Out of the Woodworks

Come readers I didn't even know I had. Well, welcome to all of you.


I have a real knack for bitching here, so bear with me. I've got news:

I still haven't been to church in...however long. I fessed up to my priest about how I'm feeling.

And how am I feeling? Well, I have no problem whatsoever with any of the Orthodox teachings. It's just that my ability to care has been completely burned out. Allow me to illustrate this with a short play. It's called 'So What, Chicken Little?'

Chicken Little: "Alexei! Alexei! The sky is falling!"

Alexei: "Yeah, I saw it."

CL: "We must go and see the King!"

Alexei: "Yeah, probably."

CL: "Maybe you misheard me. I said the sky is falling."

Alexei: "Heard you fine. And you're right, there's a big chunk of it right there!"

CL: "Sweet God! I was hoping it was another acorn! But...there it is!"

Alexei: "You called it."

CL: "Your flat affect is a little disturbing."

Alexei: "It used to disturb me too, then I got tired."

CL: "So...sky...falling...we're going to go see the King, right?"

Alexei: "I'm tired CL"

CL: "Tired of what?"

Alexei: "Running. I can't keep up anymore."

CL: "But...that's the only thing there is to do!"

Alexei: "True. But I'm tired."

CL: "Tired of battling for your life? Then you'll die!"

Alexei: "Pay more attention. I wasn't doing to hot when I was really trying."

CL: "But it's the fact that you're trying at all that counts!"

Alexei: "Trying sucks ass. And it has been doing so for a long, long time."

CL: "So what will you do?"

Alexei: "No idea. But I can't keep running the race, I'm worn out."

CL: "How did that happen?"

Alexei: "I think it was because the race was all I ever had. Other people were taking breaks now and then, just pretending the race didn't exist for a while, whenever the race was inconvenient, and then they jumped back into it. So they were rested up."

CL: "But they were never supposed to stop running!"

Alexei: "That's what I thought. So I didn't. I kept running. I got tired, and they didn't."

CL: "But Alexei, they didn't really get rested up. Stopping the race like that just made them fall back behind. Even if you were falling on your ass ever six seconds, at least you were still running."

Alexei: "But you're forgetting something CL. Humans live inside their minds. If they think they're rested up, then they're rested up. They don't begrudge the difficult parts of Orthodoxy as much because, every once in a while, they take a 'vacation' from it. It's bogus logic, but...most of them still go to church."

CL: "You don't go anymore?"

Alexei: "I can't focus on it while I'm there, and it's painful to see all the families together. I don't have anything like that myself. But I think this state of things is my fault anyway."

CL: "How do you work that out?"

Alexei: "Well CL, it's like this. I tried to do too much. I think I took on a bigger challenge than I was ready for. I tried to do everything %100 for a while with no compromises and all the works. I had myself totally convinced that any deviation from Orthodoxy, however slight, was unacceptable, given that I knew better."

CL: "So...you never head of the Church's economy? How it tries to meet people halfway on account of plain old human weakness?"

Alexei: "I thought it only did that for people who honestly believed that the Church was wrong about something. That you had to somehow earnestly believe that what you were doing was right. I believed that the church had it all right. So since I knew better, I had no excuses for not doing everything exactly as prescribed."

CL: "...God you're messed up."

Alexei: "In retrospect yes. Here I thought that simply knowing what the truth is would give you the power to live it."

CL: "You need the church for that."

Alexei: "Ah, yes. But other people have churches as well. Heretics, apostates, infidels...even Atheists in a way. And a nasty thought occurred to me."

CL: "And?"

Alexei: "It occurred to me that 900 people drank the Kool-Aid."

CL: "You've lost me."

Alexei: "Jim Jones, leader of The Peoples Temple back in the seventies. They committed mass suicide in Guyana, Africa with poisoned Kool-Aid."

CL: "I think I see where you're going."

Alexei: "Go for it."

CL: "If a religious leader can convince people to do that, then they can convince people to believe in anything. Even what you believe."

Alexei: "That's almost exactly what I mean. The idea is what psychologists call 'reinforcement'. Simply by saying something over and over again, you'll believe it more and more."

CL: "You think you were brain washing yourself?"

Alexei: "Not quite. I came to Orthodoxy after a long period of research. The piece of shit 'church' I was in before that was a hell of a lot easier to live in that Orthodoxy is. Nobody cared about confessions, there was no fasting etc... I voluntarily put myself into something much more stringent and difficult, just based on reading, and the premise that Christianity is true."

CL: "And?"

Alexei: "If they only reason I had any drive to keep going to church, is because I kept going to church...how am I supposed to manifest any enthusiasm whatsoever for going back now? I just don't care anymore."

CL: "How long has this been going on?"

Alexei: "I'm not sure. For a while I forced myself to keep going on the logic that 'I'll go to hell if I don't'. Then I got angry at God for holding a gun to my head. 'Adhere to these rules or you'll burn in an eternal sea of my love that you rendered yourself incapable of co-existing with.'"

CL: "So you've been anesthetized against feeling anything regarding religion?"

Alexei: "I think so, yes. Something in me is broken CL."

CL: "Everyone is broken Alexei."

Alexei: "Yeah, but mine is really hard to fix. My motivation is broken. Everything else gets fixed by having motivation to do something about it. But my ability to care is literally exhausted. Whatever it takes to care about this stuff anymore...I ran out of it."

CL: "And you can't go get more because going to church is, more or less, an act of self brainwashing?"

Alexei: "No. It's more like a painkiller. Going to church kills the pain of living in the world and trying to adhere to Orthodox restrictions. But the pain always comes back. It was the endless repetitive cycle that I got sick of. That and, being lonely and single sucks ass."

CL: "You seem to think a lot of things 'suck ass'."

Alexei: "It's just an expression. Should I change it and use something else?"

CL: "No, no. It's nicely descriptive."

Alexei: "Anyway. People who have a family, a spouse, all that good stuff...they've got something to balm the pain that comes from the difficulty of living an orthodox life."

CL: "So, these people that have family and kids, their ability to care doesn't get burned out because they have something around to help keep them strong, and they have a real benefit of the Orthodox life right in front of them."

Alexei: "Exactly."

CL: "But you don't have these things, so you won't do it anymore."

Alexei: "Not won't. Can't. Literally can not do it anymore. Like I said, even when I'm there, it just painful to see other people with their families that they get so much joy out of, and the rest of the time I can't concentrate."

CL: "Wow. That sucks Alexei."

Alexei: "Thanks for understanding."

CL: "I still want to keep running though."

Alexei: "And you should. I would, except, like I said...I'm all tired out man."

CL: "I hope you can catch back up."

Alexei: "Me too. God Bless you CL."

CL: "And you as well, Alexei."

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So, that about sums up my state of mind at the moment.

-Alexei

My Goodness...

...Look at that last post! I do seem to be having a shitty month. Maybe I should go to church again. It's been....however long. I think I've technically excommunicated myself at this point. Wait. that only takes 3 weeks with no communion. Which, come to think of it, was about how often I was getting it before summer when I kind of stopped going to church because of my summer job.

The entire idea of this experiment, the blog I mean, was to be totally, and even uninhibitedly honest. To do so where other Orthodox Christians could read it, and see what they though of it.

But I don't see anyone else doing it. Aren't we accountable for everything we do before God? If that's the case, why aren't other people doing what I'm doing?

Honesty is supposed to be good. But when you tell people the truth, and they don't like what they hear, you don't get credit for being honest, you get ditched. So the take away message seems to be, don't be honest.
Nah. That's just cynical.


If I'm supposed to be honest about what I'm feeling and thinking...and that honesty reveals things that make people not want to help me...how am I supposed to get any better?

Well how about that.

I remember once, a while back, some one commended me on the fact that I was unwilling to leave someone ignorant about me. This person knew that if I had an issue, or I was struggling with something, I felt that people deserved to know about it

Same person subsequently refused to help me out with something because of stuff they knew about me because of that policy of compete disclosure.

"It's awesome that you're so honest, that's really inspiring. But, um, since I do know about this...I feel like I shouldn't help you on this thing."

It was a simple request. Something you would do for people, giving them the benefit of the doubt. A stranger, about whom he knew nothing, who had no policy of disclosure, would have gotten this minor favor out of him.

But because he knew something that I had admitted, even though it wasn't directly related to what I was asking for, he refused to help me. But he thought my honesty was 'inspiring'.


It sort of makes me want to tell people in general to 'fuck off.'