The
easiest thing to do is to respond to specific passages of Alice’s
two emails.
Thank
you again for your answer. I was very relieved and happy to hear
your wise words and I am very grateful for you for answering my
questions. If you still have time to help me in my journey I would
be most grateful but I understand completely if this subject has
taken too much of your time.
The
problem is not so much our time, although we often delay because we
are preoccupied, but the issue of our not being the appropriate
person to answer some of the questions we receive, and the Internet
not being the appropriate place to solve intensely personal
issues—not to mention that some of the issues raised in this and
other emails are actually quite difficult.
I know
that one of the reasons that I have thoughts that music is somehow
sinful and does not lead to God and maybe even leads people to
idolatry, is that I am not yet a member of the Orthodox Church.
Because of that I have no one to rely on in regard to questions like
this. It would really mean a lot to me if I could find some
spiritual father who could help me with my spiritual life. But this
is a question of me, not of you I suppose.
Spiritual
direction, counselling and fatherhood have to happen face-to-face;
they can’t happen—for a variety of reasons, including the lack of
confidentiality in email—over the Internet. Admittedly it is hard
to find a good Orthodox spiritual father at any time, and especially
in countries that have only a minority Orthodox population. However,
it is impossible to engage in a serious personal discussion by email:
in the very nature of things there is a great deal of filtering that
goes on so that it is very hard to get a sense of who exactly the
stranger is who has approached you by email. This is true not only
of Alice but of all our interlocutors who approach Orthodox Monk.
We, Orthodox Monk, really do not feel that we are getting a full
image of anyone who sends us an email. Perhaps a great saint with
gifts of clairvoyance might be able to handle such a ministry but we
cannot. Hence we discourage our blog readers from expecting us to
guide them. Alice quite rightly and quite sensibly does not expect
that from us but we want to say this clearly for the sake of all of
our respected blog readers.
As you
probably understand, the Internet is full of all sorts of stuff and
sites like this
list of the passions by St Peter of Damascus, where
‘flute-playing’ is listed as one of the passions. This does not
make me feel comfortable in the least.
As
we understand it, in pagan times music was used in pagan rituals
which verged on debauchery, apart from the fact that they were devil
worship. Flute-playing was part of that. So when we see
flute-playing in such a list as this we are really encountering an
ancient attitude to pagan ritual. It might be similar today to
consider what a pious Orthodox reaction might be to heavy metal with
satanic lyrics. However, we doubt that playing a Bach partita on the
violin is to be considered in the same light.
The
only thing I’ve understood is that in Orthodox Church the Tradition
and the Holy Canons are not understood in legal terms but more as a
guide to Christian life and ascesis.
It’s
a little more complicated. While Roman Catholicism developed in a
very legalistic way, especially in the work of Thomas Aquinas, and
while Tradition is properly defined in the Orthodox Church as the
presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church, we cannot completely
relativize the canons. However, we can certainly look at what they
were intended to accomplish when they were formulated and consider
whether the same conditions obtain today. We personally think that
in cases where there is not a serious moral issue—say,
abortion—then a case can be made for flexibility in the application
of the canons given different circumstances today. Certainly if
there is a canon of Hippolytus that one should not baptize a music
teacher (we do not know), surely today one would be flexible if
someone approached for baptism who was teaching little kids to play
the violin so they could play Bach.
I hope
I have understood this correctly. I might also answer to this that I
might possibly understand this better as a member of the Church.
It
is true that some things we understand better having entered the
Church.
As for
my questions, if you have time I would like to ask you what the
difference is between the sentiments and the passions. You wrote
about the sentiments, how we Westerners are used to thinking of
Christianity as being only about the sentiments. Are emotions and
passions the same thing?
We
think that this is important. In the West, since the day of Thomas
Aquinas especially, one thinks that there is only the intellect and
the emotions. In the Orthodox spiritual tradition there is the
intellect and the emotions and the heart as the spiritual centre of
the person. In the West, if one is not intellectual he is
emotional—in the good or neutral sense. In the Orthodox Church
when one is spiritual he is not necessarily either intellectual or
emotional. This issue crops up in the practice of the Jesus Prayer,
since in the Orthodox Church the Fathers speak of bringing the mind
into the heart there to practice the Jesus Prayer. In terms of
Western received psychology this makes no sense whatsoever and can
only be interpreted as an emotional or sentimental practice of the
Jesus Prayer with a mental concentration on the region of the heart.
But that is not what is meant. What is meant is that the person
enters consciously into the heart as into their spiritual centre, not
their emotional centre. Now the person who brings the mind into the
heart does not cease to have an intellect and emotions, and these are
harnessed to the practice of the Jesus Prayer in the spiritual centre
of the person.
The
connection between the sentiments, or emotions, and the passions is
this. The passions are the emotions directed towards vice, not
virtue. The goal of the ascetic is to purify his emotions so that
his emotions are directed to the virtues not to the vices. For every
emotional drive in a person, there is a virtue and there is a vice.
Fallen man has his emotions directed to the vices; the goal after
baptism is to work to direct our emotions to the virtues. This is
called ‘purifying the passions’.
Now
when we say that Western music concentrates on the sentiments or
emotions, what we mean is that Western music does not appeal to the
spiritual part of the person centred in the heart as described
briefly above, but to the emotions. In particular, demonic music
works on the emotions to direct them to the vices, whereas healthier
music works on the emotions to direct them towards virtue, or at
least towards a greater serenity or even an Aristotelian tragic
catharsis. Spiritual music would work more on the spiritual part of
the person, so as to harmonize with raising the mind to God, either
through the services of the Church or through the Jesus Prayer, or
through prayer in a more general sense.
I
quite often have the feeling that good music can teach us a small bit
of truth. It
is not the Truth but it can at least maybe lead people closer
to Truth.
As Fr
Seraphim Rose of Platina wrote, music can warm the soul; as St
Barsanuphius of Optina wrote, ‘When you have children, teach them
music. But of course real music—angelic music, not dances and
songs. Music assists the development of spiritual perception. The
soul becomes refined. It begins to understand spiritual music as
well.’ I also think that Theophan the Recluse also said things
similar to this. Of this, however, I am again not fully sure.
While
this should be understood in light of what is said just above, it
should be recognized that in its main outlines 19th
Century Russian
religious music was actually Western classical romantic music.
Perhaps
I am not totally wrong in thinking that this means ‘good music’,
which nowadays (maybe not at the time of Fathers?) can also be
instrumental music or songs not specifically composed for liturgical
use in the Church. The exhortation of St Basil to young men
concerning Greek literature comes to mind as it says ‘There is also
good music that David, the Sacred Psalmist, used.’ Tradition also
reports that Pythagoras, by changing the melodic scale of the
flautist that was leading a merry-making, changed the mood of a drunk
crowd so that they became ashamed and went back home. (Quotations
not exact but in my own words since I don't have the source here at
the moment)
This
should make sense in light of what is said above. It doesn’t
surprise us that changing the melodic scale of the flute would change
the mood of the drunken crowd. That is what we would expect.
I’m
the most grateful for you for letting me write these words to you. I
don't remember whether I told you before but I suffer from panic
attacks and from depression and I see a therapist for that condition.
I know that one of the reasons behind all these doubts is that
condition. That and a promise I once made to God, during one of my
first panic attacks, that if this terrible feeling goes away, I will
do for God anything He wants me to do. For this I am at the same
time both afraid (for not doing what He wants from me) and not afraid
(since I trust that He will lead me if I try to find His meaning for
my life).
We
are not professionally qualified to address this condition.
I just
wanted to say that so that I can be honest. I am not crazy and I
hope that you will not worry about me; I just hope that maybe someone
like me and with questions like me, will find at least some answers
while reading your lovely blog.
...
When I
wrote to you about suffering from panic attacks and depression, if it
somehow is needed or helpful for your answer, I really don’t mind
if you mention it. I just meant that perhaps
that
is
not what your blog is all
about if I’ve understood rightly.
I had the feeling that your
blog
is more about issues that are of a
more universal
type than personal problems such as my health.
This
is quite true for the reasons given above.
Still, at the same time I
have the feeling that somehow it is because of pride that I won’t
give up thinking all the time about music and questions about its
dangers in regard to my becoming a member of the Orthodox Church and
in regard to my wish to get a bit closer to God. I sometimes feel
that if even God Himself were to say to me that no one is going to
tell me to stop being a musician and a music teacher, I would not
believe Him.
This
is something that should be discussed face-to-face with the priest.
This is actually the feeling
I get when I pray for God to help me [that no one is going to tell me
to stop]. But again, I am not sure about the answers I receive in
prayer and for that reason I seek outside assistance on the matter.
My prayer answer is a feeling I get that somehow my place in the
world is in music. For that I seek to find help from the Church, to
find trust and not to get lost in my own thoughts and feelings.
Alice
quite sensibly does not want to rely on her own discernment, and God
will respect her for that, but as we pointed out the Internet is not
the appropriate venue; a face-to-face meeting with a priest is the
appropriate venue. For that reason we cannot go into as much detail
as a priest might.
We
hope that all goes well in your life, Alice. May God bless you.
