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Notes
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Reggae, Rasta, Orthodoxy, icons and songs
one love = as you love god love man the same way = one love no partality. this love can be found nowhere else but the source of creation. (Rastafarian prayer)The stories. I want to tell your the biblical and historical tales the way I did it to my children. The Solomon and Sheba story. Christ-boy story; how Christ and Jesus discover I&I and Trinity. Who is the Holy Ghost, the Comforter. Why the end must take place and why it takes place now. What is resurrection? I couldn't tell them about Hegel, Kant, Aristotle, Foucault, Deleuze -- I still can't tell about my thoughts without stories.
We do not attend any church services. We tried. Several times. I and Esther went to Jerusalem to get married (the story) and we baptized our children. We took them the public school and now they are in Monroe Catholic school, but, nevertheless, I had to talk to them about God at home. Christianity isn't an easy concept and way above the head of many who preach it. Raised in communist country I learn it in my own way and on my own. We, the boys, read and talked to each other. One of us got seven years of hard labor for taking our conversations one step further. Sasha Ogorodnikov called his meeting Religious-Philosophical seminars. He was right, talking about God is a philosophy. That's what is missing for me in church and I prefer books.
No, I do not oppose them, even a tele-evangelist on the screen is better than nothing. Although I miss the conversations of my youth. We tried to understand life and ourselves. We did it not for salvation, we discovered the Bible after we read Marx and Einstein. We had no preachers to instruct us, our understanding came from studies. I am surprised that in my kids' religion class they do not learn Aquinas and Eckhart. I am glad that I went through this strange self-education without a full realization what was taking place. We didn't think of ourselves as the underground church. We were together to think, not to pray. We were far from the official church and from the party. I'm glad that we didn't have leaders and teachers.
I recognize this humble approach in rastafarian poetics, something on a border with ignorance. I like their non-systematic philosophy, they think about what matters to them. Why should I learn about something which is not on my mind? There are thoughts which preoccupy me and I have to give them time to grow and be formed. There are thoughts which live in me since I remember myself. How about a simple thought about my presence in this world? Did Sartre and Camus answered it for me? The great minds were our friends, we would read their books as if were written by one of us. I know that there is no single answer, no answer for tomorrow and I welcome the world without ready answers.
Let me tell you about the book I won't write. The missing book of the Bible. Jesus diaries. He too was one of us. Anybody who asks about his existence is talking to God. Rasta call this "reasoning." How did he understood that he is a son of God? The boy must out of his mind! Oh, don't talk to me about nativity and other Christmas stories -- that is what I resent about the holidays, the absence of mystery and God. No, Christ was born in December. In fact, the birth of baby-Jesus was only preconditions for Christ's birth, which he had to give to himself. Don't you know it? The born-again Christians are misusing the word "birth" -- you can't be born again, it your first birth. Yes, it's YOURS, you do it and you do it to yourself. How did he do it, teenager-Jesus?
He didn't write about it and I can only guess. Most likely, it was the same as with any other boy at time of coming of youth. I questioned my father, too. In my mind, in silence, I doupted that this bold, tired man is my father, we were too much apart. I do not care for immaculate conception, was Joseph his biological father or not, was Mary virgin and etc. -- and I don't know why all that is so important? What is important that I am only a part of the process in which the lives of my children come to this world. In what sense I am their father? How much credit could I have in given them birth? I value more the time of rasing them. But who is their father? This is the moment when I can't go on with my stories, sometimes it gets too much for minds. They are nor ready to think about it and I stop. Let them go into this forest later, on their own.
Did he talk to mother and father about the discovery that he is God? How could he? I didn't talk about such stuff with my parents, because they never talk to me about it. Why didn't they think about it? Perhaps, because they are not my "real" parents, perhaps, I belong to some other family.... I was alone and it was painful. I didn't know that God is One and solitude is forever. Also, I didn't know that longliness is a gift. I didn't know so many things and so many things were told wrong. In place of my little family I recieved the big extended family -- Russia, and it was supposed to be the answer. As if I didn't have enough problems feeling as a stranger next to people who loved and raised me! What millions of strangers who add to this equasion? Was Jesus a Jew? Jesus was, not Christ.
Notes
The Feast of the Epiphany which, in the tradition of the Christian church, remains one the most important festivals -- along with Easter and the Festival of the Finding of the True Cross (the Feast of Saint Helena).One of the five mysteries (Five Pillars of Mystery) is Mystire Tensaea Mutan (Mystery of the Resurrection of the Dead).
At the third sound of the horn the male will rise as mature youth of thirty years, the female as maidens of fifteen.
