https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=lME1CIeugtY
Here in the US, especially growing up, very conservative fundamentalist, we had the founding fathers. We didn’t have any saints, but we had the founding fathers. George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, all those dudes. There was a lot of work expanded in trying to really build up a Christian mythology around them, even though many of them were not Christians, many of them universalist, atheist, deist, etc. But there was a lot of work put into trying to basically build up a mythology around that as, well, if we could just get back to these guys, then America would be what it’s supposed to be. And just as a story, it’s not strong enough. It doesn’t have the capacity to confer identity. What do you do with people who don’t fit into the story? Even in your own declaration of independence, who are the not people? All men are created equal. Women, slaves. That’s a different thing. I’m not just here to rag on my country. Yeah, sorry. But my point is that that story itself is actually great. Those men actually lived flawed human beings or whatever, but actually lived interesting lives and did courageous things. And it’s not wrong to love them or praise them. But if you try to put on them the weight of the whole American story. It’s too much, too much. They can’t can’t hold it right. So the other thing is that very often this kind of story, one of the deep flaws that it often has is that very often this kind of story is not participatory. All right. There’s there’s really like now this this differs. I mean, a lot of the if you’re really into American history, there’s a lot of pretty cool participatory things. You can go to the East Coast, you know, and do you can go to, you know, Washington’s farm and like they have like a bourbon night there once a year and think like, you know, OK, I mean, there’s there’s a really cool place called Colonial Williams, Williamsburg, where everybody is like dressed up in period costume and they try to stay in character and, you know, that’s all fun. So so like there are some ways you can participate in the stuff. But but but ultimately it’s not very participatory. Right. And then then like, well, OK, but what if you’re black? How do you participate in Colonial Williamsburg? Right. So it’s like there’s like different there’s just is one of the one of the problems with this kind of story is that for a story to really confer identity, it’s got to be something that you can actually participate in. You can make it a part of your life. So it’s happening. James Taylor talks about this for Orthodox Christians. This will be a really familiar concept. But James Taylor in a secular age, he talks about this idea of, you know, chaotic time, the idea that that this moment, that’s maybe a mythical moment or something that happened 2000 years ago, becomes closer than yesterday. Right. That’s what happens at Pascha is that at Pascha, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, a historical event, a mythical event, all these layers to it. But then on Pascha night on Easter night, it becomes closer than yesterday. Yeah. Right. In terms of, you know. And so most of these stories don’t have the capacity to do that. And when you see people. At least not completely. They have not got the capacity to do that. Yeah. You can celebrate the 4th of July or whatever. There are things. Right. Right. Yeah. Fair enough. But like you said, they don’t they don’t they they just if they try to stand on their own as the totalizing identity, they they they end up being dangerous. Yeah. Yeah. And then, of course, I mean, one of the questions we’ve been dancing around for a long time is, and then what if you’re a brand new country, right? Well, what is your mythic time? Right. And I think we’ve kind of addressed that. Yeah. So let me let me let me give just like a couple of like practical applications for people. It’s the Baptist preacher in me. I can’t totally get away from it. But also it’s a couple of practical applications, but then also a little bit about the project that I’ve been working on and why it’s tied into all of this. So if you wanted to. If you wanted to like comment all of this stuff and you’re trying to figure out like, what do I do with it? Well, what do I do with this universal history stuff? It’s very it’s very fun to like, how do I how do I actually participate in this and integrate this in my life? The first thing that I’d say is for like for you as a Christian, the liturgical year is your epic. It’s your sacred story. It’s one that you can totally participate in. We have this prayer in the evening. It’s part of our evening prayers in the Orthodox Church. It comes from the service of complin. And it’s addressed to the mother of God. And I’m not going to unpack this or defend this for our Protestant friends out there. Please understand, we mean something by this that’s maybe not. Well, anyway, don’t freak out. I’ll be happy to explain this sometime later. But we have in this prayer, we say you are the salvation of the race of Christians. Now, salvation, we mean like a lot more things by salvation than, you know, like a dying and going to heaven. Yeah, then dying and going to heaven. So that’s not we’re talking about. But she’s the salvation of the race of Christians in what way? Because Christ comes from her. Right. And in that sense, every single Christian is descended from and is a child of Mary. Yeah. Right. But the thing to kind of focus in on there is actually that last bit, the generation or the race of Christians that when you pass through the baptismal font, you become something more than just your, you know, this is why St. Paul, you know, this is why the church can simultaneously. We can talk about there’s no Jew, Greek, Bon, free, male, female, but then also preserve distinctions between those things in important ways. We can do both because of this. Right. And this is why I mean, it’s tied back to my my long running theory. Right. That you’re not really a Christian country until you have like a definitive national icon of the mother of God. You know, that’s when you become that’s when you become a Christian people. Right. Is because there’s some connection between her and the incarnation, some connection between her, between the land, between the. Yeah. Yeah. Between. Yes. Yeah. All those body. Right. It’s all these things that are there. Yeah. The that which holds. Right. It’s like that’s what that’s in some of the motherland or however you want to think about it. All these all these ways of describing it. So then and I’ll say this especially to my like fellow Orthodox converts. Right. Is that just sort of understand and accept you’ve received a faith, which is. You know, like, Syria, Greco, Jewish in its origins. Right. Like all the early writers, right. All the all the early hymns, all these different things. They’re not written by people from America. Right. So you’re receiving this. Listen, that’s a dumb thing to say, but also it’s like it’s like weirdly freeing to realize that. So just like realize that you’re you’re receiving this faith that’s so much older than you and that wasn’t made with your taste in mind. And when people get like really like, let’s say, agitated about how, you know, well, when are we going to enculturate? When are we going to have like a single American jurisdiction? When are we going to have, you know, like American culture really represented? And what about the music and all that stuff? Like, like just like settle down. Yeah. Settle down and and accept the faith that you’ve been given in. But know that by doing so, by just like faithfully saying your prayers, going to the services, participating as fully in the life of your parish as you can, that you’re not just hopefully participating in the salvation of your own soul, but you’re also participating in the salvation of your ancestors and of your culture. And I cannot stress enough how important it is to fully accept and receive this deposit of tradition. If enculturation is ever going to happen in a natural way. Yeah, it’s just like we’re talking about. Committees can’t do it. It won’t stick. It’s got to naturally arise. It’s got to just it’s got to just arise out of. So that is of things that we won’t be able to describe afterwards. So then in 500 years, when the autocephalus Orthodox Church of Texas has officially replaced hummus with guacamole as the Lenten dip of choice, you know, like, but but just like you know, you remember how it happened. Nobody remember. But is that like where we do think in 500 years we’ll have American orthodoxy for good or for ill, it’ll exist. Right. And but but we’re not going to get there by like just trying to force things. So anyway. So save your family, cultivate just kind of a normal, holy life and wait a few hundred years and see what happens.