I knew the day would come, when I would no longer stand with you beside the white camellia. What I didn't know was, when the day came, I would be prepared for it.

His hair was one thousand shades of brown. This, the image which remains in my mind, years after conversations of Dicaeopolis, and years after the marsala had been drunk to the last. I now understand Rilke, when, in the Duino Elegies, he speaks of beauty as the beginning of terror.

There is a stillness in these winter days, which mocks the beating of my heart and the neurons of my brain. My own stillness, an illusion for the world which protects its fate; and which calls me in every moment to places which I have not been. That this movement would stop, that I might find eternal peace and enter into a soft and slumber sleep.

Several months ago I spoke to the congregations of MICAH (Milwaukee Inner City Congregations Allied for Hope) regarding the place of the tradition of social justice within the context of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The following is an excerpt from the speech. While this text offers just a beginning, it emphasizes the life of the Trinity and the Incarnation as being the source of the social justice tradition of the Church. This text together points to a social justice tradition which is reflective of out own life and time, but also the life of third century Constantinople. Like the Church, it's social justice tradition is deeper and more complex than our immediate surroundings and desires.

"The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us."

As people of faith, our life with one another is born out of our relationship with the life of God. For those of us in the Christian tradition, this relationship is most fully expressed in the Most Holy and Life Giving Trinity. For those of us in the Eastern Church, this is the great and profound mystery. It is a mystery which most fully reveals itself in the incarnation of the logos, the Word of God, the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ. These things are a mystery for us in the sense that God uses ordinary elements of out lives: people, places, bread and wine to bring us into closer relationship with God. Life is renewed. In the Incarnation of the second person of the Trinity, God comes to be with us; not for the sake of our condemnation (as the prayers before reception of the Holy Eucharist ask), but in order to transform and renew all of creation. It is in this way, in this mystery, in which God reveals that God is concerned for our souls as well as our bodies. It is this mystery which empowers us with human responsibility, and is the source and ground of the tradition of social justice within the Eastern Orthodox Church. I leave you today with two quotes. The first, from St. John Crysostom; known to many of us as the Archbishop of Constantinople in the middle of the third century; the eloquent preacher of the Church who also bankrupted it's treasury on behalf of the poor. The second passage is from St. Maria Skobtsova, a Russian Orthodox nun of the Parisian immigration following the Bolshevik revolution. Maria established a house of hospitality for the poor in Paris, and later housed Jews following the Nazi occupation of the city in 1940. It was for this that she was executed in the gas chamber of Ravensbruck concentration camp on Great and Holy Saturday of 1945.

From St. John Crysostom

"If you wish to honor the body of our Saviour, then do not despise it when it is naked. Do not honor it in church wearing the finest vestments, while outside of your very doors the body of Christ is numb with cold. Jesus has said, 'you have seen me naked and have clothes me, and you have seen me hungry and provided me with food.'. I urge you, then, to honor the body of Christ through the sharing of your property with the poor. What God needs is not golden chalices, but golden souls."

On Living Simply, The Golden Voice of John Crysostom. A Book of Ancient Christian Wisdom. Ed. Robert Van De Weyer. Ligouri Press. Ligouri 1996.

From St. Maria Skobtsova

"The bodies of fellow human beings must be treated with greater care than our own. Christian love teaches us to give our sisters and brothers not only spiritual gifts, but material gifts as well. Even our last shirt and our last piece of bread must be given to them. Personal alms giving and the most wide ranging social work are equally justifiable and necessary. The way to God lies through the love of our sister and brother. On the day of judgement I will not be asked of I was successful in my spiritual exercises. I will be asked if I fed the hungry, clothed the naked and visited the sick and the imprisoned. That is all I will be asked."

Mother Maria Skobtova, Essential Writings. Modern Spiritual Masters Series. Ed. Jim Forest. Orbis Books. Maryknoll 2003.

The crimson red leaves of the Japanese Maple float to the ground in front of the pine board church, the last week of fall has come to New Skete. I have long been taken by the beauty of Autumn, his valiant colors of ochre, surik and crimson. There is a peaceful stillness. There is an underlying trembling terror of which memory reminds us. Within one weeks time the maple had given up all of it's leaves, taken by the wind and the rain. It stands before a bleak winter's sky.

I said goodbye to a friend today, someone who has come to mean so much to me in these months in Milwaukee; someone who has loved and shown me support by his presence, by his presence. Over lentil soup and the breaking of bread, we shared moments of our lives and spoke of our faith. Life and faith, things that change and evolve; but in so doing become the profound experiences of who we are and lead us into that great day, the mysterium tremendum.