the Bible says...

Many Protestants point to the supposed references in the Bible to Mary's other children, Jesus' "brothers." Orthodox and Catholic apologists, in turn, have disputed Protestant interpretations of these verses. The disagreement hinges on the Greek word adelphos, often translated as "brother," which in other places in the Bible clearly conveys the looser meaning of "male relative." I have no scholarly insight to add to this argument.

No, there is no Bible verse that directly states that Mary remained a virgin throughout her life. I can't prove it to you by simple citation.

Instead, I will argue from this fundamental Christian premise: the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). One need not be Orthodox or Catholic to follow my argument, only to accept this basic tenet.

 

Why not?

Why shouldn't Mary have lived a normal married life after Jesus' birth? By insisting on her Ever-Virginity, aren't Catholics and Orthodox implying there is something wrong with sex in marriage? What about poor Joseph?

 

Won't somebody think of St. Joseph?!

 

 

There are bad reasons for believing Mary had to be Ever-Virgin. Disgust for non-virginal women is a bad reason. But that doesn't mean there can't be a good reason.

The good reason has everything to do with the Incarnation of Christ and how that event transformed our material world, including and especially the woman who bore him. Mary could never be a normal married woman after she became the Theotokos, the God-Bearer, the one human being from whom the Eternal Son of God took flesh.

 

The Tomb was just some rocks?

Suppose, Christian reader, you knew for certain the location of the real Tomb of Christ. Suppose you could touch the stone that was rolled away, walk inside, touch the slab where the Lord's body rested.

Would you fall to your knees and weep? Would you kiss the rocks? Would you pray? Would you cover your face in awe and terror at the realization that you, a sinner, are in the very place where the Son of God conquered death?

The first Christians did know the location of Christ's Tomb, since they were the ones who laid his body in it. Perhaps Joseph of Arimathea, upon finding the tomb available again, decided to reclaim it as his own future burial place. What could be wrong about that? After all, Jesus wasn't using it anymore. It would be a shame to let a perfectly good tomb go to waste. Tombs were expensive! Rocks are just rocks. Who would care?

By the way, some Christians do believe they know the location of real Tomb. They built a church over it, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and it is a pilgrimage site for tens of thousands of faithful every year.

A lot of fuss over some rocks

The Cross was just wood?

Suppose you found yourself standing before the Cross-- the real, physical, wooden structure upon which Jesus died for our salvation.

Would you throw yourself prostrate before it?

Or would you merely see wood-- a potentially useful raw material? Perhaps it could be used in the construction of a new house, or chopped up for firewood.

 

Or turned into toothpicks

Mary was just a woman?

There is nothing wrong with burying the dead. There is nothing wrong with using wood to make things that humans need. These are good things.

There is something wrong, however, with taking something incredibly sacred and using it like any other ordinary object.

If rock and wood can be holy, why not a woman?

There is nothing wrong with a woman having marital relations with her husband. This is a good thing. But Mary was no ordinary woman, just as the Tomb was no ordinary bunch of rocks, and just as the Cross was no ordinary wood.

Moreover, unlike rock and wood, Mary was not an inanimate object. The Tomb and the Cross did not willingly consent to participate in the salvation of mankind. Mary did.

"Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word" (Luke 1:38)

One last thought experiment.

Suppose, Christian reader, you find yourself standing before the Mother of your Lord. It is really her, physically there in front of you. Her face, her hair, her hands. You can recognize her Son's likeness in her features-- or rather, you can recognize her likeness in His features, since He inherited His humanity from her. This is she, Theotokos, God-Bearer, Ark of the New Covenant, whose body grew and carried and birthed and nursed the Savior of Mankind, she who loved Him first and best.

Will you greet her as you would any ordinary woman?