The Joy and Sorrow of Symbols, Perceptions, and Ignorance

 I recently wrote some about the search for beauty and those simple moments of purpose, faith, and pure human and natural interaction.

Saturday, a Memorial Sunday liturgy at Sts. Peter and Paul Orthodox Church in downtown Salt Lake City, I went looking forward to that. Candles, prayers, chants, the rhythms of worship common for millennia in languages living and dead, sung, whispered, shouted from the lips of millions across our globe.

But first, I had to park my 2019 Ford Fiesta in the tiny parking lot behind our more-than-a-century-and-a-half-old church, once a synagogue,  and meander down a narrow alleyway toward the front entrance.

"No Trespassing" signs, occasional police patrols, fencing, even some security cameras do not keep the homeless and drug dealers and their meth-addled victims from finding a way in during the dark hours. And with sunlight comes the inevitable stacks of bottles, cans, emptied syringes, the occasional broken crack pipe . . . and piles of human feces, near the urine splashes and stains against the bricks of our building.

This morning, as I went to light candles and say prayers for my departed parents and other loved ones inside, I had. to dodge two still-steaming mounds. One, protruding well into the narrow alley, would pose a slip-and-fall threat to a child or grandparent (one slightly less foot-sure than I), so I grabbed a stick and tried, with mixed success to move it.

My search for beauty? Now, there was a challenge. Took me well past the mid-point of the liturgy to once more focus. So much for sainthood for this old angry, smoldering, fart. 

What was I supposed to do, I eventually quipped with myself: grab a flower from the altar display and plant it in the remaining pile outside?

What a stack of fertilizer! Why, it could be a blossoming tree within days, right? 

Argh.

So,  there was that.

All a bit of a detour from a sadder, perhaps, definitely more bizarre dive into derailment of human interaction through just plain ignorance, minus intentionally defecating on sacred ground.

Earlier this week, we finally got our new flooring installed by Lowe's contractors. Two men, one a bit older than the other, of Middle Eastern origins and with little English, did a fine job. Arrived with smiles . . . until they saw the T-shirt I was wearing.

It was an old one, a black short-sleeve with a symbol the seller told me years ago was representative of the Antiochian Eastern Orthodox Church, the one I'm associated with here in Utah.

Our church is Greek Orthodox in liturgy, traditions, etc., and its mostly multi-ethnic membership in the U.S. dwarfs its primarily Arabic parishes back in its ancient stomping grounds -- Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Iraq, etc. But our Patriarch in still back there, and our Archbishop, although in New York, is Lebanese by birth. 

The symbol on the T-shirt? Your typical Orthodox three-bar cross, though imbedded inside an Aramaic-originated letter. In Hebrew, it is the letter "Nun," and pretty much identical to the Arabic version, pronounced "noon." In Hebrew, it is associated with "faithfulness," "inheritance," "fish," or "seed."

But it eventually was adopted by Arabic Orthodox Christians to evoke the "Nazarene," Jesus, and -- like the Star of David treasured by Israel was used by the Nazis to identify Europe's Jews for death camps during WWII -- the radical Islamic death cult, ISIS, has used the Nun symbol to identify Christians for torture and death.

I knew that thousands of my spiritual siblings in the Middle East have been slain by such terrorists in the "Holy Land" over the past few decades, but the "Nun" use by ISIS was a sad revelation to me.

So, finally, back to this story.

My flooring installers, seeing the symbol on my T-shirt, abruptly became silent. They hurried through their work, wouldn't make eye contact, and said nothing more until the older one, in a monotone, asked me to sign the paperwork. They rushed to pack up their gear and left.

Did the T-shirt offend him? Was he angry? Ashamed? Afraid? 

I'll never know.

But my own ignorance . . . now, that bothers me.

Passing torches, or at least, a candle or two

 Hit 72 years old to begin this week.

Don't know why, especially, but I felt a resolution to finally do some of that "pass the torch" thing. 

I "retired" in mid-2018, forced into it a month shy of my 65th birthday by the massive layoffs at the failing Salt Lake Tribune. Took the severance package, rather slim for the decades served, but better than could be expected of a a paper hovering near bankruptcy. Social Security, and a pension vested from a previously 20 years at The Associated Press helped.

But I never really, in my heart and soul, felt "retired." I freelanced -- editing, ghostwriting, copyediting, a bit of travel writing -- before A.I. and ideology-driven agendas combined to kill the wisps of that journalistic wraith that remained within.

For the past seven years, though, I served my Orthodox Church parish council and priests as best I could. But you get older, and with the phenomenal growth on our numbers -- and the influx of sharp, younger souls deserving their turns to serve -- I knew in my heart of hearts, it was time.

Hey, if John the Baptist, an exploding quasar in the spiritual cosmos of Christ Eternal, could say of Our Lord, "He must increase and I must decrease" before he faded from this world (minus his saintly head) . . . then I, by such metaphorical comparison a mere speck of occasionally glowing dark matter making its way to the nearest black hole abyss event horizon, can do the same.

Though I have my head, for what it's worth.

Kind of. Sort of. OK, not even close. But I did pass the torch to new parish leadership blood.

Or, more likely a match or two. Perhaps just a palm-full of warm ashes.

But it's what I had.

And, my prayers.

I see the light. I did not create it.

I see the light. I did not create it.

I hear the wind, the music, the rain, the thunder, the chirping of birds, the sighing of my wife in the night.

These sounds exist without my awareness, or with them.

The olfactory bliss of flowers, on trees or bushes, in vases or urns; drifting in clouds of incense from censers, bowls, cones or sticks glowing, alight.

Memories recalled, recent and ancient, of the soul, of the primordial mists.

Is this where Truth begins?