I was received into the Orthodox Church in 1993, and, though much humbled by Providence and by my own failures and shortcomings, by God’s great mercy, I am still blessed to stand in the Divine Liturgy and weep with joy, Sunday after Sunday. I have come to love the humble, hidden Church of Russia — the Church of radiant, loving prayer which I know most in her great Saints.
This love joins in my heart with, and completes, the love I learned as a child for the Northern Mysteries that were taught to me first of all by J.R.R. Tolkien and all the myths he baptized, and by the great Breton harpist Alan Stivell, whose music filled my child’s soul with lembas for the journey of my life.
These are the worlds I feel as Avalon and Jerusalem, and I ask: Quid ergo Avalonis et Hierosolymis? As the Church’s answer to Tertullian was a heart-movement of centuries, so I think will be the answer to this question. This question is for me a way back, a turning-back, taking the Lord at His word: Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.
There is a movement afoot, a moment happening for a Christianity (ever ancient, ever new) of viriditas, called forth by the grace of God on the agonies of the age. Here tradition finds its healing. Here modernity finds its memory. May all the scattered children of Wisdom come and find our songs together.
The Church is our home, both the temple and the wide earth, the open sea, the circling stars, the high and clear mountains, the singing forest, and the Heart that holds them all. “Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord.”
