https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=aJJa2f1pKSc
And so what does this mean then for an American, right? If you’re an Orthodox Christian living in Appalachia or Southern California, what does universal history have to say to you? I mean, it’s interesting because you could actually see it in the very way that Orthodoxy manifests itself in America, which is that America, man, people are not gonna take this the right way. Please wait till I finish the argument before you react to this. So America is something like the end of the world, right? America is the end of the world. And because it’s the end of the world, it manifests the extremes. One of the extremes that America manifests is something like the horror and revelation, okay? So this idea that America is a land of excess, a land of mixture, a land of lack of cohesive identity, is something which is true of the way in which America exists, okay? So it’s hard to avoid that. And so what happens, it’s negative, but it’s not just negative, right? It’s just reality. It’s just a description of what is there. And so the way in which Orthodoxy manifests itself in America is like that. It’s a little confused, right? Because it’s trying to preserve all these separate churches inside of America without having the capacity or will to join them together into the single church that they should be. And so we have to be, I think, as Christians, as Orthodox Christians in America, we have to not be naive about that and understand that that is the reality of Orthodoxy in the end of the world, you could say, right? At the end of the world, that’s what happens. And so there are, although it’s a problem, there are some advantages to that as well. There are some aspects of that which can be used to, or at least being aware of it can help us. And so there is a possibility in America, and I see it like as an artist, I see it. We also have the possibility of synthesis, which other places don’t have the possibility of. So you can understand that. So let’s say if I was a Russian, as some people have described me, a Russian Orthodox icon carver, right? Then I would have this one tradition, which would be the Russian tradition, and I would have to see myself in continuation of that. But I’m not, I’m an American, North American Orthodox icon carver. And because of that, I actually have access to all these threads that are coming down. And I have the possibility that other people don’t of retying them together in a way that reveals something universal about the Orthodox tradition. So I think that that’s the advantage of American Orthodoxy, but it’s also born of something which is clearly a disadvantage, which is this problem of multiple jurisdictions kind of coexisting in the same space. That’s a really exciting image for me as someone who’s into biblical theology, because it seems that the two kind of competing ends of the moral spectrum, you could call it, are two kinds of mixtures, right? So you can have like a mixture, like an image of Baphomet, where it’s just obscene. You have all of these different categories which are kind of lopped onto each other, and it’s diabolical. But then the high priest’s garment is just a mixed fabric from top to bottom, or the tabernacle, or the temple. It’s got all of these different kinds of things which are being brought together. Or you have the land of Eden and the land of Havilla, and you’re bringing the resources of both of them together, and it’s integrated into something holy. And that’s the imagery of the restored Zion and the prophets of the nations coming from the ends of the world to put all of this different stuff on one in the same altar, and relating it appropriately to each other. So I think that, and the image of the Whore of Babylon is an interesting one, because of course, the inverse of that is the bride Zion, right? It’s a different kind of mixture. So that’s a really intriguing, I think, productive way of framing both the challenge, but also the opportunity of living in this wild, weird place called here. The way that Christians, I mean, we have something in Christianity which we call union without mixture, right? The sense that we have the possibility in Christianity of joining things together without confusing them. And so, and I think that in Revelation, you have two images of that. You have two images of civilization. You have one which is a whore riding a beast, right? That’s one image, and that is the excess of both, right? The excess of civilization, which is controlling, which is devouring, which is naming, right? It’s like, I’m gonna give you a name that you can’t, that if you don’t use, you will be eliminated. And on riding that is licentiousness and chaos and mixture and all this stuff. The image of the heavenly Jerusalem is a beautiful image of multiplicity and unity collaborating. And like it actually says that, you know, the kings of the world or the kingdom of the world offer up their crowns to the city. And so it’s as if this gathering in of all that is good from all the nations into one space that is all attentive to the lamb, right? That’s all attentive to God ultimately. And so it’s like, I think that’s the image of kind of symphony that the church can become. [“Pomp and Circumstance”]