At work I'm beginning to take on more than just IT--for better or worse I'm starting to learn the GIS world and I'm learning some CAD. I have a couple problems here. I have a good workstation: Sun Ultra 24 with dual Intel Core 2 Quads @ 2.40GHz and 8GB of RAM. That's not a problem. But I need a 64-bit operating system to use all that power. And my CAD and GIS software is, unfortunately, Windows only. (We are locked into Autodesk and ESRI... don't argue with me, it's the way it is for now, though I'm trying to use as much FOSS as possible.) Vista 64? Not a chance. See... actually I tried it. Although Civil3D and ArcGIS are both supposedly Vista 64-bit compatible, they aren't really. Things break. Things crash. Things go bump hourly. Hourly. I don't like force quitting and restarting these programs hourly. XP 64? Maybe. I haven't tried it, honestly. I didn't want to attempt it only to find out that there are still 64-bit gotchas. So... what am I doing?

As the devil sticks his flag into the mud
Mrs Carol has run off with Reverend Judd
Hell is such a lonely place
And your big expensive face will never last
...
We're all mad here
     —Tom Waits

What follows is an excerpt from an email conversation. It's rough and stream-of-consciousness. It's certainly not a carefully crafted political position statement. My first thought was to hold off on posting this until I could take the time to reorganize, polish, re-write, polish, edit, polish, start over from scratch, polish, etc. ad nauseum. Best intentions, however, get nothing done when you are me. So. It stands as is. Incomplete. Incoherent. Incontinent. Erm... anyway.

I have been absent from the Orthodox Church for most of 4 years, which means that I have been absent from her for longer than I was present. And yet Orthodoxy has an undeniable claim on me. After four years of avoiding the Church, of wrestling with complex waves of longing, despair, and mistrust of Orthodoxy in America I have arranged a meeting with my old priest, now retired, to see how I can set my relationship with the church to rights. From this step alone I have experienced an amount of peace.

In coming to Orthodoxy, I was responding to an entirely new landscape, a new view of heaven and of the Kingdom of God which completely transcended any experience I had known prior to this. And yet, as I became Orthodox, as I joined myself with Orthodoxy I failed. For a long time I battered myself against an impassable obstacle -- I tried to be Orthodox through thinking and to some extent through doing. It became a framework upon which to hang my life, with which to identify myself, all the while I was growing increasingly despondent as I experienced one devastating disillusionment after another.

In my recently renewed zeal for the Church, for God as made present within the Church, it suddenly dawned on me -- I habitually "nest"; I almost obsessively surround myself with Orthodox "things" books, music, icons, prayers. It is as if I am trying to find God through the addition of things, a sort of spiritualization by acquisition and accumulation. And yet, all these things, however good they may be, do not make God more present to me. It is as if I am blindly groping and grasping at straws, trying to force God to be present to me, or to force myself to be present to Him. And in realizing this, I realize that at the core of all this is a deep and insatiable longing to be aware of God, to be assured of His love for me, to be assured of His goodness and his involvement with the world, to find myself not an alien to Him, not at odds with Him. I long for peace, for a sense of His love. I long for His presence.

There are moments when I feel blessed, when I feel the immediacy of God, his immanence. And yet, most often, he seems to me to be a concept, an abstraction, a possibility, an idea to be considered. Those moments when God "appears" seem to be at odd moments, completely beyond my grasp, completely beyond my ability to control. The rest of the time it is as if I was groping aimlessly, looking for something lost, misplaced. It is as if, on my own, my faith is still intellectual and emotional, psychological, but at moments the reality of God exhibits itself. How can I have more of God without self delusion? How does one go beyond psychology and moral, pious actions? How does one become truly a child of God?

I read a great deal of Mother Theresa's letters in Come Be My Light and have to admit that after a while I grew sick of it, despondent with her darkness, self-accusation, self-hatred. She was convinced of God almost, as it were, through her own doubt and darkness. I put it away. Her darkness and conviction spurred her on to great works of love and charity. But I can only think that it's all rather beside the point when God seems so far off, so distant and vague. So dark.

By night on my bed,
I sought him whom my soul loves.
I sought him, but I didn't find him.
I will get up now, and go about the city;
In the streets and in the squares I will seek him whom my soul loves.
I sought him, but I didn't find him.
The watchmen who go about the city found me;
"Have you seen him whom my soul loves?"
I had scarcely passed from them,
When I found him whom my soul loves.
I held him, and would not let him go,
Until I had brought him into my mother's house,
Into the chamber of her who conceived me.
I adjure you, daughters of Jerusalem,
By the roes, or by the hinds of the field,
That you not stir up, nor awaken love,
Until it so desires.

When he is found -- how do we not let him go? When he makes himself present in our lives, how do we hold on to that closeness? How does one grasp at light so that darkness remains at a distance? How do we keep our souls from retreating back into the abyss?

Update: For those of you who care, I've been back in church for a while now (today is September 19, 2008). I've found a parish I'm can live in. A place to put some roots. I'm glad to be back. I'm glad that being back, I am not what I was before I left.

A couple emails about hell. The context was that the world is becoming worse as people lose their fear of hell.

The emphasized sections in brackets are a summary of my correspondent's statements.

I've kept quiet in this thread up until now. And honestly, I really am hesitant to say anything. But I will say a short word.

Fear of hell doesn't inspire love for God. Fear of hell inspires a self-oriented desire to protect one's self. Christ was far more than a fire insurance salesman. Yes, Christ talks about gnashing of teeth. Yes, he says that he shall say, "Depart from me for I never knew you." I'm not trying to squeeze past an uncomfortable truth. At each point Christ spoke the word of healing that his hearer needed. Often it was a word of forgiveness and compassion. But it was also frequently a challenging word, a word to crush the idols of our minds.

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons NonCommercial Sampling Plus 1.0 License.

You are Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris. You are recovering from personal loss and trying to come to grips with the reality that the person you love most is gone from this world. You want more than anything to feel love and will even venture out into the furthest reaches of space to have this void filled.

Ultimately, you have hope for the future and an undying faith.

Which Classic Art Film Are You?
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I received this in my email today. It is astoundingly confrontational, provocative, titilating. Is it art?

Caveat emptor!

I took my dad to see Malick's The New World today. I'm already trying to figure out when I can go see it again before it leaves the theaters. It's a beautiful film.

Malick's way of telling a story is just as far removed from the "serious" dialog driven films as it is from flashy, fast paced action films. His films tell their stories through image and through time. What dialog exists is minimalistic -- the most meaningful words of his films are delivered in meditative voice overs, which speak from the inner thoughts of the characters.

Some people are challenged by it, or frustrated, because of the lack of action and the lack of dialog. But I wonder if the same people grow impatient when sitting in the woods and contemplating the life around them, or even by laying in a hammock and watching the clouds pass. The movie is something like that, something between laying in a field and just being aware of all that's around you and sitting in a museum in front of your favorite painting, considering it, meditating on it for a few sweet hours.

Take some time while The New World is still in the theaters -- take some time to be quiet and just watch. Forget thinking, forget figuring out meaning -- just be present to the film. You'll find yourself richly rewarded.

Cáitlín according to the IPA:

ˈkɔɪtˌlɪən