Luminous Darkness

I have been spending a few weeks in Charleston, WV and whilst driving around the city I noticed that there was a very large Orthodox cathedral downtown, Saint George’s. I decided that I would definitely want to pay a visit, and ended up there this evening for Divine Liturgy in celebration of the Feast of the Transfiguration. The service was wonderful; celebrated fully in English with a quite decent choir and a celebrant with a spectacular singing voice. His delivery of the gospel lesson sent chills up and down my spine.

This is a centrally important feast in the Orthodox tradition, and perhaps is accorded a greater place in the liturgical year there than in any church in the West. This is largely due to the Orthodox understanding of this life and the next as a process of deification or theosis, where we become closer to and more like God.

During his sermon, the priest reminded us all that the whole point of the Transfiguration event was not so that Jesus could simply prove yet again that he was the Son of God, although it did certainly accomplish that. Rather, in that experience, Jesus shows the three disciples who he brings up the mountain what is possible for us as human beings. Everything that Jesus does in his life is to build us up and human beings, and this is no exception. Jesus’ transfigured body is what our bodies can be. What Jesus has by his divine nature we can have by grace. Most of us will not literally shine with divine energy in this life (although the saints have shown that it is possible), but it is something to begin to work towards now, knowing that our infinite approach towards the divine continues in the next life. The priest also noted that living a holy life is not just about morals and ‘doing the right thing’, but encompasses every aspect of our being, following the example set by Jesus.

I’ve written up a page to keep track of my travels visiting Anglican cathedrals around the world.

Unusually, my travels have taken me to a second World Heritage site in less than a month. I have been in Nashville for a few weeks and have had a great time here exploring the city and listening to lots of live music in the bars and honkeytonks downtown, and had a good day on Saturday driving up through Kentucky to visit the Woodford Reserve whiskey distillery and Abraham Lincoln’s birthplace. However, the highlight of the weekend was definitely my visit to Mammoth Cave National Park. Mammoth is the largest cave system discovered in the world, with over 365 miles of mapped caves, and many more that have not yet been explored. I took two tours, one that was about four-and-a-half hours long and another that was two hours long. Both were interesting and very different, and I was fascinated to see the beauty in the cave in a number of different ways, from enormous caverns to tiny cracks and passages. Words really cannot describe what it like to be in those ancient places and spend several hours walking underground in an environment that spends much of its time in perpetual darkness and silence. Definitely food for thought.

Since I am clearly a bit behind with this blog, I shall make no apologies, but will just try and get on with things. The most recent bit of reportable news is that I have added another UNESCO World Heritage Site to my list. I was working for a few weeks in the western part of North Carolina last month, only about a three-hour drive from Great Smoky Mountains National Park, so I decided to spend a weekend there.

I arrived on Friday afternoon and drove up to my hotel in Gatlinburg, TN (a fascinatingly garish tourist mecca about which much could be written) through the park from south to north. This took me past a number of very beautiful views of the mountains themselves and I stopped several times along the road, including once to see a small black bear cub walking around on the hillside. By the time I got to Clingmans Dome, the tallest point in the park (and therefore also usually the most tourist-filled) it had started to rain quite heavily, and by the time I parked it was a complete downpour. Having a fairly good sense that this was likely to be a short term rain shower, I waited in the car and said Evening Prayer whilst watching people run back to their cars. By the time I was done, the rain was also done, and I headed up to the top.

It is quite a climb, although not too long of one, to get to the top, but the view is spectacular and very worth it. This is in spite of the fact that pollution and smog have made the views much less stunning than they once were (as a number of National Park Service notices explained in great detail). Oddly, the rain seemed to have dampened people’s enthusiasm for the climb since I was actually up on the observation deck for about ten minutes completely by myself which I would guess is fairly unusual for the height of the tourist season.

After this I headed to my hotel and planned my hike for the next day. My good friend Eric is currently finishing up a through-hike of the Appalachian Trail, and so had been through the park a few months before. He had given me the suggestion of a fairly good day-hike with a good climb at the beginning meaning most tourists wouldn’t try it, but not too long that someone like me who doesn’t hike all the time would get totally exhausted. It started out at the Cades Cove Picnic Area, headed up to the AT, went along that trail for a few miles, and then circled back to the Cove for a total distance of about fourteen miles.

On the way up it was extremely humid and I was soaked to the skin within an hour with my glasses fogged up so that I could barely see. However, the views were wonderful and, after I left the river behind, the silence was almost total other than occasional animal noises. I do believe that I saw a pair of either bears or hogs (which are apparently just as big as bears according to the Park Service trail runner I met) in the woods only about an hundred feet off the trail, but the mist was very thick at that point and they raced off as soon as I got near to them.

Coming back down after lunch it was much less humid and the sun actually came out a bit. Overall the hike was beautiful and gave me a definite sense of peace and serenity, as well as isolation since I only saw about ten other people on the trails during the course of the entire day. I would definitely go back since I barely scratched the surface of what there is to see, and I would highly recommend the park to anyone.

I had the opportunity today to add to my list of visited UNESCO World Heritage Sites by visiting Everglades National Park. It is only about an hour south of where I am staying in Miami, and I decided to spend the day there. I have to say that it is a truly amazing place. It contains a number of different ecosystems that are unique, including the largest mahogany tree in the United States, the only place in the world where one can see crocodiles and alligators coexisting, and the 730 square mile ‘River of Grass’ that looks similar to a grassy plain but is in fact a six-inch deep river that flows South towards the Gulf of Mexico. With hundreds of species of flora and fauna to see in an area of more than 2,300 square miles (6,100 square kilometers), my trip was truly spectacular, and with only one day in which to do it, I just scratched the surface. I would highly recommend the Everglades for anyone visiting South Florida.

Several people have commented that I ought to be posting some things a bit more frequently, especially commentary on the current Anglican situation in The Episcopal Church and worldwide. So I have some thoughts that I am putting together that will begin to get posted this week and next hopefully (especially now that my books from England have arrived).

For the moment, however, all I can offer is a new page about world travel plans for the future. The UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites represents an amazing collection of natural and constructed sites around the world that represent a major contribution to the human story. I have visited a few of the seven hundred or so sites, and plan to make them the mainstays of my future travel plans. More information is at the bar on the right under ‘About’ or here: World Heritage Sites.

I returned to the United Kingdom from Brazil yesterday, and got back to Durham late last night. While I will want to post some more in the next few weeks reflecting on the overall experience, I thought that for now I would point in the direction of the articles that I have written for the Anglican Communion News Service as part of my job at the Assembly. There is still one more to complete, but these will give you some idea of one particular side of my time there. There are also a few speeches and sermons from other Anglican participants. Please click on the links below:

• Anglicans have strong presence at WCC Brazil
• Archbishop addresses World Council of Churches
• Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams visits WCC General Assembly
• Sermon by Revd Canon Kenneth Kearon
• Desmond Tutu: ‘We can only be human together’
• Strong Anglican voice in future WCC work

I am now about halfway through my trip to Brazil and I find that I have been too busy to spend any real time on reflecting on all that has transpired over the last ten days. The Assembly began last Monday and I was right into my work as a a steward. This involves taking requests from journalists for interviews and attempting to track down the people that they would like to talk to in order to facilitate the process. This is made rather complicated by the fact that there are over 5,000 people at the assembly, and only the 700 or so delegates actually have anything close to assigned seats in the main plenary hall. Despite this, I have been able to solve most problems and am very much enjoying working with the people in the press office. Besides my main work, I have been helping with setting up and running the daily press conferences that take place at the Assembly.

The highlight of the last week was the visit of The Most Reverend Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, to the assembly. He was the keynote speaker at the plenary discussion about Christian identity and religious pluralism and, as is usual for him on any topic, challenged the debate in a new and fresh way. His full address can be found at this link, but the concluding paragraph speaks to his main point:

The question of Christian identity in a world of plural perspectives and convictions cannot be answered in clichés about the tolerant co-existence of different opinions. It is rather that the nature of our conviction as Christians puts us irrevocably in a certain place, which is both promising and deeply risky, the place where we are called to show utter commitment to the God who is revealed in Jesus and to all those to whom his invitation is addressed. Our very identity obliges us to active faithfulness of this double kind. We are not called to win competitions or arguments in favour of our ‘product’ in some religious marketplace. If we are, in the words of Olivier Clement, to take our dialogue beyond the encounter of ideologies, we have to be ready to witness, in life and word, to what is made possible by being in the place of Jesus the anointed – ‘our reasons for living, for loving less badly and dying less badly’ (Clement, Anachroniques, p.307). ‘Identify yourself!’ And we do so by giving prayerful thanks for our place and by living faithfully where God in Jesus has brought us to be, so that the world may see what is the depth and cost of God’s own fidelity to the world he has made.

Since I had been in Porto Alegre for a week already, I was unofficially co-opted by the staff from the Anglican Communion Office and Lambeth Palace to help facilitate the archbishop’s visit. This meant that I was able to spend most of the day with him, mostly by leading him as efficiently as possible from one event to another and trying to fend off the hordes of people who wanted to try and speak to him. There were also many small details to be worked out, and I was able to assist with that effort by working behind the scenes with stewards in other offices to make sure that everything went smoothly. I was greatly honored to be able to have lunch with His Grace and a small group of his staff, and was extremely touched when he presented me with a copy of his book The Dwelling of the Light: Praying with Icons of Christ as a personal token of remembrance and thank you for my help. His visit was extremely well recieved by both Anglicans and non-Anglicans at the Assembly, and everyone has said that his presence was, without a doubt, the high point of the gathering so far.

Last night I went to a traditional Brazilian resturant called a churrasco. They style of eating in much of Brazil is buffet style, but in this particular type of resturant, found mostly only in the southern state where I am, waiters supplement the buffet by walking around with large skewers of meat, in more than twenty-five different cuts, from four different animals. One eats and eats until full, and then they just bring more meat! The variety was amazing and all of the food was very well prepared, as has been just about everything that I have tried in Brazil so far.

This morning, I attended church services at the Anglican cathedral in Porto Alegre, where many Assembly participants were welcomed by the Most Reverend Orlando Santos de Oliveira, Primate of the Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil, who celebrated the Eucharist at the service, along with a number of bishops from all over the Anglican Communion. Afterwards, I walked around downtown Porto Alegre with some other stewards and did a bit of shopping at the local outdoor markets.

Perhaps the most interesting thing for me about the Assembly so far has been the question of language. I was sorry when I arrived that I had not had any time to learn any Portuguese before I came but, when I arrived, I discovered that it would have been even more useful to brush up on my high school Spanish! There are many participants from Latin America, and many of them only speak Spanish. In additition, many Brazilians speak some Spanish or can at least get along in it. The two languages are not at all as similar as I had supposed, but my Spanish has improved a great deal over the time that I have been here.

That is basically all of the news for now, so I will write again when I have more time.

I arrived in Brazil with basically no major problems last Friday afternoon after about fifteen hours of travelling. I am in the city of Ports Alegre, the capital of Brazil`s southernmost state called Rio Grande du Sul. Our hotel is fairly nice, although baisc, and the other stewards are all very interesting people from all over the world. I can now count as good friends young people from Kenya, Jordan, Colombia, Brazil, Canada, Rawanda, India, and many more places!

The assembly itself will begin on Tuesday and I will be working in the area of media relations and communications, probably by helping to set up intervews between the media and those people at the assembly that they wish to speak with. The stewards and other youth participants (ages 18-30), have been working together for the past few days to prepare ourselves to be a major presence at the assembly when the rest of the delegates arrive. Tonight we took over a local club for a cultural exchange evening that was an amazingly vibrant event. Groups from six major world regions shared songs, dances, poetry, and stories from around the world in colorful national costumes and in many languages. (Those of us from North America taught everyone some Texas line dancing to great acclaim!).

That will have to be all for now as I am quite tired and the official work begins tomorrow. I will write again when I have some free time.

I have had several people comment that I have not been blogging recently, so I figured I should probably explain why. May and June were taken up with finishing off my dissertation and the rest of my M.Phil. projects. July was spent traveling, mainly to a retreat in North Wales and nine days in Rome. This latter trip in particular was very important to me as I had never been to Rome before, and had been wanting to visit for years. The city is spectacular on many levels, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has not been there before. In particular, the sense of history from the pre-Roman period right up to the modern Roman Catholic church is very profound.

One of the strange things about Rome in the summer is the fact that by mid-July, when I was there, much of the native population has left the city to escape the heat, and tourists from around the world have piled in to take their place. Although Rome is known in many places as the “Holy City”, I found it quite challenging to actually have any spiritual focus. It is difficult, for example, to appreciate a statue by Michelangelo when an hundred people are trying to photograph it at once. There were just too many people, too many flashes, too many tour guides, and too much of a sense that not many people were really there to have any kind of religious experience.

However, there was one place that overcame that general feeling. This was the church of Santa Sabina, at the top of the Aventine Hill. It is a restored fifth-century basilica, and in the words of the person who recommended it to me, is “sublimely simple.” It is also the headquarters of the Dominican Order, and I encountered a real sense of peace and tranquility there. I went into the side chapel and sat down to rest from the walk up the hill and discovered that I could actually pray. It was a wonderful oasis of tranquility in the midst of a city that had become, in part, a commercial tourist mecca of the worst sort. I would highly recommend this church to anyone visiting Rome, and should also say that the gardens outside are very nice as well, with beautiful views across the Tiber to the Basilica di San Pietro.

Otherwise, I am back now and am slowly catching up on the news, so I hope to start posting more regularly in the near future.