Some old articles from DEATH TO THE WORLD by PUNX TO MONKS

[尼古拉前执事]

DEATH TO THE WORK? Ooops I think I meant DEATH TO THE WORLD! LOL!
I have wanted to post these old articles for some time but just now got around to it.

[尼古拉前执事]

NEVER KNEEL

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Once upon an average morn, an average boy was born for the second time.
Prone upon the altar there, he whispered up a prayer he kept hid inside.
The vision came, he saw the odds, a hundred little gods on a gilded wheel.
"These will vie to take your place, but Father by Your grace I will never kneel." - Steve Taylor

I, unfortunately, did kneel. I was raised in a very average "Brady bunch" family. Mom had me and my sister, and Dad had my older brother and sister. I was very excited to have a new father (my biological father died when I was 3, of an alcohol related heart attack) and a new brother and sister. We did not live happily ever after. My brother, feeling jealous and angry at the separation of his family and having to come and live with a new family, took it upon himself to punish everyone else for this. He proceeded to torment my existence in every way he could. I was emotionally and physically abused by him until I was 13 years old. I had developed into a deathly insecure adolescent. I lived in my own fantasies and other realities that I had created. He couldn't hurt me there. I went to church every Sunday and most Wednesdays. I sang and listened but heard nothing; even there I was in my own reality. It was about this time that I had left the geek scene and entered the punk scene. Punx were the only people who ever treated me with respect and didn't run me down. I went from polo shirts to a blue mohawk and combat boots. This was 1986 in a rural cow town in Oregon. I was then tormented by everyone in town. My brother had been replaced. Because of my individuality I was shot, stabbed, and beaten. One day a friend of mine invited me to a party of sorts. This party consisted of some of my friends from school and two older ladies. It was described to me as friends sitting around and talking, drinking soda, eating chips and playing games.

The two older women were witches and the party was the gathering of a coven. I was then initiated into the practice of Wicca. If you don't know, Wicca is an ancient feminine dominated form of druidical magic. That is why I was called a witch and not a warlock. I progressed rather rapidly and became a practicing witch. My mind sank into a strange sort of delirium and dementia. It was obvious to me that insanity was the ultimate experience. If you die, it's all over. If you go insane, you pass through death without dying. This was my philosophy. I strove hard for it day and night. My practice of witchcraft took me to many new places, mostly through astral travel. It was a natural expansion of my fantasy world. I was all powerful and everything looked up to me in this world that I had created. The feeling of power is what keeps you going in witchcraft. In the real world I was nothing, in witchcraft I was something. I felt invincible. I was wrong.

One night I woke up due to a rather strong call of my bladder. This was one of those times when you lie in bed and switch from looking at the clock and then looking at the door trying to decide if you can make it until the morning without wetting the bed. I decided to get up and go to the bathroom. I then realized that my entire body was paralyzed from the neck down. In Wicca there are no drugs or alcohol. If you would be found using these things you would be expelled from the coven. I knew that I had nothing in my system that could cause this. The only explanation I could come to was that something spiritual was attacking me. I left my body and suspended myself above it. I then went into shock. Sitting all around me and holding me down were about 15 demons laughing hysterically. One turned and looked at me and spoke. It said I was the biggest idiot it had met in a long time. It said that I was taught what was right but went the wrong way, and now I was so deep into it I was going to hell and there was no way out. He then proceeded to make a deal with me. Two of them came to my astral body and turned me around. When I was turned around I found myself in Hell. There is no way to describe what I saw, felt, and smelled. I will never forget it. The faces. They returned me to my room and gave me the ultimatum. I can kill myself and become like them and torment instead of being tormented, or die and go to hell anyway. I chose suicide.

Just before they let me return to my body, I said under my breath, "Jesus, if you're there, help." There was a great flash of light and they were gone. I sat up and began to curse God. Why did he let me go through these things. I cursed him for about an hour while I cleaned up the vomit my body expelled during the experience. It was then that I, for the first time, heard the voice of God. He said only one simple phrase that stopped me in my tracks. "All I wanted you to do was ask." -C.I., Portland, Oregon

[尼古拉前执事]

THE LAST TRUE
REBELLION

The Radical, Catacomb teaching of
Monk Seraphim Rose

by Monk Damascene Christensen

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    It's all over for what was once known as Christian civilization. We're living in a post-Christian age. As the mad prophet Friedrich Nietzsche said, "The 20th century will be the triumph of NIHILISM." And this triumph, said Monk Seraphim Rose, will end in a reign of ANARCHY. "Nihilism is the means, Anarchism is the end."

    "Nihilism" comes from the word nihil, meaning "nothing." Nietzsche defined Nihilism thus: "There is no truth. There is no absolute state of affairs--no 'thing-in-itself.' This alone is Nihilism, and of the most extreme kind." Fr. Seraphim wrote that "Nihilism has become, in our time, so widespread and pervasive, has entered so thoroughly and so deeply into the minds and hearts of all men living today, that there is no longer any 'front' on which it may be fought.

    This is the mind-set of modern society, and it is the wave of the future. But if abandonment of Truth has become the mainstream, who then are the rebels? Not the Nihilists who openly declare that life has no meaning and live as though it did not. They are only victims who have been devastated by the spirit of the times. The "Christians,"then? Not if they've sold out to the world, and, while immersed in their slick, squeaky-clean worldliness, act as if they're trying to stand for something otherworldly.

    No, the true rebels are those who, by their deeds and lives, spit on both the falsness of the world and on the mainstream of Nihilism that refuses to see above this world. Such a rebel was Monk Seraphim Rose.

    Fr. Seraphim was born into a typical white, middle-class Protestant family in San Diego in 1934. While growing up, he was the proverbial dutiful child and academic achiever. After high school, however, he began to passionately seek the answer to the question "Why?"--and, not finding it in the society in which he had been raised, he began to rebel. He refused to accept the accepted answers. This was at the very beginning of the modern counterculture, the early 1950's. Fr. Seraphim became a student of one of the counterculture's first pioneers, Alan Watts (whom he later realized was totally pseudo) and became a Buddhist Bohemian in S.F. He learned ancient Chinese in order to study the Tao Teh Ching and other ancient Eastern texts in their original language, hoping thereby to tap into their heart of their wisdom. By this time he had wholly rejected the Protestant Christianity of his formative years, which he regarded as worldly, weak, and fake; he mocked its concept of God and said that it "put God in a box." He read Nietzsche until that prophet's words began to resonate in his soul with an electric, infernal power.

    All this time, he had been seeking the Truth with his mind, but the Truth had eluded him. He fell into a state of despair which he described in later years as a living hell. He felt he did not fit in the modern world, even in his own family, who did not understand him. It was as if he had somehow been born out of place, out of time. He loved to roam under the stars, but he felt that there was nothing out there to take him in--no God, nothing. The Buddhist "nothingness" left him empty, just as it did the founder of the Beat movement Jack Kerouac; and, like Kerouac, Fr. Seraphim turned to drink. He would drink wine voraciously, and then would pound on the floor, screaming at God to leave him alone. Once while drunk, he raised a fist to heaven from a mountaintop, cursed God and dared Him to darn him to hell. In his despair, it seemed worth being damned forever by God's wrath, if only he could empirically know that God exists--rather than remain in a stagnant state of indifference. If God did darn him to hell, at least then he would, for that blissful instant, feel God's touch and know for sure that He was reachable.

    "Atheism," Fr. Seraphim wrote in later years, "true 'existential' atheism burning with hatred of a seemingly unjust or unmerciful God, is a spiritual state; it is a real attempt to grapple with the true God Whose ways are so inexplicable even to the most believing of men, and it has more than once been known to end in a blinding vision of Him Whom the real atheist truly seeks. It is Christ Who works in these souls. The Antichrist is not to be found primarily in the great deniers, but in the small affirmers, whose Christ is only on the lips. Nietzsche, in calling himself Antichrist, proved thereby his intense hunger for Christ...."

    In searching through various ancient religious traditions, Fr. Seraphim once went to visit a Russian Orthodox church. Later he wrote about this experience:

    "For years in my studies I was satisfied with being 'above all traditions' but somehow faithful to them.... When I visited an Orthodox church, it was only in order to view another 'tradition.' However, when I entered an Orthodox church for the first time (a Russian church in San Francisco) something happened to me that I had not experienced in any Buddhist or other Eastern temple; something in my heart said that this was 'home,' that all my search was over. I didn't really know what this meant, because the service was quite strange to me, and in a foreign language. I began to attend Orthodox services more frequently, gradually learning its language and customs.... With my exposure to Orthodoxy and to Orthodox people, a new idea began to enter my awareness: that Truth was not just an abstract idea, sought and known by the mind, but was something personal--even a Person--sought and loved by the heart. And that is how I met Christ."

    On becoming Orthodox, Fr. Seraphim continued to despise the modern world and hoped for nothing from it; he wanted only to escape it. He felt no less, if not more, estranged from the Christianity he had been raised in, for while that Christianity was at home in the world, his was radically otherworldly. He had finally found the designation of man's existence, and it was this: man is meant for another world.

    Fr. Seraphim's was an ascetic faith. He wanted a Christianity that emphasized not earthly consolation and benefits, but rather heavenly redemption through intense suffering on earth. No other kind rang true to him who had suffered so much. Only a God Who allowed His children to be perfected for heaven through suffering, and Who Himself set the example by coming to a life of suffering--only such a God was capable of drawing the afflicted world to Himself and was worthy to be worshipped by the highest spiritual faculties of man.

    In his journal, Fr. Seraphim wrote: "Let us not, who would be Christians, expect anything else from it than to be crucified. For to be Christian is to be crucified, in this time and in any time since Christ came for the first time. His life is the example--and warning-- to us all. We must be crucified personally, mystically; for through crucifixion is the only path to resurrection. If we would rise with Christ, we must first be humbled with Him--even to the ultimate humiliation, being devoured and spit forth by the uncomprehending world.

    "And we must be crucified outwardly, in the eyes of the world; for Christ's Kingdom is not of this world, and the world cannot bear it, even a single representative of it, even for a single moment. The world can only accept Antichrist, now or at any time.

    "No wonder, then, that it is hard to be a Christian--it is not hard, it is impossible. No one can knowingly accept a way of life which, the more truly it is lived, leads the more surely to one's own destruction. And that is why we constantly rebel, try to make life easier, try to be half-Christian, try to make the best of both worlds. We must ultimately choose--our felicity lies in one world or the other, not in both.

    "God give us the strength to pursue the path of crucifixion; there is no other way to be a Christian."

    Before he had found the Truth Fr. Seraphim had suffered for the lack of it. Now having found it he suffered for the sake of it. He devoted the rest of his life to living that Truth, and killing himself to give it to others. Together with a young Russian man named Gleb Podmoshensky, he formed a Brotherhood which practiced the "Do It Yourself" philosophy. They opened a bookstore in S.F. and began printing a small magazine by hand on a letterpress, refusing to become a dependent arm of the worldly church establishment. Later, partly to avoid this very establishment, they moved their printing operation to the wilderness of northern California, where they began to live like the "desert-dwellers" (wilderness ascetics) of ancient times. There was no running water on their forested mountain, no telephone, no electric lines. They built their buildings themselves out of lumber taken from old pioneer dwellings, and hauled water on their backs up the mountain. They lived with deer, bear, foxes, rabbits, squirrels, bats, mountain lions, scorpions, and rattlesnakes.

    In 1970 they became monks, thus dying forever to the world. At this time the church establishment tried to shut down their wilderness hermitage and make them standard pastors for parishes in the world. The two monks fought long and hard against this, and after much suffering achieved victory.

    In the wilderness, Fr. Seraphim's spirit began to soar. "The city," he once said, "is for those who are empty, and it pushes away those who are filled. The desert keeps those who are filled and allows them to thrive."

    Working by candlelight in his tiny cabin, Fr. Seraphim produced a great number of original writings and translations of ancient ascetic texts. In America his writings have so far reached only select circles, but in countries formerly behind the Iron Curtain they have had an incalculable impact on human lives. During the Communist era, they were secretly translated into Russian and distributed in the underground press ("samizdat") in the form of typewritten manuscripts. By the time of the fall of Communist Power in 1991, Fr. Seraphim was known all over Russia. Today his books are on sale everywhere in Russia, including booktables in the Metro (subway) and on the street. The reason that he has made a much greater mark on Russia than on his homeland is because in Russia people know how to suffer. Fr. Seraphim's message of underground Christianity, of suffering and persecution in this world for the sake of Truth, touches a responsive chord in people who have already been crucified. In America people would rather hear the "nice" messages of preachers like Rev. Robert Schuller (who, by the way, broadcasts his show to Russia, where people can hardly believe how stupid it is).

    I met Fr. Seraphim a year and a half before his death in 1982. Like him, I had been seeking Reality through Eastern religions, etc., by seeking to escape pseudo-reality through a Zen- like breakdown of logical thought processes. Finally reduced to despair, I listened to Syd Barrett's two schizophrenic-withdrawal, childhood-regression solo albums over and over, until I had memorized all his word-salads. (In Russia, this is known as "going crazy on a full stomach.")

    Then one day Fr. Seraphim came to the campus where I was going to school. He drove up in an old beat-up pickup truck, and emerged with his worn-out black robe, his long hair, and his exceedingly long gray beard which had become matted (I found out later that he had not taken a bath or shower since becoming a monk ll years before--which is common monastic practice in Israel, Greece, and Egypt--but for some reason he didn't smell). It was the image of absolute poverty.

    Thc next thing I remember is walking with Fr. Seraphim through the college. Dinner had just ended, and the students were milling and hanging around outside the cafeteria. Everyone was staring at Fr. Seraphim, but he walked through them as naturally as if he had been at home. In the middle of this progressive American college, he seemed like someone who had just stepped out of the 4th-century Egyptian desert.

    Fr. Seraphim went to a lecture room and delivered a talk called "Signs of the Coming of the End of the World." He happened to be sick at this time, and sniffled throughout the lecture. Obviously exhausted, he yet remained clear-headed, cheerful, and ready to answer questions at length. I could see that he was at least as learned and far more wise than any of my professors, and yet he was clearly a man off the wilderness, more at home in a forest than in a classroom.

    What struck me most about Fr. Seraphim was that here was a man who was sacrificing himself totally for God, for the Truth. He was not a university professor receiving a comfortable salary for being a disseminator of knowledge, nor was he a religious leader who hankered after power, influence, or even a bowl of fruit to be placed at his feet, as did the "spiritual masters" who then had followings in the area. He was not "into religion" for what he could get out of it; he was not looking for a crutch, to "enjoy spiritual life." He was just a simple monk who sought the Truth above all else. And I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he would die for that Truth, for I could sense that he was dying for it already.


    As we have said, Fr. Seraphim's message falls on many a deaf ear here in America. Even people in his same church will only listen to so much of it. When they think they might have to go against public opinion and risk losing recognition and acceptance by the world (including the "church world"), they stop short. And yet the Crucified God to Whom they give lipservice once said to His disciples: "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." "In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world."

    Those who have suffered immense pain in this world can believe far more deeply than those who have not, that there must be another world. Those who, like Fr. Seraphim, have felt themselves out of place in modern society, who have been "devoured and spit forth by the uncomprehending world," can understand better Christ's radical call of rejection of the world and rebellion against it. Thus it is not the "accepted" ones who can hear Fr. Seraphim's message "not of this world" and carry it out to the end. Just as in the time of Christ, it is the outcasts who get the point. Even an atheist may be closer to God than a "right-believing" one, if the former is suffering in his unbelief and the latter is smug and complacent in his belief. As Fr. Seraphim said, God is working in the souls of the "great deniers" more than in those of the "small affirmers."

    It is not accidental, then, that while many people in Fr. Seraphim's church only go halfway with his teaching, there is a growing number of people from the punk movement who are going all the way with it. Several punx have joined the Brotherhood he founded and are dying to the world as monastics, having found ancient Orthodox monasticism to be the ultimate punkdom.

    As early as 1960, Fr. Seraphim had come to many of the conclusions that the punx of today have come to. He said that humanity, when divorced from God, naturally becomes SUBHUMANITY, and that Humanism becomes Subhumanism. Those artists and musicians who depict modern, godless, autonomous man as empty, despairing, enraged and dehumanized, hit closer to the truth than the naive, happy humanist who tries to look at the modern situation with optimism.

    A few years later, in 1962, Fr. Seraphim wrote an essay in which he traced the course that Nihilism takes, directed by the Evil One. His words proved prophetic in subsequent decades.

    At the first stage of Nihilism, he said, is "Liberalism," by which he meant the attempt to work out a compromise between the Old Order ("Christian civilization") and the New Order of humanity without God. At the second stage is Realism, in which belief in the other world and transcendent Truth is abandoned and the whole concentration is on the material world, physical well-being, technical progress, etc. Realism, however, denies man's unplanned, irrational needs, and therefore must evoke a reaction against it, which is the third stage: Vitalism. In the Vitalist stage, the criterion of Truth is substituted by a new standard: the "life-giving," the "vital." This may take the form of pseudo-spiritual experiences, the invoking of "powers" and "presences," or else of the "cult of nature" with its primary elements of the earth, the body, and sex. Vitalism, Fr. Seraphim said, is "an unmistakable symptom of world-weariness. It is the product, not of the 'freshness" and 'life'and 'immediacy' its followers so desperately seek (precisely because they lack them), but of the corruption and unbelief that are but the last phase of the dying civilization they hate."

    Thus, Fr. Seraphim believed, beyond Vitalism there can be only one more, definitive stage through which Nihilism may pass: the Nihilism of Destruction. "Here at last," he wrote, "we find an almost 'pure' Nihilism, a rage against creation and against civilization that will not be appeased until it has reduced them to absolute destruction."

    Since Fr. Seraphim wrote about this in 1962, the youth movements have tended to correspond with the stages he outlined. The hippie movement of the 60's and early 70's was an example of Vitalism reacting against the dead Liberalism and dry Realism of the 50's (when sclence was expected to take care of everything, conformity was the rule, and spiritual seeking looked down upon). By the 80's and 90's, the ideals of the hippies had proved naive and simplistic, and their Vitalism gave way to manifestations of the Nihilism of Destruction in a now far more fragmented youth culture. This is where we are at today. And beyond it, Fr. Seraphim said, is Anarchy.

    "The Nihilism of our times exists in all," Fr. Seraphim wrote, "and those who do not, with the aid of God, choose to combat it in the name of the fullness of Being of the living God, are swallowed up in it already. We have been brought to the edge of the abyss of nothingness and, whether we recognize its nature or not, we will, through affinity for the ever-present nothingness within us, be engulfed in it beyond all hope of redemption--unless we cling in full and certain faith (which, doubting, does not doubt) in Christ, without Whom we are truly nothing....

    "Facile interpretations of the 'crisis,' of the 'choice' before us, abound; to take either side of these illusionary interpretations is damnation. The true crisis is now, as it has ever been, within us; it is our acceptance or negation of Christ. Christ is our crisis; He; demands from us all or nothing, and this 'problem' He presents us is the only one that need be answered.... Do we choose God, Who alone IS, or ourselves, nothingness, the abyss, Hell? Our age is founded upon nothingness; but this nothingness, inexplicably to us, presents, for those who can still perceive, the crisis of all men in all ages most clearly and unmistakably. Our age tells, if we can listen, to choose the living God."

[尼古拉前执事]

A Prison Called Self

Imprisoned inside of you there's someone, somewhere
Waiting to break free
To crumble the facade
And show who's really there.

Step outside with a smile on your face
Don't let anyone know you're sad
Don't let anyone know you can't take
Anymore of anything ever again

You've had enough of the world and its pretenses
But you're stuck in the prison of your mind
You want something real-something true
That you know you cannot find in this world

Your prison is also your life
Where you sit in solitary confinement
You cannot connect with anyone
Conversations are but meaningless words

You've noticed a crack in the wall of your cell
You rush to fix it so no one gets through
Or else someone will crumble your walls
Leaving you defenseless

Jesus reaches out and knocks at your door
"Is anyone in there?" He asks
Yes- you grab His hand and pull yourself out
Destroying the walls forever and more

Now you can smile with joy in your heart
You've found something more than this world
And you know you are free
As you have never been before

Your soul has found its refuge
No longer is it confined
It has broken its shackles-
Once and for all!

Caroline

[尼古拉前执事]

PERFECTION IN PAIN
"I was so young - I didn't know what it meant to be hurt and then to hurt."
-- Rites of Spring

At the time of acute self-consciousness at the birth of adulthood, when the
soul is still innocent and open, has not been hardened, and the world is a
big apple with possibilities that are seemingly limitless, and relationships
can seem to be so perfect and so easily perfect, and the soul has been just
awakened to the intense sense of personhood, self-hood, and asks (for the
first and sometimes only time in one's life) the question of who he is and
why he's here, the soul is wide open and seeks to go beyond itself. The
person feels deeply and intensely, having not yet learned to block and hide
these feelings which later prove too painful, and he longs to share this
feeling, this self-awareness, this itensity, this pain with others and to feel
what others feel, especially those who are going through the same thing.
Everything is poured out freely, sometimes too freely, and there is no
attempt to guard one's inner world from being trampled on. The child who
has never been hit by a car, if he is not told of the dangers, will have no
fear of walking into a busy street.

However, when the person gets older, as time passes, the perfect "soul-
mate" relationships which began so intensely, like a wonderous blossoming
flower, become disappointing because there was nothing higher to hold
them together; and the seemingly endless possibilities which present
themselves in youth become smaller, one possibility closing itself off after
another once one goes further on a certain path ( for each person can only
take one path at a time). And then occurs what has formerly been feared
and rejected - a layer forms on top of the raw person, a protective coating;
and it cannot be helped, for pure vunerability is too painful.

All this explains why youth of today fear so much to get old, why they will
do anything to prevent it. Many young people, even if they have exposed
themselves to rottenness in their search for reality and intensity, if they
get out of it in time, are still good, innocent kids, because in a backwards
and self-contradictory way, they have been striving to preserve innocence.

This also explains why the lyrics of many contemporary musicians, when
they are young and first start out, are so poignant and direct, while the
later lyrics of the same people become increasingly obscure, to the point
that those listeners who have practically lived on the earlier songs can get
less and less from the later ones.

(ATTEMPT AT AN ANSWER)

AT THE TIME of acute self-consciousness and the awareness of the eternal
question "Why," the person must be able to direct that self-awareness and
painful yearning to something higher than himself - to God, Who became
flesh and suffered as we do. It is not enough to pour this painful yearning
out to another person - that may help for a time, but it is not enough for
eternity. The human soul seeks perfection, and there is nothing perfect
except God. Other human beings, even if they seem perfect at first, always
turn out to be imperfect, and that can be a great source of disillusionment
to idealistic youth. A human being can be a vehicle to reach the end (God),
and almost always such a human being is needed, but that person cannot
be seen as an end in himself. However, in our post-modern age, when youth
have been denied a knowledge of God, the perfection is usually at first
sought in one or (usually) several human beings, or in unworthy lesser
vehicles such as wealth, beauty, or fame. Again, one must turn one's
painful feelings of self-knowledge and longing to go outside oneself - to
God, for only He has the infinite love to meet them. We know God through
this very pain. "Remembrance of God is pain of heart endured in the spirit
of devotion, but he who forgets God becomes self-indulgent and thus
insensitive." - Mark the Ascetic. "No one achieved anything without pain
of heart." - Elders Barsinuphius and John.

The inward pain and intensity experienced in adolescence is not only
good, but is even vital for the future development of the soul, its drawing
closer to God. It is a moment of truth, and that is why it is so important that
these strong feelings - that "all or nothing", "I won't settle for second-
best" feeling of God-given youthful idealism - be quickly channeled to Him
who is not "second-best", who is the Ultimate. If this would happen, more
youth of today would turn to monasticism - which is the "all or nothing"
life, not settling for second-best, but giving up everything for a higher
end: the Kingdom not of this world. But there must be strength and
backbone in young people to keep alive the flame of their idealistic
yearning when all kinds of worldly tares attempt to choke out the newly
sprouted seeds.

If one channels one's pain, self-awareness, etc., upwards, there is
possibility for endless growth in the spirit. However, if one keeps it
flowing on a horizontal level it will lead to stagnation, despair, or selling
out. Even if one can keep it going, always trying to be intense and real, if
there is nothing else than that, he will just keep going around and around
in circles, not getting anywhere. Life cannot be imbued with meaning
simply by the attempt to live it intensely. Being intense and "having a real
emotion" is not the ultimate answer - it is a partial answer, for it is only a
means and not an end. The answer - the Truth - is God who was nailed to
the Cross, to whom may the youth of today turn in their pain of heart - so
that they will grow up not just into boring worldly adults but into Saints,
growing into the likeness of God, and will continue growing not just into
middle or old age, but throughout eternity, all the while still preserving
their innocence and childlikeness.

All popular attempts not to sell out to the jaded "adult" world have failed,
because they are still part of the one big sell-out: the sell-out of man to this
world, and the abandonment of the radically otherworldly revelation of the
Crucified God for the sake of worldly Christianity, false spiritual paths,
materialism, hedonism, or overt nihilism.

In the words of monk Seraphim Rose, a misfit in the modern world who
went through years of living hell before finding the way out: "Christ is the
only exit from this world. All other exits - sexual rapture, political utopia,
economic independence - are but blind alleys in which rot the corpses of
the many who have tried them...."

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                                     -Monk Damascene Christensen

[尼古拉前执事]

Overdose

I. Monk Ephraim

In the year of 1425 a monk was taken captive and tortured to death in his monastery in Greece for being a Christian. He was slowly tortured to death over a period of a year. After each episode his wounds were allowed to heal, and then he was subjected to new and worse punishments. Finally they executed him. He was hung upside down from a tree in his monastery grounds and run through with a pole which had been sharpened to a point and set on fire. All traces of his life and martyrdom were forgotten until this century, when he appeared to the abbess of a convent and told her of his life and sufferings. He also revealed the spot where his bones, which had never decomposed, were buried. They dug up the bones for the glory of God.

II. The Addict and the Saint

Some years later an American teenager in the Midwest was grappling with his own life. He was heavily using drugs (cocaine and heroin) and was quickly sliding to destruction. He had neither a stable family life nor a religious upbringing, and though still young was in serious trouble.

One night an ugly old man appeared to him and said, "I am your friend, I want to make an appointment with you to meet me." He directed him to get into his car and drive as quickly as he could down a certain road which had a hairpin turn at the end with a sheer cliff at the bend. The young man did as he was told, got into his car and drove as fast as he could down the road. Losing his nerve at the last minute he managed to slam on his brakes and barely made the turn. He arrived home shaken.

Two nights later, the old man appeared again and said with anger and indignation, "I am very disappointed that you didn't meet me. Get into your car again and drive as fast as you can and this time don't put on the brakes." The young man felt strangely compelled to do this. Once again he got into his car, drove as fast as he could and this time didn't stop but drove at high speed off the cliff. The car was demolished but, surprisingly, he escaped with only cuts and bruises, and with a concussion.

A few weeks after he was out of the hospital, the ugly man appeared to him once again and said, "I am furious with you for not keeping our appointment. Tonight without fail you will meet me! Put a double dose of the drug in your needle." Again the boy felt compelled to do this, and after injecting himself went into a coma from the overdose. He was taken to the hospital where doctors told his family that he probably wouldn't live. And if by chance he did live he would only be semi-conscious - in a vegetative state. There was almost no chance of recovery. In two weeks, however, the young man did awake, fully conscious. He told those around him that he had seen a man which looked like some sort of radiant monk. He came to him and said, "I have been praying for you.... God has given you another chance. You will live, but you must correct your life. You are to go to Greece so as to visit the resting place of my bones, giving thanks to God for your salvation. My name is Ephraim.

[尼古拉前执事]

SUICIDE:
THE LAST GENOCIDE

Only one chance. Even the longest life is so short, in the face of the eternity which spreads out behind it and before it, and which we will never understand in this life but will experience someday, whether we choose to or not. No matter how long we live, when we look back on this life, it will all seem so short, as if one day.

Only one chance. There are so many things which we have not experienced, which we could experience. Only one chance to learn what real love is, for the first time. And we have never learned, if we are not ready to sacrifice ourselves for it--and more than that, to die for it a hundred times. After we die, we can never again make that sacrifice, can never again taste the sweetness of that pain.

Only one chance. Only one chance to find out that the philosophy, mindset and religion of the 1990's are not the only ones. And that perhaps there were better ones in the past, in other places. And that it's not true what we've been taught--about how what is more modern is better. Only one chance to no longer be a slave to times and fashions, of the modern counterculture as well as the culture. Especially when both the culture and the counterculture have failed us.

Only one chance to be alive. Only one chance to show courage. Only one chance to change things, and to change course. Only one chance to rise above the state of irresolution and passivity and doubt into which we've been placed by television and other electronic media stimulation. Only one chance to live virtuously.

Only one chance to go to the mountains and watch the evening sun filtering through the trees. Only one chance to sit on a cliff over the ocean and wonder why you're here. Only one chance to see the stars. Only one chance to hear a heart beat.

Only one chance to be free. True freedom comes not from taking life, but from giving it. Suicide is the only unforgivable crime, because it is the only crime after which you cannot ask forgiveness. After that, you enter a future life in which there are no more chances. And that, if you have not taken the one chance you've been given, is true hell.

Suicide takes the lives of 6,000 of the young generation in the U.S. each year. This phenomenon is something unheard of in the history of the world. Why should this be, if the world is truly becoming a better place? Suicide is the last Genocide.

-- Monk Damascene