sâmbătă, 28 august 2010

matryoshka (jam session Florin Caragiu and Monica Lassaren, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)


















in the beginning there was the weeping
days were hills between the apparitions of the same face
that buried all things in your voice
displaced from light

sometimes I used to cling to its sharp edge
and cut myself, but no blood would come out, only a silence
filled with open mouths waiting for the word
that would take out one of my ribs
slowly rotating the universe, following the code
hidden behind it
long before the grass grew

your gaze alone would bend my bars
and they became strings
upon which a song would push you out

while you were coming out, a part of me
somehow remained painted inside you
a rock art shape moving opposite the arrow
I remained half in you
you were half open
into the body smeared with seeping visions
with a cross nailed to the back
so that the colors would keep calm

the unborn half was struggling to come out
that’s why with every backlash
you looked more and more like a child
wherever you went trees touched your head
with their tops
and hawks drank the night from your collarbones


*

I can no longer feel where you are, my flesh has been ripped off
I only stretch out my arms into the night to catch the rainbow
wet rags are shivering inside
towards a seal put on a crater

do you still know me? lip edges are calling you
do you recognize me? I cut myself with the echo

I don’t even know when you crush the glaciers under my eyelids
the color spreads out when you withhold
the outburst into words

I am the child left floating on the waters inside the tiny boat
with fists full of mud
between the oars that hold my quarter of the sun

all these because you have the face
I have never seen before



(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, pp. 78-80. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

short-circuit poem (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)


















let me revise: I take propolis tincture for my bronchitis
coughing is a form of expectorating the death
I intoxicate myself with every night; what else is sleep, I say
I who only drink plain water

in the morning I sober up and go to work
among books always thrown on the floor face-down
as if praying for my end to near

it’s a little drafty in-between my bones, but it doesn’t matter anymore
my soft stride raises but a shadow of dust
you pull over my soul to tell me something unheard of
unaware that life goes out right when you light it up

you fearfully turn on the switch and the light shivers around you
enough to suddenly make you thirsty for reading/ then you feel a little sick
and ask to be left alone by all the things you fight with
over your unique love that sparks more and more



(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, p. 77. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

ramonage (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)


















”Generally people meet you, get to know you and then, eventually, they start to love you. Father Theophilus wasn’t like that. He loved you first.”
Fr. Răzvan Ionescu



we write our story in chalk on the asphalt
from the end to the beginning as proper for strangers
used to the signs that lose their adherence

we improvise here and there: I glue your eyelids shut with light
so you could steal me from darkness just by opening your eyes
with the eloquence of an unmapped language

then I take cover under a piece of wood while you launch towards me
dwarf suns and octopuses from the ellada nebula

your slight anorthopia has me suspended in a ramonage
between life and death – two vertical walls the proper distance apart
for me to catch my breath on an X-shaped cross


(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, p. 76. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

vineri, 27 august 2010

night asylum (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)


photo: Titus Mureşan




















I lost my heart –
my night asylum

life is a door notched with the knife
freshly emerged from the twilight palette

you stand on the threshold, your lips slightly pursed
not knowing what holds you back from entering or leaving

the street hangs from the window frame,
the pendulum clock that broke last night
utters a long-forgotten murmur

it runs, it struggles, always missing the path
to the shelter for wandering visions.

the heart is a blind man’s song
that the Lord passes by



(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, p. 75. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

appearances (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)


















we are bordered by appearances
welded to the fear of the encounter
there is less and less ground beneath our feet
still it can contain many voices
of a system-resistant intimacy

we’ve lost a lot of light
in this shipwreck dictated by a crumbling of things
that cannot be learned, only received
when Jesus’ love draws us toward
limbs of life

the price of every conquest is a prison
we lock ourselves into, sick with the desire
the doors would open on their own

some push their way to the exit painted on the wall
but they can’t see a thing
besides the fretwork carvings
left on their bodies after the survival lesson



(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, p. 74. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

in my childhood (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)

















I used to be a sickly child,
yet I loved to play to exhaustion

I would leave home heading for the meeting place
with a guilty feeling like a shell
cracked by my fast pace and my panting

I was usually late and the teams were already set up
I would fidget outside the field until
someone would call me eventually; then I could not withhold
an awkwardly broad smile

I would run the most of all
rinsing out my T-shirt in several waters
and although I would rarely receive a pass
when that happened suddenly there was a void around me

I would dribble into poetic forms
the shadows that multiplied around me
until the ball deserted me like a word
uttered in your sleep

often enough right in front of the goal
I would lose my motivation to strike the ball
although a few times I gave up looking for one
and the ball flew up to the spider
but I could pull this trick only in the rare moments
when I remembered to look at the sky
through the green of the trees

when I returned home it was already dark
I was soaking-wet again, feverish, aching all over,
alone, and vulnerable

but I would encourage myself
that if I made it out alive this time as well
I would never play
again



(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, pp. 72-73. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

in the space between your arms (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)


photo: Diana Popescu













I’d write in the space between your arms what lies rather on this side
of my own skin stretched under the milestone, the path
interrupted here and there by the jump over the rapid springs
to catch up with myself and meet my true nature

I will not lean my elbows against my own thought,
convinced that the roaring water will carry me together with your smile
thrown in like a life-saving rope over the abysses, I will only notch my escape
on the shore you now tread on with the fervor of discovery

growing apart from familiar things is not abandoning, just moving forward
on the arc of the circle that pulls us together like a child running
and revealing for his parents’ eyes what he is inside: insects, stones, and flowers
bravely emerging here and there under the footstep
that quickly draws them out of hiding

the jump leaves behind only the shadow, as it’s the only way
a sharp eye could throw out its net into blooming abysses;
things cling to the garments, they rise from their slumber
to remind you of what you did not know
about the nest forsaken at dawn



(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, p. 71. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

joi, 26 august 2010

together alone in the blue cup (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)


photo: Diana Popescu














On the edge of the war zone, people look for their hearts in the blinding solitude;
together alone they gather, crushing the grapes of each moment,
counting the roses that bloomed into the flesh, the hen with golden chicks.

Up in the peach-tree, the little girl laughs unhindered by the rapid-fire gunshots.
Mom begs her to come down, but she bites the juicy pulp, imitates the wind,
reads through her eyelashes the stories of the wandering clouds,
draws with her finger the birds circling in the air, spits out the kernel
looking at the tree that at the break of dawn will be sky-high;
under the metallic ra-ta-ta-tah, she melts in the blue cup
the colored dreams that make her cry.



(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, p. 70. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

miercuri, 25 august 2010

palimpsest (jam session Florin Caragiu and Aida Hancer, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)

















in the evenings we sweep the light off the streets
and the sorrow off the bodiless clothes in the store windows
we step firmly on the ground that turns softer and softer
like a flesh ready to carry along the bones
in an unprecedented start towards each of the silhouettes
struggling in the dark light in our memory
in which we learn to pinpoint the soft spots

as our life is a history that keeps rewriting itself
in the clumsiness of those possessed by an emptiness
they can’t fill up with what’s left of the body
after parting from the loved one

no, there is no need for us to be separated
as a hot sun would pour down
hurting my shadow over you and the other way around
the space for silence would ache as well
all these – an offense to every possible closeness
you’d better keep silent and put on another body
over the old one
drink myrrh, drink anything
be happy with the muses you have
from birth.
history is always hung in-between two store windows
not into the light

yet the only muse I know
is this very light gathered ray by ray from the ground,
spread into foils over the body from birth
and in-between the store windows
there are only the scales of the apocalypse
that slowly draws in our shadow

there is no light at the end of our tunnel
but a body worn over the shirt
in our march under the tallow candles
we conquer but the trees leaning over us
and the evenings when we untwisted death,
pulling it down the streets as if it were a witch
on its way to a God-reaching pyre
nothing could wash its melted wax silence off of us
nothing remained in the tallow inside us

it’s terrible not to be able to write on the wind
when your breath is burning by the gaze of an angel,
it’s a kind of writing that goes through you
leaving only the surface, the face that contains the world
like a glass you drink up –
the gift of blood

we will crush but one lightning between us
the backs of the fish will sense our fear
and they will bring to shore a Jonah with his feet wet

Jonah, can you hear the snowstorm on the sea?
the scales of the fish are covered in salt
nobody weeps on the upper step
on our crossed names
give me a place in your mornings broken by trade winds

the place is yours, I don’t know about the trade wind
it spins looking for gold on the road
but all it can find is an eagle’s cry
the water that’s been squeezed out from the corner of the shirt
a short spear
a tower

we do not leave the tunnel, but we drink it all in
to the bone of light,
to the sun nailed to our palms



(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, pp. 67-69. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

marți, 24 august 2010

Florin Caragiu and Mihai Caragiu: "Elements of Iconic Anthropology at Fr. Ghelasie Gheorghe and Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae")


Fresco painting (detail) by Fr. Ilie 














(Current Landmarks in the Dialogue between Science and Religion) [1]


Abstract: We consider Iconic Anthropology as a proper place for an integrative approach to theology and science. The triadological and iconological perspective emphasized in the works of Fr. Ghelasie Gheorghe and Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae is highly relevant for the Christian orthodox tradition. We apply it to indicate the insufficiency of some outstanding naturalist theories regarding the nature of mind and the problem of consciousness. In the same light we discuss the long debated problem of human freedom and natural law. The Christian gnoseology presents a double methodology in a unitary view, avoiding the temptation of a reductive monistic or dualist approach. To explain the level of integral movements of the soul in its undivided simplicity the discursive character of thinking does not suffice. The area of science is that of created energies and decomposable levels of reality. Science cannot give direct evidence on the soul itself, a realm which is beyond its domain of competence. Theology has as principal goal man's salvation in communion with God and its efforts have a holistic and liturgical, Eucharistic finality. But science is inseparable from theology as soul is inseparable from its movements and their partial reflections in the realm of multiple energies.

A. Introduction

At the turn of the twentieth century a Romanian Father has brought to light one of the most important synthesis of patristic theology, with prolifically generative implications as regards the dialogue between science and religion [2]. Hieromonk Ghelasie of Frăsinei (1944 2003) is a prominent representative and exponent of the Carpathian hesychast tradition.
The sheer scope and coherence of his mystical theological vision, the richness of associations and the accuracy of his comparative approaches to other lines of thought – traditional and modern, philosophical and scientific – are utterly impressive. His writings are indeed a promising panorama of the living Christian tradition in the present day world.
Fr. Ghelasie acknowledges the restraints that inevitably occur in the dialogue of science with religion on both sides: theologians and scientists. The first party is “afflicted by the fear of science which desacralizes the mystery”, while the latter “are afraid of and associate religion to mystification” [3].
Knowledge is presented from a Christian dialogical perspective, as an integral knowledge which allows the two distinct modes of knowledge to retain their specificity. Creation has an iconic and dialogic background on the divine support and in the orientation towards the participation at the divine mystery.
The fundamental communication is dialogic, and the physical causal relations remarked by science are reflections not of the being itself, but of its substantial (spiritual, personal) movements/ dialogical acts. The reasons of mind/ of the energetic field give information not about the soul/being, which remains to be known apophatically by communion in love, self giving, Eucharistic partaking. That means that reductive scientific or philosophical approaches that identify the soul with its energetic field and/or with the bodily icon of their union suffer from insufficiency when related to the integral/unified theological anthropology.
The dialogical character of knowledge is manifest on the level of the language of soul, as well as on the energetic level. Therefore, in a Christian sense, the relation between science and religion is indeed the expression of the unitary integrality of the Person and its relationships with God and the created world.
Starting from the revelation of the Holy Trinity, Father Ghelasie affirms the sheer equality and coexistence of mystery, knowledge (i.e. science) and language; of mystery, revelation/discovery and identification; of mysticism, metaphysics and theology. The theological defining does by no means represent a departure from the action of scientific knowledge, but on the contrary a further opening towards the integrality of the mystery of person and communion. The Trinitarian iconic perspective which, according to Father Ghelasie, is distinctively characteristic of the Christian vision – allows for the overcoming of the philosophical dualism in a critical yet not antagonistic approach to the relationship between science and religion.

B. Elements of Triadology

The starting point of Father Ghelasie’s approach is the Divine Revelation and its patristic comprehension. Ontologically speaking, his teachings are profoundly personalistic and focus heavily on triadology, starting from the triadic indication of the Divine Person in Itself and its trinitary opening beyond Itself. This triadological vision is closely related to, is intertwined with the 14th century hesychast vision of the integrality of being and energies synthesized by Saint Gregory Palama.
It is this very vision that is able to provide an answer to several important issues/problems that arise when philosophy and Christian mysticism and theology meet, namely:
How/ in what manner/ way can we indicate the dynamism of the being in itself as a living being without reducing the being to the impersonal abstract principle of an immobile/static unity?
How can we avoid conceiving of the energy as of a mechanical, automatic and impersonal emanation originating in the being?
What is the dynamic personalistic term that mediates the relationship between being and its energies in such a manner that it does not imply a composition in God?
How can we represent the relationship between being and hypostasis or person according to/ in accord, agreement with the Divine Revelation of the Trinity, so as to avoid monist or tritheistic tendencies?
In other words – how can we understand the integrality being energies as a dynamic living unity from a theological person oriented and communion oriented perspective, considering also its mystical fulfillment? Father Ghelasie offers from the very beginning a triadological approach to the Person. He literally updates, brings into actuality fundamental patristic distinctions by means of a unifying Trinitarian and iconic view. The Trinitarian representation of the Person disqualifies any attempt at representing being simply as an abstract and impersonal principle of unity.
In full agreement with the Orthodox Christian/Eastern Orthodox tradition, this perspective reveals the Origin of the Divinity in the Absolute Person, God the Father. The Person of the Father is in Himself a Trinity of (eternal) permanencies or integral divine modes which are essentially interrelated, interweaved and interworking, in interpenetration, beyond all attributes and qualities: Self Spirit Logos, Consciousness – Memory – Language, Peace – Movement Repose, Subject – Being – Self, Icon [Chip] Face – Likeness, Totality – Unity – Equality, Icon – Model – Prototype etc.
The Trinity of Divine Persons is presented as the ultimate absolute eternal opening of God the Father – Who is the Absolute Arche Icon, the Absolute Proto Icon or Hyper Icon. This very opening is absolutely realized from eternity in the Birth of the Son and the Proceeding of the Holy Spirit. The above mentioned triad of permanencies or integral modes – originating in God the Father – is bestowed upon the Son (through/with His Birth) and upon the Holy Spirit (through/with the Proceeding) fully and equally, in absolute terms and from eternity. This triad indicates what is common from eternity to the three divine Persons. Each Trinitary Person possesses this triad in His personal manner but in absolute Trinitary Communion. Thus the Trinity – beyond the idea of number – represents the ultimate fulfillment/realization/consummation of the Opening of the Person, of the Father Who is the absolute “Principle” of the Unity in God. Fr. Ghelasie emphasizes thus the full accord and reciprocal affirmation in God of Person and Trinity.
We do not run the risk of reducing the Being to an abstract, impersonal principle precisely by overtly/openly declaring the being a permanence of Person together with the consciousness and the language and an integral mode that finds its Trinitarian correspondence in the Holy Spirit, the Bearer/Conveyor of Grace and Movement within the Trinitarian interrelationships. Similarly, we escape the peril of identifying the terms “Being” and “Person”, precisely because the Being is considered a permanency, an integral mode that paradoxically contains within itself the whole Person. Due to this very association of Being and Movement in the Trinitarian communion – the Being is ultimately revealed as a “living Being”.
The Person is no longer regarded as a monadic singularity as such, for it gains a special dynamism. In God, the Person manifests by Itself and also within the Trinitary communion movements of permanencies or integral modes, which emanate the uncreated Divine Energies. Grace is equally characteristic of all the Persons of the Trinity. It is reflected, it is emanated by the movements of the Person’s integral modes as such, and within the interpersonal communion. The Energies are by no means simply impersonal emanations of a static immobile being; on the contrary, they are the reflection of the movements originating in a living Being, a Being that is in Itself alive. This is how the Trinitarian approach has managed to break through and find a path of mediation between these all too debated terms: ‘Being’ and ‘Energies’, by means of the Acts and Movements of the Person in Itself and “beyond” Itself in the absolute Divine Communion.
These divine acts/movements are indicated and explicated by the triad of love communion self offering. Between Being and Energies Father Ghelasie situates ‘the Act”. The energies originate in and emanate from the Act and return to the Act. As it is, etymologically speaking the word ‘energy’ (en ergon) means ‘(being) in work, in act’. As reflections of the Divine Act, the uncreated Divine Energies do not imply a composition within/in God, Who is fully present within/in His Energies. On the other hand, this vision is fundamentally supportive of the apophtism of the Person, which is mentioned in contemporary theology by theologians like Vasheslavtev and Staniloae. Thus the Mystery of the Person in Itself/ as such is not reduced to the energies of manifestation which describe strictly the movements and Acts of the Person. The Person is discoverable beyond mere energetic reasons by means of direct Communion. For the Person is to be apophatically discovered as love–communion–self offering by means of the movements and interrelated intertwined per¬manencies.
The Being as integral mode, as permanence of the Person is also fully resonant with the Mystery of Incarnation. The Son of God assumes in His own Hypostasis the mode of created existence/ the created mode of existence, that is, His Icon which is created in the integrality of Being (i.e. soul) and Energies (i.e. energetic body).
The divine Grace is itself presented triadically as information energy light, mind senses reason, will feeling thinking – all being essentially Divine. The Divine Persons, the Triad of the Person in itself and the movement energies are inseparable and in a constant/perpetual reciprocal/mutual affirmation/assertion, so that we cannot talk about a composition when it comes to describing the One Living God.

C. Elements of Iconic Anthropology

The anthropological transposition/translation of the revealed Mystery of the Trinity happens/unfolds in light of the revelation that man is created in the image and likeness of God and also in light of the Divine Incarnation. According to Saint Maxim the Confessor, the Incarnation is generally regarded/deemed as a Mystery of Creation and of the journey that the Creation embarks on in order to reach its transfiguration in the unity with God.
Father Ghelasie presents the Creation of the world from a liturgical perspective as to the (atemporal) Trinitarian counsel about the creation before the very birth of time/act of creation. The Creation is the Gift that the Son presents to the Father. The Blessing of the Father bestows Being onto the Creation and the Breath of the Holy Spirit confirms the Gift of the Word, it endows this Gift with life.
The Creation bears the seal of the Divine Act, which is im¬printed in its very Being through the Divine word and Divine breath of life. The Divine Icon of God indeed marks man’s own Being, for man is the creature that allows the creation to be united with God in Christ. The seal of the Divine Icon and Words represents the inescapable participative condition of the ontology of creation. By means of this seal the created reality is grafted on the Mystery of the Son of Man, which the Son of God takes upon Himself/assumes in the very divine counsel about creation. The duality of God and Creation is under no circumstances a duality of contrary realities, but an iconic duality that is liturgically oriented.
The Act of Creation initiates a dialogue and an iconic orientation that encouragingly guides man towards participation, an invitation addressed to the entire Creation to participate in and partake of the Divine Life. The very foundation of the Creation is therefore dialogic. The created existence is essentially a participative, cooperative answer to the Divine Act of Creation which ontologically marks its identity. Hitherto, according to the Christian vision, created life discloses its answer of growth in the “unaltered identity of being, according to its species” (Saint Maximus, Ambigua), “retaining its species through continuous birth till the end of the world” (Saint Basil the Great, Homilies to Hexaimeron). The created existence is governed by the Mystery of Filiation, it translates this Mystery of Divine Filiation into the created mode of existence.
Father Ghelasie transposes the distinction between Being and Energies to an anthropological level as unitary integrality of soul and energetic body (reflections of movements of the soul). The Soul is explicated by the triads: consciousness memory language, I spirit word, consciousness being self, rest movement repose, icon face likeness [4]. The direct communication of the Soul happens through integral movements such as love communion self offering, love trust/hope faith.
The energetic body is characterized by the following triads: information energy physical mass, informational energies vital energies accumulative energies, mind feelings reason, will senses thinking, individuality form manifestation. Thus, the energetic body presents a triple rationality configured by the mental or informational reason, the reason of the senses and the reason of organic functions.
Father Ghelasie defines the Iconic Body (Trup) as the icon of interweaved/twined and interworking soul and its energetic body (corp). The iconic body partakes of the Eucharistic condition; it is the wedding garment of the merging/interpenetration between being and its energies, of the union of man with God and the entire creation. The iconic body has three centres: the cerebral centre, the centre of the heart and the abdominal centre.
Firstly, consciousness and mind are merging (without confusion, in a state of interpenetration) in the cerebral centre. The heart is then the centre of merging/interpenetration between memory and vital energies, and also between spirit and feelings. Next, in the abdominal centre, the language of the soul merges (without confusion or separation) with the language of the organic functions. Finally, the heart is the centre of the integral union of the soul with God, as the spirit is the bearer of movement and energies.
Thus the energies find their repose only in the move¬ment of the spirit which “projected” them/from which they come out. The Hesychast Prayer enacts the return of the energies to the movement of the spirit by means of constantly addressing Christ. In fact it is He Who first calls for us, Who purifies us and thus retrieves and restores us to our Eucharistic condition.
The fall of man has brought about movements that are contrary to his iconic orientation, contrary to the Icon/Image of God in man. These projected on to negative energies that have generated an additional/subsidiary/supplementary reality. Thus the reality of the soul was obscured, smothered and camouflaged and the subconscious arose [5].
The break with God is thus readable in the split self of man, while the diminished Eucharistic condition is reflected in the death of the body. This post lapsarian condition extended and thus afflicted the entire creation. The “garments of skin” are symptomatic of the present time condition of the world where the entropic effects of the fall are manifest. But at the same time, these “garments of skin” are provisions of the Divine Plan that limit and control the effects and consequences of the sin and help us reach the eschatological border of the transfiguration of the world in the unity with God.
The Creation is in a state of perpetual suffering and is bewailing its long destiny of waiting for the time when it can again partake of the glory of the Sons of God, as we read in the Scriptures.

D. Remarks

Gnoseologically speaking, the iconic anthropology is characterized as the triad mysticism metaphysics theology.
A possible parallel vision in cultural history belongs to Jacques Maritain who developed a theory of metaphysical knowledge which postulates:
– the dia noetical intellect (knowledge through the senses)
– the peri noetical intellect (knowledge through signs)
– the ana noetical intellect (knowledge of the trans intelligible which first reveals the metaphysical and then the supernatural, but never reaches the knowledge of God).
Yet spiritual apotheosis is not described as a metaphysical experience but as a mystical one.
Owing to his special approach to the structure of the human being, Father Ghelasie’s conception embodies an iconic anthropology and an iconic integralism that reveal the iconic body (Trup) as the very Icon of the soul and body integrality. This iconic body is the axiological centre of spiritual life, being described as the altar of the merging (interpenetration between) soul and body, as the altar of the cosmic Eucharisty.
The dialogic character specific to Hesychast mysticism is based on triadological ontology and the ontological Eucharistic condition, as possibility of Eucharistic realization provided by the plan and economy of the Incarnation.
Axiologically speaking, the human being is not coordinated by spiritual or material values but by the Eucharistic value which is proclaimed as most integrative of all values. Thus, the role of the liturgical ritual is revealed as the participative dialogical fulfillment of the Eucharistic condition.
Another major issue – that this theology undertakes to discuss – is the idea of Filiation. The essential order of existence is based on love and filiation, not just on hierarchical rationality. This is why the theism presented by this theology possesses an irreducible Christ centered character.

E. Iconic Anthropology versus Naturalist Scientific Theories on the Nature of Mind and the Problem of Consciousness

In his approach to the nature of the human mind and that of the consciousness, Father Ghelasie marks a clear cut distinction between the two, mind and consciousness. Within the iconic anthropology that he presents, consciousness indicates an integral mode, a permanency of the reality of the Soul; while the mind indicates the informational mode of the energetic reflections. As it is, consciousness and mind interpenetrate in the brain which is a centre of the iconic body (trup). This iconic body interweaves the soul and the energies emanating from its movement.
After the Fall, the anti iconic movements literally split the energetic reflections, which hereafter foreground/evidence an antagonistic logic of contrary relations. On the other hand, the soul and the consciousness of the Divine Icon, the level of divine communion gradually withdraws in the background. The Soul grows blind, the additional reality deprives the Soul of its original sight and this marks the rise of the subconscious.
In the following, we shall comparatively approach some of the most important theories in the philosophy of consciousness referring to the relationship between consciousness and the material, energetic body as examined by scientific research.
Causally speaking, the theology presented by Father Ghelasie, fundamentally departs from epiphenomenalism in many respects, for epiphenomenalism postulates that consciousness is just an epiphenomenon of neuro physical processes, the consciousness having in fact no influence, no impact whatsoever on the phenomena of organic origin.
The conscious voluntary act, for instance, is not regarded as a free decision that originates the act of the subject, but is merely considered a mysterious interior illumination that passively accompanies nervous processes as such. As it were, these latter nervous processes are deemed to be the true driving forces behind our acts.
All in all, the arbiter of our consciousness is literally discarded as a mere illusion but still, the material level is completely irrelevant to our decisions. Hermann Ebbinghaus – a German philosopher and associativist psychologist (1850 1909) – suggestively explains away the epiphenomenalist conception regarding consciousness, by use of a metaphor. Our inner spiritual life, that is, our subjectivity is compared to a spectator who passively attends a play without interfering in the flow of remarks and gestures performed on stage [6].
The epiphenomenon is defined as an accessory phenomenon, as a superfluous unessential addition that accompanies the rise/production of an ontologically superior phenomenon. Deprived of autonomy, the epiphenomenon represents a secondary reality that suffers from an utter lack of authenticity.
Iconic anthropology is radically different from epiphenomenalism due to the following fundamental distinctions, namely:
– the Soul is ontologically superior, for the Soul is the originator of the material energetic movements, while energy as such is a derivate reality
– the voluntary act is a free decision of the subject. From the perspective of existential dynamics, the iconic personalism is essentially a theology of the act, for the personal act or movement initiates all energetic manifestation.
As compared to emergentist evolutionist theories, consciousness does not appear on a superior level of development. On the other hand, one cannot altogether refute the causal relationships that occur between the spiritual level and the corporal energetic level.
The difficulty of clearly identifying these causal relationships (soul energetic body) resides mainly in the discursive untranscribability of the triadic modes of the soul. The direct mode of communication that characterizes the soul fundamentally transcends any capacity of representation that the discursive reason holds. Anyway it is not a mere abstraction, while one experiences it in a concrete way in the interpersonal communion. The corporal energetic reflections – as studied by science – inevitably refer to the movements of the soul, providing rational information and existential indications about them.
The unobjectivisable character of the reality of the soul does not necessarily imply an absolute apophatism, because the energetic reality is not parallel to the reality of the soul, but in a constant state of interpenetration and reciprocal assertion/affirmation.
The symbolising and naming performed by the discursive language can only hint at the reality of the soul and its participations/implications. To put it in other words, the theological language reveals the iconic orientation, and at the same time represents the altar of the soul to soul dialogue and communion beyond partial reasons/insufficient reasoning.
In this sense, the vision of the iconic body as intertwined and interworking soul and energetic body, discloses the structuralist scientific excursus/method as utterly inseparable from the participative dialogical dimension belonging to the reality of the soul. The separation motivated by methodological criteria is a moment of the abstract thinking, but in the unique concrete unity of the person, the reality of the soul and the reality of its energetic reflections are inseparable, in interpenetration and reciprocal affirmation.
As regards the dualistic perspective, iconic anthropology is incompatible with a dualism of substance. It is true that dualism does not recognize the primordial character of matter over consciousness, matter being considered autonomous. The iconic theology though, does not regard the energies as self standing, but as reflections of the movements originating in the soul. Consequently, we cannot talk about a substance dualism, and neither can we talk about a pantheistic emanationism, for the energetic body is endowed with an irreducibly real consistency, which is generated by the real and irreducible movements of a living being.
Similarly, the iconic body partakes of the Eucharistic condition that ultimately reaches the Liturgical Union of the Creation with God. Although the Fall resulted in a diminishing and weakening of the Eucharistic condition – bringing about the all encompassing mortality that afflicts and ails the entire Creation – the communion with the Risen Body of Christ is the prerequisite of reaching the eternal/ever lasting liturgical realization/fulfillment of the iconic body.
In the same time, the Christian viewpoint cannot subscribe to a conceptual dualism, because the properties, features and definitions that this dualism performs – although being supported by the movements of the soul – are scientifically distinguishable in the field of partial reasons, as far as the energetic reflections are concerned.
As to the materialist monist theories, we can say that these theories recognize the specificity of the consciousness as unsubstantial product of the matter. On the other side, the Christian iconic ontology presents the soul as substantial, and the energies as not possessing their own ontological substance: they are not a self standing, autonomous principle [7].
Nevertheless, we cannot talk about an idealist ontological monism, because – from a personalist iconic perspective – reality intertwines in its ontological structure both ‘principles’: both the spirit and the matter, that is, its energies of movement.
Behaviourism and functionalism represent other structuralist attempts at reducing the mystery of the soul to the level of energetic manifestations.
Behaviourism is a psychological conception developed by James Watson (1913) as a reaction to introspectionist psychology. Behaviorism considers that the proper object of psychology is solely the study of external behaviour, and thus this approach literally eliminates consciousness. This current promotes the compared analysis of human and animal reactions and their response to stimuli, by studying the motor, glandular and verbal behaviour.
The reductionist study of these schemes of behaviour, sym¬ptomatic of this so called objective psychology, presents a limited spectrum of approach, for it basically refers to the distinctive semi mechanical workings describing the schemes of behaviour and therefore overlooks altogether the personal reaction and the uniqueness of the person.
As opposed to the psychologist interpretation performed by logic, logicism – with its main representatives Husserl and Lukasiewics – argues that the forms of correct/proper thinking are autonomous and do not depend on the psychic reality. These forms have an objective value and a sui generis mode of existence that is suspended in an ideal atemporality. Basically, for the logicist interpretation it is of not relevance whether these forms of thinking reach the level of consciousness, whether they are right or wrong, true or false, whether they are present or absent.
According to the Hesychast mysticism, the improper perception of the Logos does not necessarily imply its inexistence, its non existence or its subjective and purely immanent existence. On the other hand, the major difference between logicism and the iconic perspective refers to the fact that in the logicist view the ‘objectivity’ of the ideal forms exists as such, whereas the iconic anthropology holds the ‘objectivity’ of the divine Logoi – which supports and closely inform the forms and rationality of the Creation – as enhypostatic in character, indicating a real personal existence in the Divine Logos. Therefore, in the Person of the Divine Logos and in God’s own plan there is a foundation for the ‘objectivizing’ of the human logos.
In other words, the logoi of created forms belong to the Divine Logos which indicates to the created reason the level/degree of objectivization. And this is precisely why the rationality of the Creation is transcendentally oriented. This rationality aims at the direct communion with God in the Divine Embodied Logos, Jesus Christ.
In the Program of the XVI th World Congress of Philosophy (Düsseldorf, 1978), one of the principal themes of debate was: the rationality of science and other types of rationality. With this occasion one has brought a criticism regarding the scientist approach.
There have been stressed the limits of scientific rationality, characterized by, as an outstanding invited speaker Jean Ladrière affirmed: “a process of systematical growth based on procedures, with local character, for controlling the validity. Either in the formal sciences or in the empirical sciences, the validation has an operatorial na¬ture. Therefore, in last analysis, the two specific features of the scientific rationality are its local and operatorial character [8].
With regard to positivism, which includes the early physicalism of type Carnap, one has made the hypothesis that it “identifies veracity with verifiability and truth with the means of its verification” [9]. This interpretation indicates the elusion of the objective status of truth. “The neopositivism has adhered constantly at a subjectivist relativism, based on formalist and conventionalist arguments” [10].
In the work “Der Logische Aufbau der Welt”, Rudolf Carnap affirms significantly: „The conception that what is being given constitutes in fact my own impreessions is common to solipsism and the theory of formation. The last one and the transcendental idealism assert the thesis that all objects of knowledge are constructions and as such they are objects of knowledge as logic forms [11].
For the iconic ontology, the construction of reality in consciousness has a precise sense: it refers to the forms existing in a close relationship with the ontology of the person or the identity understood as icon (bearing the divine seal). The logical forms, concepts and ideas are only partial reasons and only the axiological élan of consciousness can comprehend/include them in a round/holistic meaning.
The terminological distinctions performed throughout this presentation call for a separate but similar approach to the relationship between mind and the physical body. Yet all so far mentioned considerations easily apply to this latter relationship of mind and body, because the mind and the organic functionality are two equal interpenetrating modes that originate in the movements of the soul.

F. Several conclusions

We must necessarily mention that iconic ontology cannot agree with a naturalist ontology that behaves reductively in respect to the Divine Mystery. The Seal of the Divine Icon of God is deeply imprinted in the human being and essentially sustains its existence.
This is why the project of regaining the direct knowledge and communication of the soul calls for the restora¬tion of the Eucharistic condition which is afflicted by the reality of the sin. This restoration is the province [12] of the Eastern Orthodox theology and mysticism. The methodology required by this spiritual science is a special one.
This is the path of purification, illumination and deification of man in the gradually arising unity with God in Christ. The measuring device employed in this “science of the soul” is man himself, purified of all passions and enlightened by Grace, united with God. The further development of the method and of the measuring device occurs with the growth in Christ and with the personal attempt to reach a state of sinlessness. This is why, in relation to the soul, the Saint is the experienced “scientist”, and the Holy Tradition is the adequate space of the scientific approach to the Divine Revelation.
The mystery of the Creation is closely intertwined and interrelated with the Divine Mystery. The energetic reflections of the soul are more than simple illusionary emanations; they are radiating movements of the soul, the aura of the being as dialogical and liturgical being. Created Life is the participative answer founded in the Divine Seal.
The iconic anthropology does not overlook the dialogic dimension/pattern present in the created beings. The Creation is itself triadologically configured in the triad man angels nature. The interpenetration within this triad discloses the Creation as a trinitary dialogic scene, which is oriented towards union and transfiguration in the Resurrected Body of Christ. The relationship between the cons¬ciousness and the body cannot be separated from the interrelations that occur on the dialogic level, and this relationship goes beyond the province of natural scientific research.
As the iconic ontology reads, the physical world is not a causally closed system, for it is fully compatible with an epistemology that is open towards the Divine Transcendent and towards the reality of the soul, which is itself transcendental as compared to the reality of energetic reflections. The level of these energetic reflections originates in the movements of the soul.
The Seal of the Divine Icon is the principle of the unity of the soul, while the soul is the principle of the unity of the energetic reflections. The unity of level of energetic reflections refers back to a founding model, a Divine transcendent model (as support of synergy) – the Divine Words and the Divine Icon/Image – and also a transcendental created model – the soul. In their urge to put together a self sufficient explicative system, natural sciences have looked for a principle of unity that is strictly immanent in the physical world and in the energetic reflections that it is studying.

G. The arrow of time

A very important aspect of Fr. Ghelasie's thought is the distinction between the “big bang of the creation” and what he calls the "big bang of the fall". Indeed, he repeatedly pointed out to the importance of the fact that the effects of the fall were not only felt by human beings, but in fact the impact was truly cosmological, the differences between the pre lapsarian and post lapsarian universes being so great that the discursive reason (dianoia) of the fallen man finds impossible to apply concepts rooted in the entities and processes of the fallen universe in order to get a “realistic” glimpse on the pre lapsarian world. Indeed, the fall of man marked the entrance of death into the world (Romans 5:12), and a world without death is out of the grasp of the unaided human reason.
However, in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition, it is the Incarnation of Christ which made possible a contemplation of the mysteries of the pre-lapsarian world: through the spiritual mediation originating in our participation in Life of the Church, dianoia and nous (the spiritual intellect) are harmonized. In the life of the Church, time itself has a liturgical character: one then may assume that while there was “time” in the pre lapsarian world (and certainly there were the days of the creation), the pre lapsarian time was a liturgical time: a time of communion, togetherness, praise and worship of the Holy Trinity. And together with time, the character of the whole pre lapsarian universe is liturgical: all of its processes, movements, acts and gestures are nothing but Liturgy in an extended sense; the “pre- lapsarian physics” itself has a liturgical mode (tropos).
In this Cosmic Liturgy a central role is definitely played by the human being, the crown of the creation, created in the image and likeness of God. That made the fall of man impact the whole Cosmos.
After the fall, the death (which can be related to entropy) which entered the universe transformed the mode (tropos) of time itself. The post lapsarian time (that is, the time as we know it, and which is studied in physics and cosmology) is a “stochastic time”, in the sense that the “arrow of time” (term introduced by Eddington in 1927) is linked with entropy: following that arrow leads to in¬creasing randomness.
Moreover, the inherent randomness in the quantum rea¬li¬ty suggests that randomness and increasing entropy are cha¬racteristic features of the post lapsarian universe. While the actual event of the fall may remain eternally hidden from our perception, the pre lapsarian liturgical universe did not disappear! [13] It still “is” (and can be contemplated, through the Grace of God, in Life of the Church).
Missing this comprehension, the hypothesis of natural evolution was promoted as an explicative principle that would relatively provide a unified vision and understanding of the physical world as a causally closed system [14]. The patristic view on the other hand, argues that the kinship between the various forms of Creation does not reside in the gradual evolution and transformation of these forms one into another; the common key is to be found in the Seal of the Divine Act of Creation that bestows upon the entire Creation the identity, the Icon, the Logos of Filiation [15].
Due to the emphasized dialogic/participative iconic identity, the Orthodox Christian perspective does not appear compatible with Darwinist hypotheses about the transformation of species, but with micro “evolution”, i.e., with the growing diversity and adaptation of living beings within their specific identity and general interrelation.
The last century has demonstrated several times how the objectifying tendency of science may sometimes lead to excessive and over wrought interpretations that trespass beyond its competence. This deficiency may cause existential crises, the splitting of life and culture, the inability to reconcile the scientific content and its abstract implications with the reality of a unifying (concrete) act/event of communion.
The iconic ontology cannot agree with a naturalist ontology that behaves reductively with respect to the Divine Mystery. The project of regaining the direct knowledge and communication of the soul calls for the restoration of the Eucharistic condition which is afflicted by the reality of the sin. The methodology required by this spiritual science is the path of purification, illumination and deification of man in the gradually arising unity with God in Christ.

H. Natural law and spiritual freedom in the conception of Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae

Father Stăniloae is the most renowned Romanian theologian. He is one of the founders of neopatristic current in theology. In his „Dogmatic Theology” (vol. 1) he approaches the problem of natural law and spiritual freedom, a question long debated in science and philosophy. In accord with the doctrine on uncreated logoi of St. Maximus the Confessor, he affirms the existence of a correspondence between the malleable rationality of nature and the human capacities [16].
The human hypostasis brings nature to realization on his spiritual and liturgical way toward the union with God. Nature’s realization itself depends on the realization of man’s vocation as priest of creation, involving „a responsibility toward the human community and God” [17].
One of the most interesting modern issues concerns the possibility to conceive in a scientific way the reconciliation between the deterministic or random character of the laws of physics and man’s freedom or power of choice [18].
Fr. Stăniloae expresses at his turn not simply the human capacity to transcend the determinism of natural laws but also a kind of malleability of the natural realm adapted to man’s action. The natural laws allow the exercise of man’s freedom that actualizes and brings to fulfilment nature’s virtualities [19], so that a key word is their inseparability [20].
Man has in his own body the evidence of this compatibility between spirit and nature [21]. There is a kind of iconic hierarchy in which the higher level and the lower level are in a reciprocal affirmation [22]. They form together an iconic body in which elevation of lower level has as correlative the backing of the higher level by the lower level. The differences between human involvement and nature’s flow is affirmed together with the relation of non contradiction given ontologically [23].
More than that, Fr. Stăniloae affirms the solidarity and continuity of man and nature, an extended relation of spirit and body [24]. Nature has an anthropic orientation and a liturgical dimension. It is God’s gift to man which is returned with man’s self offering offering to God in the view of final transfiguration. It is a place of the all embracing formula of synergy: “The synergy is the general formula of God’s action in the world” [25].
In that sense, Fr. Stăniloae remarks in man a “transcending of nature that is neither his own product nor a mere product of nature” [26]. This transcending involves man’s creation as a living icon of God in the mystery of divine economy; realized in the likeness with God, man will bring nature its partaking to the blaze of God’s sons, as Scripture says.
One of the principal points in the debate is that a (deterministic) approach of natural sciences objectifies reality. Affirming the non dualistic iconic ontology of human being, Fr. Stăniloae remarks a certain “non objectivity of the body. According to Christian faith, the body is in a special way a partaker to the interiority and life of the spirit, going beyond the biological, physical and chemical level” [27].
The transcendental vocation of the spirit meets the incarnational eucharistic vocation of the body in a unique iconic integrality [28]. The body is more than a mechanical structure acting through automatic processes. Even if life’s fundament is spiritual, spirit and body are interpenetrated realities that are in a paradoxical relation of reciprocal interiority [29].
Fr. Stăniloae affirms the mystery of the body as “partaker at spirit as subject”, in terms that point to its Eucharistic condition that transcends mere materiality [30]. The relation spirit body is thought in terms of an iconic hierarchy and reciprocal actualization [31].
The personal soul body integrality seen in the realm of divine economy and in the world’s dialogic (inter relational) texture is emphasized. The distinction between the actual condition affected by death and the eschatological resurrected condition is decisive for a right understanding. One could already locally contemplate certain indications and evidences about the eschatological condition in the veritable divine miracles [32] .


Notes:

[1] We sincerely thank Mrs. Alice Butnar for her most valuable translation work.
[2] For the patristic grounds and actual relevance of the iconic anthropology see our study „Mistica Iconică, o Viziune Unificatoare” in: Ierom. Ghelasie Gheorghe, „Scrieri Isihaste”, Platytera, Bucureşti, 2006, p. 316 415.
[3] Ierom. Ghelasie Gheorghe, Medicina Isihastă, Axul Z, Axis Mundi, Bucureşti, 1992, p. 9. Fr. Ghelasie remarks further: “Mystery resides in the very Revelation of the Holy Spirit and in the Christ centered Iconic Language. As it is, in the Christian view this calls for an intertwining between Religion and Science, Soul and Body, Mystery and Revelation, Divine Being and Uncreated Energies. Yet, Christian Science is not a syncretistic mix up but an Equal Dialogue, in co existing but also individual ways. Christianity is not a Religious or Philosophical System, but an ever Opening and Revealing Vision. The revealed Christian Dogma is not a closed System but a Defining in Opening. The Christian Mode of Knowledge is an Opening Discovering in its Defining. It is a Mystery manifest in Different Modes of Defining which brings in Evidence all the more the Mystery as a Mystery” (idem).
[4] As concerns the theology of the Holy Trinity, Fr. Ghelasie distinguishes the triad of permanencies or integral modes of the Person from the Divine Hypostases/Persons which have it in common. The Son of God and the Holy Spirit are receiving it from the Father through their Birth and respectively Proceeding from eternity. This explains and avoids the modalist or tritheistic confusions/errors.
[5] We mentioned above some important aspects of the iconic anthropology developed by Fr. Ghelasie in: Ierom. Ghelasie Gheorghe, Memoriile unui Isihast, vol. I, Platytera, Bucureşti, 2006, see for ex. p. 18 20, 27. Terminological clarifications with details and implications for the hesychast practice could be also found in: Ierom. Ghelasie Gheorghe, Scrieri Isihaste, Platytera, Bucureşti, 2006.
[6] Essai de psychologie, Paris, Payot, 1930, p. 202.
[7] Richard Swinburne affirms the irreducibility of the mental events with respect to the physical descriptions, distinguishing between quantifiable and non quantifiable variations. Ηe observes that at the background of the integrative process that is characteristic for the advance of science lies the assumption that different branches of study have the same subject matter. Right this assumption makes unlikely, in Swinburne’s view, to explain in a physicalist view the mental events (Richard Swinburne, On Mind Body Dualism, Interview with Science and Religion News (2006), http://users.ox.ac.uk/~orie0087/framesetpdfs.shtml, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford).
[8] in vol.: Filosofia şi concepţiile despre lume, Caiet documentar 3, U.B. 1979, p. 123.
[9] I. S. Norski, Sovremenîi pozitivizm, Moscova, 1961, p. 302. Stephen Barr calls the claim that quantum theory is incompatible with materialism the London Bauer thesis and presents The London Bauer Argument in Brief (Stephen Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana, p. 232).
[10] Ştefan Georgescu, Epistemologie, E.D.P., Bucureşti, 1978, p. 81.
[11] Weltkreisverlag, Berlin, 1928, pp. 248 249.
[12] province = area of special knowledge, interest, responsibility.
[13] Considering as a distinctive property of time “to be in a flux leading to novelty and to the endless unfolding of the reality of the world” Alexei Nesteruk discusses the attempts of Prigogine and Penrose to explain entropy, the expansion of the universe and the arrow of time. Considering flows of correlations in place of binary correlations, Penrose links the irreversibility of time to boundary conditions that, seen through the “patristic eyes”, “point towards the logos of Creation”. The implications of man’s fall are not discussed in this emergentist context, but Nesteruk affirms along with some theological implications that “the role of the future in the sustenance of time, as its creation from the kingdom, can be articulated only through an appeal to ecclesial and liturgical experience” (Alexei V. Nesteruk, Light from the East, Theology, Science and the Eastern Orthodox Tradition, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2003, p. 166, 169, 177).
[14] Nesteruk observes that “the extended but still monistic scientific substantialism is not able to detect that the ontological basis of the world is beyond the world (…) In order to justify the inference from the world to God and to make it a useful instrument in the science religion dialogue, one should adopt a different methodological ap¬proach”. Breaking “the monistic trend and its view on the world”, this approach should fit the methodology of the “theological monodualism” with its “relational ontology” (Ibid., p. 97).
[15] The created existence is essentially a participative, cooperative answer to the Divine Act of Creation through the Divine Logos which ontologically marks its identity. Hitherto, according to the Christian vision, created life discloses its answer of growth in the “unaltered identity of being, according to its species” (Saint Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua), “retaining its species through continuous birth till the end of the world” (Saint Basil the Great, Homilies to Hexaimeron). The created existence is governed by the Mystery of Filiation, translating the Mystery of Divine Filiation into the created mode of existence.
[16] Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae, Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă, I, EIBMBOR, Bucureşti, 1996, p. 247.
[17] idem.
[18] Stephen Barr brought into light in a recent book the scientific debate on the possibility that quantum mechanics, with its probabilistic indeterminist approach, allows free will. The laws of physics, says he, “must be flexible enough that more than one outcome is possible in a particular situation: for free will to be possible, laws of physics must have the indeterminacy built into them. The key point is that quantum indeterminacy allows free will, it does not produce it.” (Stephen Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana, p. 179).
[19] Fr.Dumitru Stăniloae, Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă, I, p. 249.
[20] “Nature is structured such that there is place for (allows) human intervention that transcends its precise laws. These laws are in a way completed by the intervention of human freedom. The human sense of existence combines with the exterior nature, fulfilling it in a way that makes impossible a separation. A separation can be made only in an abstract level, imagined by man’s spirit”, ibid., p. 248.
[21] The modern science agrees with this reconciling between personal freedom and natural law and the picture of a “interwoven texture of Matter, Life, and Soul”, as Hermann Weyl commented in 1931 the implications of quantum theory (apud: Stephen Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith, p. 184).
[22] “The model of this completion is the symbiosis between the spiritual life, with its fullness of conscious thinking and sensibility, and the physical chemical laws of the body”, Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae, Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă, I, p. 249.
[23] ibid., p. 248.
[24] ibid., p. 249. John Polkinghorne traces a kind of non reductive imagery of multi level explanation, distinguishing clock like type from cloud like type systems. He applies this for distinguishing an energetic field from a mere mechanistic physical system. He distinguishes further a fallacy that lies in the deterministic interpretation of the words „dependent on”: „We can admit that thoughts are dependent on the neural substrate in the sense that, without it (or something equivalent) we presumably cannot think, but this does not mean «dependent on» in the sense of «determined by»” (Polkinghorne Q & A, http://www.starcourse.org/jcp /qanda.html#Meteor). Of course, living bodies cannot be reduced at cloud like non living systems, as their energies arise from the participative movements of their living being.
[25] Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae, Teologia Dogmatică Ortodoxă, I, p. 256.
[26] ibid., p. 250.
[27] ibid., p. 251. Also: „In the body, the rationality acquires a particular complexity, owing to the spiritual richness that permeates it. At its turn, the rationality of the spirit itself actualizes itself (comes into actuality) in a complexity of great refinement and subtlety, in its action on the body”, idem.
[28] ibid., p. 251.
[29] ibid., p. 252.
[30] ibid. p. 259.
[31] “Man’s body cannot be understood without the spirit that organized and penetrated it combining the reasons of the body through which spirit’s reasons are manifested. The body is continuously adapted to the spirit, and is imprinted by spirit. The body is the first reserve of innumerable material contingent possibilities. The spirit actualizes them through correspondent spiritual possibilities able to be actualized. But without the body, soul’s possibilities couldn’t be actualized. (…) the body also has a contribution to soul’s formation: it gives to the soul its own seal”, ibid., p. 252 253.
[32] Fr. Stăniloae develops an idea of St. Maximus the Confessor, that “miracles represent a renewal of the mode (tropos) in which the human nature’s reason is accomplished, or of nature in general, but not its alteration. This, there is no contradiction between the created nature and the powers of God, that brings to realization His creation, as there is no contradiction between nature and what is superior to nature (ibid., p. 256, apud: Ambigua, P. G., vol. 91, col. 1341). The miracles are a local coming into evidence of the divine action that in the eschatology times will pervade and transfigure the actual condition. This will happen in a way that brings a much higher adaptation and transparency of laws to the full realization of the personal inter communication (ibid., p. 257).

(English translation: Alice Butnar)

Paper published in the volume Ierom. Ghelasie Gheorghe, „Medicina Isihastă” („The Hesychast Medicine”), Platytera Publishing House, 2007, pp. 271-301)

Now what? (writings, jam session Florin Caragiu and Aida Hancer, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)


photo: Elena Popa












1.

do you recall
back when I crawled up inside you
for nights
fearing
the wolves howling outside
my head and your toes described
a different kind of sky
when you breathe
you set up a new trap for me
how could I have possibly written this love poem
if I hadn’t seen that you fall too
just like me
and rise back up
from an earth loop
again you inhabit a leaf until I grow tired of being upset
and I start writing


2.

sometimes I forget a vertebra inside you
you throw me earth from your gardens
through this opening
while hopping over obstacles
with the comforting alienation of a piece of paper
pinned to the sky in one corner
now I know that rolling over
is a struggle from within
that detours the fear of not finding our bodies
in the dark
I can’t forget/ no, I can’t forget the nights that leaked from our joints
onto our snow-hardened eyes
nor the falls stirred by the desire
for the apparition of he who is waiting to catch you
as the empty spot inside me
gathers your waste of air
again my death
is as old as your life


3.

I am what you say I am
with your vertebra inside me - a circle of life
inside the circle of life
a smaller circle of salt
in the salt, your footsteps

don’t hit me with earth
earth is dead
and our muscles tight
like a Queen of the Night
a mute man follows another mute man. how old are they altogether?


4.

the earth is a vowel of your name
left outside long ago
back when we used to break up skies dyed in red
with the hard pointed tip of sleep
between us there was only a piece of wood
empty on the inside
through which we blew light over the waters

and you/ how you carry me so far away
amongst living things waiting
for me to give them a name and the tamarisk flowers/
one of them touched your chest
and morning broke


5.

you don’t know when morning breaks
in my chest
that’s why I have fingernails and soul and ribs
for you to see
how I bloom inside
and wear a blooming skin
on the inside
carrying you in the morning
walking you through the dew in my chest

passing through wood
light blooms as well


6.

your face works through the wood arched over the world,
time is a strip you tear into pieces
big enough for me to tie my body to my soul
when I bleed from missing you –
a free fall, a swinging until
flesh turns to a steam
that doesn’t dissipate into the mouths of beasts

and yet the rencounter is a flame
we step into
one death poorer



(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, pp.63-66. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

luni, 23 august 2010

earth and water (jam session Florin Caragiu and Dana Banu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)


photo: Elena Popa














every morning I look for the earth
I write about the tenderness of light and then go silent
one gesture closer to the sun
we toss about the never-awaited coming
one line farther away from the edge of the world
today we shall not speak about the semi-darkness
lonely as we are, smiling at the transparencies
time is the sparkle in which I read your restlessness
the game creates this surprising trajectory we escape from
by testing the worry detached from our garments
when the clearness of the presence loses every stable spot
in the dance of the moment of fear and beauty
we will recognize each other by the state of throwing ourselves
upon the rock whiter than the halos of dreams
we draw every footstep in the mirror
the free bird of the unknown takes us traveling to the sky
the waters will open up when we eventually get
closer to ourselves

to the west the trees are in bloom



(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, p. 61. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

shapes (jam session Florin Caragiu and Dan Cârlea, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)


photo: Elena Popa














the most beautiful poems are written
after poets finish their lines
and lie face-down arms stretched out
on the rug

the ceiling turns a translucent blue like a sky
impossibly close
they don’t even realize when the room fills with a smoke
clearer than air

they wake up on the burning rug
and cover it with their bodies till the flame goes out

there is only a heart-shaped hole
left in the floor
inside them a cross-shaped void
resting place
for God and the world

locked in an embrace



(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, p. 61. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

duminică, 22 august 2010

Two at the Apple Core (jam session Florin Caragiu and Dan Cârlea, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)


















It was chilly. God was walking around with that look
we never knew where it came from
it was not overwhelming our senses
not even as much as the evening light

the air had frozen, yet not all the way down to us

a flame was rustling at the resurrection end of a tomb
deserted by the living

let’s put the apple back together: you - your half, me - my half,
like two skies - those skies we live in-between,
one called earth

two at the apple core



(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, p. 60. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

Alephs (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)


photo: Andreea Mureşan




















when a spider weaves its web and you tear it down,
it patiently and carefully redoes it...
if you tear it down several times in a row, it will make it again,
but with obvious flaws; if you still tear it down
repeatedly, it can no longer do it,
it will chaotically send threads of silk into the air as if it had forgotten how it’s done
and it will end up starving to death...

Cantor was convinced that the transfinite numbers
had been whispered to him by God
he knew he would face grief
which would make his joy even greater
Kronecker thought that irrational numbers don’t exist

at this point you look for something to surprise you
a row of infinities hidden behind a title written in red,
deliberately misleading,
which doesn’t even indicate the most important thing:
the power of the continuum
the inconsistency of the multitude of all multitudes
or the freedom to follow the Truth
wherever the descending light may take you
an impossible prediction gravitating around
the limit points

your apparitions change my mood,
upon the impact questions move from one orbit to another,
touching the healing blaze of the paradox



(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, pp. 58-59. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

möbius arch (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)


















I wrap myself in the möbius arch
from inside out incessantly,
the diamond drill bit carves sounds into the flesh,
your footsteps take off.

No armor fits me,
today at the supermarket the salesman whispered to me:
it’s because there is a sword thrust into your chest!

I laughed at first, didn’t believe him,
dropped the bags of dreams on the floor:
it can’t be, I shouted, it can’t be,
I’ve been that way since forever!

Yes, he smiled, and pointed to the slightly protuberant
gilded knob
here is why caresses hurt
and everything I touched with my heart bled.

Your hands were flickering into the night,
cauterizing the tear.



(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, p. 57. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

how can you call yourself an apple? (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)


photo: Andreea Mureşan




















How can you call yourself an apple
when you’re buried into the ground up to the sky
with the sun between your teeth?

How can you call yourself a tree
when dipped into the fruit you peel off
down to the last word?

How can you say you’re in love
when stallions kneel down of thirst
begging for your tears?

No, you can’t say that the hand
is less of a heart than the wind,

nor that the lover is more of a flame
than the well in the womb,

or that death is more of a tear
than the baby who looks at you questioningly.



(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, p. 56. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

slits (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)


















every time you go away you leave in me a track as big as an eye
enough to make me detach myself from my normal itinerary
and speed up through the things in which the memory shimmers
thinned up at both ends like a trace of liquid gold

some people watch us and laugh; it’s fine, only our deeds cannot be wiped out
they remain in the corner of our mouths after we drink the glass of worries
many people don’t know that God made man with clothes
they dilute their souls into their flesh and go blind wonderingly

death crawls under the word-stall
and athletes no longer buy love on credit
to fill up their souls with the unpredictable trajectory
of the sprint towards the slits at the end of the world

garments are the shadow of the light detached from the body when you struggle
to be born of your own will divided by zero
with the despair to take a bite of the smallest natural number
which cannot be defined in less than seventeen words
[1]


[1] see Richard’s paradox.


(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, p. 55. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

Ar Bann (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)



photo: Diana Popescu













things are singular points on a trajectory
that explores the corridor between words

they are not objects, they are not indifferent
in each of them struggles the corner of a memory,
an imprint, a time crater awaiting the eruption

their roots are stuck into God’s palm
and they have cracks from each free fall
through which the whiteness of night penetrates the room

the places where you once touched them
intoxicate themselves with life and death
drawn to the edge of your body
like the letters in those books with uncut pages and gilded backs

they are the very letters a blind man explores
upon rocks hanging from the clouds



Note: "Ar Bann" means "The Sunrays", in Breton.


(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, p. 54. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

sâmbătă, 21 august 2010

twilight of the idols (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)


















kill me gently
crushing no bone
it suffices to leave your love inside me
stratified clouds
the sun rolls upon towards the black womb
I’ll never know, you’ll never know
when the dance ends and all the trifles
piled on the tablecloth will dimly shine

no loss is too great
not to be able to make a chain out of the crushed idols
with which to tie ourselves to the sky in the puddles
when the body becomes steep
and nourishment is a light passing through us

people are precipices we pass by
with eyes closed

I fell into you long ago and there is no way out
but no one wants out
when they find God
inside



(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, p. 53. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

steam (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)


photo: Elena Popa




















one day you painted a golden flower
on the TV screen and since then
I haven’t turned it on

sometimes we sleep in separate rooms
we learn to pass through the walls
in the morning your hands are filled with steam
as though you have just come out of me
with the sky half-dipped into the blue mud

sometimes we take walks
until silence throws us out of ourselves
and we pull the miracles by their ankles into our room

until the air has the consistency of amniotic fluid
and there are no more spaces in between us
for the words to be uttered or buried
like wings too heavy for
the fall into God



(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, p. 52. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

puzzle (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)


















the garments pierce through the flesh, fly through the windows over the line that concentrates pain into the corner of the garden: it’s the first day death falls behind,
the first gaze in which a place remains undestroyed

we stick by the fire, touching it from time to time
with our skin peeled off in layers like the wax polish for silverware

the tent cloth flutters under the waters while we suck in more and more space
and the word that carries our breath breaks in our mouths

time is a sticky thread that wraps around us
a fencing foil stabbing us in our tense muscles
a water spring carrying our words where the eyes can’t see
a gravestone heavy on our backs while waiting for the new name registration

each moment makes us grow another wing
until flight envelops us like a still flame

time cuts out pieces of our lives that do not match
so we often don’t know who we are anymore
forgetting they are shaped like
the wounds of Christ



(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, p. 51. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

breakdown (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)























you’re beautiful when you smile
although you only do it in your moments of sadness
when you catch me trying to cheer you up

I could never tell you how you look
what exactly changes in time
and what stays the same irrespective of your mood
maybe because when I do that
your shadow breaks down into my words

every time we meet I get the feeling
I have my arms full, even when I forget to get you
a little gift
you come into my embrace to receive
what I brought you without knowing

sometimes you bandage up my soul
with your colorful sleeve
like first aid
against my inward falls

other times we are two arms
spread out to be able to hold

when we are far from each other
we become almost translucent
and people no longer greet us back
looking through us at their own lives
abandoned on the edge of a child’s footstep



(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, pp. 49-50. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

loveblind (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)


















the world is a film over the eyes
before long the scalpel will cut it
seeing will be as hard as a getaway
from the body hachured over the heart

once upon a time there was a hand clap
near the stone behind which we were spying on the sunrise
your shadow sliding over me
melts the cry of a seagull
between the fingers wandering through the sand
next to us the deserted arcades get gilded
and the sky scatters around
tiny pieces of our lives

we knew from the start we’d go loveblind for a while
we are too much alike to be able to touch

a story you always run through
from the middle to the end like reading the face of a child
asleep in his mother’s arms


(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, p. 48. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

the picture box (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)

















all my life I’ve been meaning to learn
how the soul becomes body and the body becomes soul
without ever ceasing to be what they are

then we could wander one inside the other like in a garden
one breath apart
I like to watch you sleeping
see you eyelids crease up from the dreams in the picture box
and your skin getting thinner under God’s caress
in the chill of the morning

sometimes you cry in your sleep with the pain of a melted stone
that squeezes my heart into the corner of my eyes
other times you uncover yourself of night with a smile
caught in a gesture
from which light pours over things

your sadness lays on words
a web in which the sun weaves its rays

upon awakening
loneliness is a baby crib


(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, p. 47. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)

vineri, 20 august 2010

something happens (poem by Florin Caragiu, English translation: Simona Sumanaru)


The Icon of Saints of the Prison from Aiud



















(for the martyrs of the communist prisons)

motto:
"another cubit of life poured out
another palm long the body shrivelled"
elias loennrot, kalevala


we hear ourselves crack like a nut in the nutcracker
something happens on the upper plank-bed when shoulderless and tearless
living dead in a lime pit
we kiss in awe
the only thought
written in splinters under the corner of an eyelid

porridge and freedom sip from the bottom of the platter
a supplement from the love ratio,
a boot tip throw us on the corridor
dancing upon the suffering in the shirt
signed with blank policies

with a distant sound
the blows ask us who we are
until our trunks detach from our heads
and the shapes appear reversed like trees in water

we don’t have the teeth to crush the snake that crawls into our mouths
we can’t lift the sky to our lips like we do a milk bowl

locked in one last confession
with eyes almost closed and the head tilted to the left
we find ourselves hanging by a thread
revealed by the rhythmic movement of the lips

suddenly the windows are slammed shut
the flesh tenderizes under the blows
big winged angels struggle to get in
but they can’t pass through the glass and saddened
they watch us in the semi-dark
until the windows turn black

where to run when the night
pulls us out from the crust of sin
and unhesitatingly counts the falls,
when the angel of God gets us out into the light
not through the prison gates,
but through the breath of the martyr
lying face-up
on the wet concrete floor


(poem inspired by Virgil Maxim’s accounts,
Hymn for the Cross They Bore, 2 vol., Gordian Publishing House, Timişoara, 1997)



(poem published in the volume "catacombe. aici totul e viu" ("catacombs. everything is alive here"), Vinea Publishing House, Bucharest, 2008, pp. 45-46. English translation: Simona Sumanaru.)