Orthodoxy and earthly distractions
It’s been an interesting summer — obviously having taken the summer off from writing in HHG with April being my last posted entry — and I’ve walked away with a few observations about Orthodoxy, culture, and plenty of introspective conclusions about myself and the life I lead.
In April I was charismated into the Orthodox Church and set out on a new journey as they say, a life-long journey of theosis and becoming more like Christ. But looking back over the summer since that journey, it’s hard to conclude that I’ve really made much progress — if anything, in some respects I feel I’ve slipped further behind in my faith.
The Orthodox value a rule of prayer, a dedication to a life filled with structured and unstructured prayer. Additionally, they also teach the importance of consuming the scriptures and being filled with the truth and applying that to your journey in the context of the Church as a whole, and not solely upon your own context like it was commonly understood in my evangelical circles.
But as with all good intentions, they’re easily thwarted by the simplest of things and distractions become the rule — in my case, it was probably more apathy and indifference in regards to my life, my ambitions, and what I do with my time, talents and energy. I’ve moved from one thing to another, attempting to find meaning and significance for my life — music performance aspirations, web design, back to music, on to photography after a few disheartening events, and then wasting time on video games when my aspiration in photography wasn’t going anywhere fast enough for me.
Besides my lack of patience contributing to my leap frogging between interests, I find myself at a place where I have lost my drive and ambition to pursue anything because of what I feel it won’t reward me with. My music? Fallen on deaf ears and left with hundreds of CD’s collecting dust in the basement. My web design? Plateaued and just genuinely bored with it. My photography? Between the expectations of others to get something for nothing (or very little) and the great amount of competition out there and small salaries, I’m not so certain if I’ve got what it takes.
And that leaves me with my job — in web design no less — and I’m left feeling uninspired about my future, drained of any aspirations to achieve anything noteworthy, and wonder what is left that is worthy of aspiring to and working towards. My response to all this has been anything but unorthodox, but rather typical of one who is fallen just like any other. I bury my head in the sand and avoid responsibilities, I waste time in video games and lounging about, and have neglected my life of faith and prayer.
If you knew me years ago, I was a person FULL of ambition. I was passionate about songwriting and performing. I regularly was playing my guitar and recording new songs. I had aspirations of actually becoming a performer some day with some level of notoriety, and hoping that some day my music would make a difference in the lives of people. It was with my last band, Crash Effect that I had hoped to finally be able to make a difference with — we had a mission, a clear-cut goal, and a practical way of being able to fuel money and awareness into humanitarian charities and to help the less fortunate. But with our band’s split and the heartache and fallout from that, I just have not had the heart to keep at it anymore. So much so, that I haven’t even got our old site back up and running yet when I switched hosting companies.
And this is where the title comes into play — Orthodoxy and earthy distractions — that a few small, insignificant earthly distractions have lulled me into complacency and indifference. With what the Orthodox faith seems to value, there’s ultimately going to be conflict on multiple levels — conflict with both the desire to aspire towards some personal ambition as well as apathy and indifference. I’m not quite sure what to do about all this, what to make of my life, and how all this squares away with past ambitions. And of course, earthly distractions only contribute to my apathy towards the situation, dismissing all aspirations as being empty and ending as fruitless ventures.
I’m not quite sure what to do.
