When the Homily is about Immunology

Memory Eternal, Sorta.

While reading Fr. Michael Oleksa’s book (he tells me he has a new one coming out soon, entitled “Another Culture/Another World”) I am also listening to his lectures given at the Eagle River Institute in 1997 (I think). Fr. Michael is quite an Alaskan historian and I have really enjoyed the depth of his lectures in this regard, but one thing particularly struck me as both intriguing and significant.

Fr. Michael is privy to a good deal of oral tradition on Alaskan history and when he compared it to the sometimes-near canonical text of Bancroft’s history of Alaska, things didn’t mesh very well in a number of areas. Fr. Michael notes many fascinating aspects of how our culture has evolved to view oral tradition as repugnant and chosen instead to rely on written text…as if having something written down automatically lends credence and validity to what is there. Curiously enough, by examining recently released or found (who knows?) documentation in Russia, Fr. Michael found that the oral tradition was spot on right and Bancroft (who apparently wrote his book while in San Francisco and I’m not sure but may have never even BEEN to Alaska) was flat out wrong!

Listening to the choir sing about the “Heresiarch” Arius at last Saturday’s Vespers really got me thinking about what Fr. Michael was saying about oral tradition. There is a lot in my head right now – and this issue is likely much bigger than a blog post and in fact it might even be the fuel to get me to finish my section on Tradition. But let me try and slim it down. Who else, save the Orthodox, would sing about the ancient heresies of Arius and Nestorius…isn’t it amazing how we keep the collective memory of the Church alive? Isn’t this what Tradition is all about? We are living the stories of the past…but why? Fr. Michael relates our Church traditions to the story telling of the native Alaskan people, for whom the stories were a means of teaching people how to be human beings and how to fit into the universe around them.

And yet we now live in a time when we chose to figure this out on our own. We do not sit by the campfire and hear the elders speak to us…we as a culture have rejected that. Even Christians have bought into this stupid lie and have fled running wildly from the word “tradition”…how sad. In so doing we have become a spiritual version of the short-term memory lacking character portrayed by Guy Pearce in the movie “Memento”

You’ve heard the old adage: “Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it”
Why do we never hear the positive side of the same adage: “Those who learn THEIR history are blessed to repeat it.”

The Orthodox Church will not let you forget your history and She does more than tell stories: She sings them and asks us to live them.