Light Streams In, Again

Elissa Bjeletich Davis: Christ is risen! This is Elisa Bieletich Davis and I'm back on Light Streams In. You know, it's an appropriate time to come back to Light Streams In here during Bright Week because ⁓ it's the right time to invite the light of the resurrection to stream in and dispel the darkness. That's why we call it Bright Week. But on Holy Saturday, we have the best gospel reading. It's the beginning of John's gospel and I just love it. And he writes, in him was life. and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. I love that in Holy Week we enter into the darkness, right? We move ever more deeply into gospel accounts of our Lord's suffering and of man's betrayals and man's cruelty. And when finally the resurrection dawns, we turn immediately to John's glorious gospel and to the light which cannot be overcome. which gives me echoes of come receive the light, right? Come receive the light from the light that is never overtaken by night. It's kind of an old fashioned translation, but I love that. But that's light streams in, right? The light comes into the darkness. It dispels the darkness, because the light of the resurrection, Christ's light, it's the most powerful thing. And suddenly, of course, I like the title even more, because ⁓ I love echoes of resurrection and of John's voice. And really, when I titled this, I wasn't thinking about Pascha. I was thinking about Christ's light. So I was related. But I was thinking about how our difficult world can sometimes feel so dark and about how the Christians around me sometimes seem to have lost the thread. They've lost sight of Christ's powerful love and become warriors in a culture war that doesn't seem to have much to do with him. I was contemplating St. Porphyrios's beautiful advice, not to fight the darkness, but instead to allow Christ's light to dispel the darkness, open an aperture to let the light in. And the darkness just goes away, it disappears. I want to write about that. I want to think about that. Not about how we battle dark forces and fight culture wars and defeat whatever the modern world or something, but how we resist feeling afraid. in our modern world, how we resist succumbing to anger and nastiness and even violence. But instead we just follow the way, keeping our eyes on Christ, our hearts warm with his love and fearlessly loving this world with a stubborn, relentless, healing love. It's not just about the world today, right? It's not just like the modern world, all the weird things that have unfolded in the 2020s. It's about everything ever. Darkness is always seem to be present. It's always threatened to overtake us, but Christ's light always handily defeats the darkness. puts it in its place. Surely in the early church, the Byzantine years, the middle ages, even with the pilgrims here in America, every age had its darkness. And some ages had a lot of darkness, frankly, but it's never any match for the light. We can trust it. You know, we mistakenly, we gird our loins and we draw our weapons and we take the darkness head on. We fight and we become dark ourselves and we find ourselves exhausted with the world as dark as ever. But when we stop and we put down the weapons and we lean into Christ's love that's inside of us, the light just streams in and the darkness just disappears like a bad dream. I think about this idea a lot because I'm a mother of five. Having spent my early adulthood establishing the children and the rhythms of the faith and showing them a way of life that I hope they'll want to keep, I'm now watching them enter into an adulthood and freely choose where to go, what to do. It's natural that they should try other options, that they don't simply blindly adopt all of my answers as their own. They're curious, they're smart, they're investigating. I like that. But of course, you know, just as my choices have not followed my own mother's plans for me, their choices won't follow mine. And I picture in my head sometimes a lovely immigrant couple, it's a fictional couple, but I think about them a lot. They're like, it's the summer of 1968 and they're ethnic, maybe, you know, a Greek couple, Serbian couple, something like that. They're Orthodox. They're very pious. They have a whole way of life in the old country that they're trying to preserve. And they've got these kids in America and it's late sixties and the kids go crazy. Right? Like they're, they're this lovely couple that has tried to give the kids, yeah, real honestly, strict upbringing probably, but you know, really faithful upbringing. And they've got this idea of what a good life looks like. And now the kids are like, hitchhiking to Woodstock and they're smoking grass and embracing free love and liberal politics and they must have freaked out. They must have been terrified. I think I would, if I were them, I kind of am them in a way now, right? But I think they were probably really concerned. They were really worried and maybe they kind of thought this was the end of things. And when the kids didn't come back, maybe they thought it was. But you know, all those kids now, who would have seemed like strangers to their Orthodox parents back in the day. Like they seemed like they were a different culture. They were a whole different, they weren't like straight-laced conservative immigrant anymore, right? They were wild hippies. But they're like 75 now, right? Like, know, some hippies at your church. There are a bunch of hippies in my church and they, I'm sure, freaked their parents out. They gave themselves wholeheartedly over to like the way this new generation, this radical new existence that was going on, right? But now some of them are like 75, they're on the parish council, they're cooking for Greek Fest this weekend, you they, you can still see the hippie, you know, the hippie still there. There's something light about the way they carry themselves. There's like a social consciousness and... There's some environmental concern, right? They might be the ones who push for recycling at coffee hour. Yes, I am thinking of particular people. But nothing about that seems strange or dangerous anymore, right? The 60s don't feel dangerous anymore. It's just what was happening back then. And there's no reason to say that those people didn't stay with Christ or come back to Christ. I try to remind myself that I'm like this little old lady, right? I'm crossing myself and praying that the kids will come through their generation's peculiarities intact. Right? I want them to remain loving and kind throughout. And I want to know that eventually they're going to decide to embrace Christ on their own. Not because I said so, but because they embrace Him, they love Him, and they feel loved by Him. That's what I'm hoping for. But every generation has its movements, and I hope to reform some aspect of the culture. You know, I think back, or even things like Elvis Presley in the 50s was like this dangerously wild dancer, because he was shaking his hips, right? It doesn't look dangerous from here. Or Billy Idol when I was young. Ooh, that guy, he was scary. He was like this punk guy. didn't care about anything. I watched like videos for the Rebel Yell or ⁓ White Wedding, and he doesn't look scary. He doesn't actually look particularly cutting edge, right? He looks like a little kid. who's spiky hair, who's maybe afraid of the world, but trying to sound tough. So, you know, I came of age, late 80s, maybe early 90s, maybe more late 80s. But I was militant about canned tuna. I was going to save the dolphins. We worried a lot about recycling. I lectured my parents about interracial marriage a lot. I was really troubled by like some of the ways that racism was still present in our culture, even though we'd had the civil rights movement and all of these things, right? And it mattered a lot to me. Now, my kids look at my generation, they see us and they see that we didn't go far enough, right? And I think really, it just takes a while. It takes a long time to get from like slavery to color blindness, in a sense. But they're right, right? They look and they see like problems that still existed that maybe we didn't even notice. There are so many things, it kind of a joke, like it was fine in the 80s, nobody thought there was anything wrong with this joke or this thing, right? But they see all of that. But what interests me is that they accept the things I was arguing for that seemed radical and different. They accepted it now as just utterly obvious. These are clearly obvious facts that they all believe and they press ahead. They're going for radical acceptance for complex gender identities, diverse sexual orientations for arguing about the misogyny of policing women's style choices and body types. And I recognize that fervor and that indignation because I was there. I felt that. It's part of being young. It's part of choosing something different than what your culture, what your parents are already giving you and kind of making your mark. But the good thing is, right, they're They're fighting for something good. They're fighting for love. They're fighting for tolerance and acceptance and kindness, all things that I taught my kids Christ was in favor of. see a generation I'm not afraid of, you know what mean? Like people are generation X, people are wringing their hands. I'm just, I see a generation demands that we accept all of God's children, that we receive everyone with unconditional love. Whether they're You know, right or wrong on the details, I don't know, it's not my job to know, but what they're doing is demanding that we be more loving and more accepting. And honestly, that feels very Christian to me. So I'm not afraid of it. Now research is showing that when kids leave the church, which is the thing all the parents are afraid of, right? Like, let's speak it. That's the fear. When people leave the church, the decision is not about Politics really it's whether they feel loved and accepted whether they feel like they belong And if we can accept the idea that sometimes young adults are gonna explore they're gonna walk away They're gonna decide independently whether they want to come back and that that's okay That's natural if that's the case Well, then what can we do to make them more likely to come home to the church? I don't think fighting them is the answer. I don't think there's a war that you can go win to bring them back. I think it's like a Chinese finger prison. Do you remember those toys? You know, your fingers are stuck in this little basket woven tube. The more you fight to get free to defeat this thing, the more tightly stuck your fingers are. But when you stop fighting and you relax your fingers, they just slip right out of the prison. And your struggle is what held them there. Your peace freed them, but your struggle. held them fast. I'm thinking a lot about St. Porfirios and Mother Maria and my imaginary immigrant friends who have much solidarity. I'm learning to practice radical love. My kids are teaching me radical acceptance. I'm not fighting anymore. I'm not fighting my kids and I'm not fighting the culture wars. I'm just, I'm not leaning into that. I'm not declaring that I have all the answers. I'm just watching everything unfold. I'm receiving it all calmly with the firm conviction that His will governs all. And I'm focusing on the part that matters, the one thing that brings all the other things to right and without which nothing is ever quite right. I'm praying that they'll know and love Christ. So that they call Him Christ or not is not my concern. but that they know and love Christ is what matters to me. So I'm happy to restart Lightstreams in and to write about things that matter. So welcome, God bless you. Let's pray for each other as we all work through this sort of confusing world where sometimes it's hard to tell like, what is Christ's path here? How do I, how am I Orthodox and in the church and being full of Christ's love? and being thoroughly accepting, like, does all this fit in? What does it look like? And how do I answer some people who might disagree? So, when you're thinking about that, you're welcome to join me. take heart, you if you're ever wrestling between fighting and loving and how we balance all of it, memorize the morning prayer of the last elders of Optinia. It's very helpful and it's... very good advice. Lord, grant that I may meet all this coming day brings to me with spiritual tranquility. Grant that I may fully surrender myself to thy holy will. At every hour of this day, direct and support me in all things. Whatsoever news may reach me in the course of the day, teach me to accept it with a calm soul and the firm conviction. that all is subject to thy holy will. Direct my thoughts and feelings in all my words and actions, in all unexpected occurrences. Do not let me forget that all is sent down from thee. Grant that I may deal straightforwardly and wisely with every member of my family, neither embarrassing nor saddening anyone. O Lord, grant me the strength to endure the fatigue of the coming day. and all the events that take place during it. Direct my will and teach me to pray, to believe, to hope, to be patient, to forgive, and to love. Amen.