Joy
This week’s publication includes Audry Hassad, Anthony Bloom.
But if you only read one thing, let it be about Armenia. Links below.
“The day when God is absent, when He is silent - that is the beginning of prayer.”
-Anthony Bloom
I am interested to hear what you readers think when you see this graphic. Is it strange? The way of Christ is strange, seemingly upside down, and counterintuitive. Nevertheless, this graphic shows what Christ gave to us as an example: dying to self while trusting in the Father. There is no map for life. There is a cross.
“…unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone;
but if it dies,
it bears much fruit…”
Freedom:
a man eating a meal with his loved ones.
a man going to pray.
a man taken prisoner enduring beatings and mockery.
a man standing silent before his accusers.
a man forced to carry the instrument of his death to the place of his death.
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
NEWS
The link is to an absolutely beautiful on Armenia. Please read it if nothing else.
Armenia’s Ancient Christian Heritage & Why It Matters Today
Part one:
Armenia was the first country to declare Christianity a state religion, 301 years after Jesus was born. That’s right, years before Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire, disciples were in Armenia sharing the gospel and getting thrown in pits (we’ll get to that story).
According to the Diocese of the Armenian church, historical testimonies in Armenian, Syriac, Greek and Latin confirm the fact that the Apostles Saints Thaddeus and Bartholomew first preached the Gospel in Armenia around 44 AD. These are men that walked with Jesus—Bartholomew is even mentioned as witnessing Jesus’ Ascension—who traveled through the mountains and eventually gave their lives sharing the Gospel in Armenia. 1
Part two:
The Ottoman Empire … began the systematic murder and deportation of Armenians through massacres, forced labor, and death marches leading to the Syrian Desert. This resulted in the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians and the destruction of two millennia worth of Armenian civilization in Western Armenia (land that is now considered part of Turkey.)
The priests and intellectuals were the first to die.2
Watch the news today and you will hear about the sudden outbreak of violence in Armenia. Why does this matter? Not because one side is innocent and the other is guilty. Read more from the New York Times.
Bad things happen all around in conflicts. My point in bringing this up is to highlight the ancient Christian heritage of this place. That matters to me.
Good explainer site and source of the images above here.
STORY
The following is a story told by Anthony Bloom who lived through the Russian Revolution and became a monk secretly while serving as a physician (amazing). He is talking about being prepared to go through periods where God is not there and avoiding the need to substitute false gods in His place. We must be prepared to face despair and go through it. This is, for Bloom, an example of what it means for someone to come to their true self, to be Christian.
Perhaps I can illustrate this from a story taken from the late history of the Russian Church. I think it shows what I am trying to say about being a Christian. In the years of the Civil War when the opposing armies were contending for power, conquering and losing ground in the course of three years, a small town fell into the hands of the Red army which had been held by the remnants of the Imperial troops. A woman found herself there with her two small children, four and five years of age, in danger of death because her husband belonged to the opposite camp. She hid in an abandoned house hoping that the time would come when she would be able to escape. One evening a young woman, Natalie, of her own age, in the early twenties, knocked at the door and asked her whether she was so-and-so. When the mother said she was, the young woman warned her that she had been discovered and would be fetched that very night in order to be shot. The young woman added, You must escape at once.' The mother looked at the children and said, 'How could I?’ The young woman, who thus far had been nothing but a physical neighbour, became at that moment the neighbour of the Gospel. She said, 'You can, because I will stay behind and call myself by your name when they come to fetch you.' ‘But you will be shot,’ said the mother. ‘Yes, but I have no children.’ And she stayed behind.
We can imagine what happened then. We can see the night coming, wrapping in darkness, in gloom, in cold and damp, this cottage. We can see there a woman who was waiting for her death to come and we can remember the Garden of Gethsemane. We can imagine Natalie asking that this cup should pass her by and being met like Christ by divine silence. We can imagine her turning in intention towards those who might have supported her, but who were out of reach. The disciples of Christ slept; and she could turn to no one without betraying. We can imagine that more than once she prayed that at least her sacrifice should not be in vain.
Natalie probably asked herself more than once what would happen to the mother and the children when she was dead, and there was no reply except the word of Christ, 'No one has greater love than he who lays down his life for his friend.' Probably she thought more than once that in one minute she could be secure! It was enough to open the door and the moment she was in the street she no longer was that woman, she became herself again. It was enough to deny her false, her shared identity. But she died, shot. The mother and the children escaped.
MUSIC
Audry Hassad is a musician. You can find her writings here. In a past life, she professed Christianity (of what sort I did not search out), but has since become her own boss. Lord. God. You can read what she says about herself and her ideas on the link provided above. I include her here because (1) she wrote some beautiful lyrics in the past and (2) … … I just feel for her. Whatever combination of religious ideas and mental problems she experienced (still experiences, I guess) did not go well.
Many of us can relate to toxic ideas in religion. I have experienced them, and still “suffer” from them today, but I realized that WHO I learned Christianity from is not the same as THE CHRIST. People are not the source of the Gospel. The Resurrection stands apart as a thing to be reckoned with regardless of all the little ways humans screw up the delivery.
Ms. Hassad’s ordeal with ideas is, no doubt, a terrible thing to experience, but I think it leads to the same place over and over for the people who get to where she is inside:
The present is all we have. I might as well be happy on my terms.
In other words, materialism (one step away from nihlism). Her desk:
She writes,
I feel like, if I want to maintain both sanity and happiness, I have got to make friends with the idea that life's whole brand is change. While we're here, we are always living and dying; our cells, continuously composing and decomposing. How symphonic, how layered, how heartbreakingly intricate it all is! It seems to me that living itself is The Point; that any heaven we could dream up is already here. I don't imagine that any old afterlife could be better than my son's eyes looking up at me shyly through long lashes, my daughter's tiny hand placed trustingly in mine, the pleasant mild sting of late October air…
…Seems to me we are all in heaven, and we are all in hell--seems to me it's all happening right here, right now. Might as well actually BE here—as our fullest, most soul-drenched and saturated selves.
Her post from February 14, 2023 tried to lay out some of her issues. Here are a couple of things that stood out to me. I hurt along with her when I read:
Sometime around 2015 I began finding myself doing a little bit of nihilistic thinking. And then, slowly, I did some more nihilistic thinking; and after a few years of that, I think it’s safe to say that by halfway through 2018 I could have easily been termed a ‘nihilist’ by anyone who would know—except that no one did know. I felt so ashamed that I was feeling and thinking in these ways that I kept it to myself. I felt so strange about the fact that sometimes I held my two children in my arms and told myself I didn’t love them, because love was just a cocktail of chemicals in my bloodstream and we are just making up all these high flown stories about that in some sort of futile pursuit of meaning. (Casual, cute, cuddly af, I know.)
…
Things had begun to improve quite a bit in 2019 when I first started communing with psychedelic plants but I continued to try to push forward through feelings of exhaustion when it came to my “work” — my music, my art, my creative expression.
Sounds like we are just biochemical entities responding to biochemical stimuli and physics.
That sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?
It sounds terrible.
She has said in an interview with a YouTube channel called “The Sacred” that her foundational truths changed. That religion was fine, but it wasn’t the whole picture. Christianity can help, but it is a very small part of a very big cosmos (I have paraphrased here).
I feel for her, and I think there are many, many people who quietly feel the same way - and I think “the church” has more than it’s share.
I include a small part of Audry’s story here because I feel for her and others like her. We all have broken parts. Sometimes all the parts seem broken. Pointing out bible verses doesn’t do much to help when the cage is in our mind, and it seems to me that Audry’s mind is a cage.
She may still believe in some cosmic “other” that feeds good intentions. I have no idea. What I know is that she left us - Christians - the following beautiful lyrics. I wish her well. I mean that. I wish her to be made well. Said from one hospital patient to another.
[Verse 1]
In the garden of our Savior
No flower grows unseen
His kindness rains like water
On every humble seed
No simple act of mercy escapes His watchful eye
For there is One who sees me
His hand is over mine
[Verse 2]
In the kingdom of the heavens
No suffering is unknown
Each tear that falls is holy
Each breaking heart a throne
There is a song of beauty in every weeping eye
For there is One who loves me
His heart, it breaks with mine
[Chorus]
O the deeds forgotten
O the works unseen
Every drink of water flowing graciously
Every tender mercy You’re making glorious
This You have asked of us:
Do little things with great love
This You have asked of us:
Do little things with great love
Little things with great love[Verse 3]
At the table of our Savior
No mouth will go unfed
And His children in the shadows
Stream in and raise their heads
O give us ears to hear them and give us eyes to see
For there is One who loves them
I am His hands and feet
There is One who loves them
I am His hands and feet
How I need you.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Previous issues of Tentmaker
https://nations.co/the-first-christian-country-in-the-world-part-one/
https://nations.co/the-first-christian-country-in-the-world-part-two/