Recovered Childhood

I'm the kind of person who never asks a store clerk if they have this or that in stock...I prefer to look for myself. I hate being disappointed, and I would rather break the news to myself gradually, walking up and down the aisles, rather than face the, "No. We don't have it." Somehow, this weird fear of disappointment has creeped into other areas of my life. For example; if a book that I read in the past was an especially good read, I'm afraid to read it again because...I might be disappointed. People change, but books are rather constant...at least on one level...so the possibility always exists that something that "spoke to you" in the past, will no longer speak to you in the present. I guess I prefer keeping the memory of something good, rather than test it to see if it is still good. For example - no one thing convinced me that Orthodox Christianity was the truest expression of Christianity on the planet...it was an ineffable journey. But the book, For the Life of the World certainly played a large role in that journey for me. I was experiencing the death throes of my previous marriage, and would take this book and walk 'round and 'round the upper trail of The Grotto in Portland while reading this book. I wasn't Roman Catholic at the time, but I was attending St. Mark's, which was pretty close. The point is...I haven't picked that book up since until last night because I was afraid I would be disappointed. I just wanted to say...I'm not. It is as beautiful as ever. One quote will suffice to see if you are "tuned in" to what Fr. Alexander has to say:

The liturgy is, before everything else, the joyous gathering of those who are to meet the risen Lord and to enter with him into the bridal chamber. And it is this joy of expectation and this expectation of joy that are expressed in singing and ritual, in vestments and in censing, in that whole "beauty" of the liturgy which has so often been denounced as unnecessary and even sinful.

Unnecessary it is indeed, for we are beyond the categories of the "necessary." Beauty is never "necessary," "functional" or "useful." And when, expecting someone whom we love, we put a beautiful tablecloth on the table and decorate it with candles and flowers, we do all this not out of necessity, but out of love. And the Church is love, expectation and joy. It is heaven on earth, according to our Orthodox tradition; it is the joy of recovered childhood, that free, unconditioned and disinterested joy which alone is capable of transforming the world.

-For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy
by Alexander Schmemann