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Metanoia for Kids

Hi Mike! I’m sorry I got you so mad at me – I have tried over the years to wise you up, but obviously you successfully resisted my efforts. I know it’s painful. In every single religious tradition, this painful struggle is what the “spiritual warfare” is all about. Definitely the training to wage this warfare against ones’ own worser self is not for those addicted to coddling themselves in bed – which is how you burned out the power pack in the computer I bought for you, as the guy in the Apple store explained to you, and I had to replace it for $400. (And while we are on the subject, I also bought you a nice Canon printer to go with the nice Apple laptop computer – and the first thing you did with it was to leave it out on the bed, as I warned you not to, so that your dog urinated in the printer and totally blew it out so that it had to be replaced, as I did, I forget the astronomical cost of that whole episode at the moment. So I really haven’t been as mean and nasty to you as you suggest in your most recent e-mail depicting yourself as my “victim”.)

Anyhow, warfare is always fraught with pain and suffering, and the necessary spiritual warfare against one’s baser impulses is never, in this life, a joy ride – our Lord has Himself told us that whoever is unwilling to pick up his cross and follow Him is unworthy to be His disciple. “Spiritual Warfare” is the title of a major western classic translated and partially corrected by Nicodemus of Athos, I believe it was, and then definitively translated and rendered theologically and spiritually sound by St. Theophan the Recluse. St. Theophan’s lifetime spanned the 19th century much as Herbert Schwartz’s life spanned the 20th, and both St. Theophan and Herbert deplored the moral and spiritual degeneration of their times – and wrote and taught against it. St. Theophan spent 26 years in reclusion, and in addition to his prodigious literary output, he received up to 30 or 40 letters a day requesting spiritual counsel, and he answered every one of them himself. In this way Theophan had an influence comparable in our times only to what would be possible utilizing the internet – and this prepared Russia for the 70 years’ Golgotha it underwent during the atheistic Soviet persecution. I assure you, Michael, that the martyrs raised up in those times – they numbered more than at any time since the early pagan persecutions of Christians – were by no means whatsoever given to spending their days in bed wrapped in comforters.

As for Herbert, he did not retire in reclusion. Instead, a community formed around him, becoming a settled commune during his final 20 years, and it has fallen my task to get his teachings out to our fallen society – which on balance has responded as did Russia and the other countries controlled by the Soviet regime, most especially in the current self-examination and regeneration taking place in the OCA. If you take a look at Mark Stokoe’s site, Mike, you will see that you are not alone in failing utterly to understand how salutary is this revitalization, including the pain it necessarily entails in order that the evil be expunged from the ecclesial community. I have said from the outset, Mike, that you, and your family, with all its ethical irregularities, are victims of this culture we live in. As also the Clintons, there is definitely a kinship there – perhaps in actual fact, since Hillary’s father hails from this area. If you mis-identified what should be an organ of the most intimate union - God presented Himself as the Bridegroom, and ourselves as His chosen and most beloved Bride, throughout salvation history, the biblical account of history closes with the words: Come, the Spirit and the Bride say, come! And the Gospel is so filled with this imagery that the services inaugurating Holy Week are known (at least to Orthodoxy) as the Bridegroom Services. I don’t really think I need to refresh anyone’s memory regarding the Clinton approach – or lack thereof - to this Holy Mystery. No doubt Bill could have been jailed for his – uh, misconduct, as you were Mike, except that as president of the United States of America he was subjected to other processes, so that his political popularity saved him from impeachment – although his status has crumbled so abysmally in the past month, when he had the crust to announce that Chelsea might enter politics, an announcement accompanied by a picture of himself walking right behind her to push her forward, I couldn’t believe that since his wife failed so pathetically, he would shove his daughter into the ring, and right at this most sensitive instant, without even waiting a few weeks to shift gears and let things heal somewhat. I haven’t read a single critical word about Hillary of late, everyone feels so sorry for her, they just wish she would let go so the whole world doesn’t have to watch her death agonies any longer. And here is her husband throwing their daughter into the same arena!!!

So much for that kind of aggressive, exploitative, “love”. It’s no different in kind from your indifference to all I have given of myself to you, Mike, because – frankly, you want some flesh to latch onto, be it only a hand. Or to jab - same difference. Herbert didn’t use terminology like “mammy jabber” or what you say it is the “southern” equivalent of – and I, myself, although I had seen the latter term in print in novels by people like Norman Mailer, never heard the expression pronounced by any one at all (normally I don’t have dealings with people who use that kind of language, and I read the unsavory novels because it was required in a doctoral program I pursued for the purpose of finding out what the world out there was like when I felt I would have to play a role in it after Herbert’s repose) – so I never heard this term actually used by anyone except by a former disciple (at least he pretended to be) of Herbert, who went to quite some lengths - himself wrote a book and self-published it, looked up a genuine disciple of Herbert, by then an aged Trappist monk, and convinced him to re-issue the book on Herbert that he had written in earlier years, with an extended preface which was a very thinly veiled effort to depict Herbert as degenerate.

Now 2 families, the Plummers and Van Lockerens (although not Dave Van Lockeren, the father of their 11 or so children, whom Ronnie divorced to marry an older chap with considerable wealth) have collaborated to write a fictionalized account of life with Herbert in our community. The (putative) author is Cecilia Plummer Galante – I forget the title just now, something about a butterfly with only a tenuous connection to …… anything at all, really. The book actually does not get into the kind of sexual innuendos that characterized the earlier, self-published (because, who would bother to buy it?) book, but focuses on something written by “a child of Mt. Hope” and posted on the internet, mentioning me by name – Laura Jones. Given that the Plummer-Galante book is dedicated to Ruthie Van Lockern, and her moneyed stepfather is mentioned with especial warmth in the acknowledgements prefacing Plummer-Galante’s book as a dear friend who supported this literary effort, and given, moreover, that something alleged against Herbert in this internet item constitutes the burden of the entire book, motivating all the rest of the plot, which consists mostly of an attempt by the grandmother to get her grandchildren out of the commune – it seems a reasonable guess that Ruthie Van Lockeren is the “child of Mt. Hope” who wrote said internet post. The post is from the year 2005 as I recall, and I had read it before, but when my oldest daughter, Martha, notified our family of the publication of the Plummer-Galante book a month or so ago, she referred again to this earlier post, to which had by then been added some blog comments against Herbert, one from the younger Scholten boy, who I was told - I think truthfully although it was not a matter of sufficient account to me to take measures to check it out further - was heavily into drugs, and another comment from Rachel Gavish, who since an incredibly tender age has made her money, as long as she was able by “exotic dancing” and outside that by other forms of, frankly, prostitution. No further comment.

Recently Martha sent me an e-mail recommending that I again read this same post. So I did access it, just to make sure it was the same one I had read in case Martha asked. It was, but it just caught my eye as I was scanning it that this “child of Mt. Hope” says she was told by Herbert she was dirty, and being at the time too young to discriminate, she ever after thought of herself as – I don’t know, dirty and no good, something like that.

But the point to be made is that Herbert never, but NEVER did any such thing. He was even persecuted by the Catholic Church for his teaching that we have two natures, our fallen human nature, and God’s own triune divine nature which is ours by participation, cf. 2Pet I:4: “…He has given us his very great and divine promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.” Once you understand this – Mike, please NOTA BENE – you see how this schiz characterizes everything about us. As our Lord Himself said when the disciples slept through His agony, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” By reason of the divine in us we desire what is divine, but by reason of our fleshly weakness, we do not always act accordingly – in fact, this is the very reason we must inevitably engage in Spiritual Warfare. It’s not easy, Mike – nobody ever said it was, and I myself never promised you a rose garden. Herbert taught us to see the Eucharist in this light, and it was only then that it became meaningful to me – since, as we know from the latest daily offerings of Benedict’s Papal Preacher, there is no sacred mystery of the Christian tradition, not the Trinity, not the Incarnation, nor any of the others that derive from this, which the Catholic Church can’t screw up when it tries to teach them – no, not a single one. Herbert taught us that just as we know that we are pure and holy in Jesus, inasmuch as we participate in His divinity (in the Orthodox services it is constantly repeated that “God the Word has clothed Himself in me”, and this is indeed the terminology of St. Paul which Herbert also used: Paul is always urging us to put off the old man and put on the new man, etc.) So we know we are pure and holy in Jesus, although when we take a good look at ourselves, all we are able to see – if we are honest, Michael Conrad – is an “angry pig” at the mercy of our irascible (of anger) and concupiscible (of physical desire) impulses, so also, in the Eucharist, all we see is what looks like bread and wine, yet by faith we know that this is the Body and Blood of Christ Himself. (Which reminds me of the most recent contribution from the Papal Theologian, O.F.M., the Franciscans are really not known for their theological acumen, this latest was entitled “The Two Bodies of Christ”! I was like, what on earth will he come up with now??? I’m not going to labor the point, if you want to wade thru something suggestive of cannibalism, go to CatholicOnline yourself.)

Yes, only in line with the way Herbert expressed the reality of the Eucharist as it really is, within the context of Christ’s Incarnation, does it make any sense at all.

I guess the bottom line is that it would be too much to expect anything else from the daughter of Ronnie Van Lockeren, who is still quite glamorous, she has the kind of looks Nancy Reagan does, but is, intellectually, seriously challenged. I remember very well a time when Ronnie had been baby sitting a group that included Catherine Davey/Schwartz’ children, and they did something wrong so that Ronnie took them to Herbert. In all likelihood he didn’t scold them, typically it was enough to just tell him what the children were doing in their presence for them to want to make amends. As Catherine’s children did. I guess Ronnie related the whole thing to Catherine when she gave her children back to her. And Catherine was – literally – screaming livid at Ronnie, reminding her that we were all taught NEVER to leave the children after such an incident WITHOUT FIRST TAKING THEM BACK TO MAKE UP WITH HERBERT – precisely so that in conclusion the children would know they were NOT “bad”, as if that were their base condition. Herbert had a collection of small gifts to give the children when they came to him in this manner, and often he would take them out and buy them something special. And Catherine was so furious with Ronnie’s treatment of her own children, because this is how the children learn that they are NOT inherently bad, and come to understand that when they turn to Jesus with a converted heart (in Greek this process is called metanoia), He receives them and loves them, and reconciles them to Himself. This is in fact the entire burden of Pope John Paul II’s encyclical on the Holy Spirit “Lord and Giver of Life”, for it is the Holy Spirit Who indwells in us because of our baptism Who effects this conversion of heart, this metanoia, in us – and then, the Pope concludes, our suffering for our sin (because he had begun by noting how difficult it is for us to look into our sinful selves, it’s a theme that runs all through the Psalms, hardly a one fails to allude to it in some way) – so this suffering remains in us even as our hearts are converted with repentance and remorse, but, John Paul says, this suffering is then “especially salvific” (salvific is from “to save”, Christ being our Savior), because it is joined, indeed melded together with, Christ’s suffering on the Cross. This encyclical was released on Pentecost, 1986, and I was in Rome at the time, having been received into Orthodox Communion the preceding Holy Week, and wanting to talk with someone in the Russicum, the Russian institute in Rome. When I was about half way through reading the encyclical I said to my friend I was with at the time: Hey, this encyclical on the Holy Spirit is all about SIN - and it’s exactly what Herbert taught us!

If you can pray, Mike, so that you get the jist of what I am saying and make it your own, you will save the world – literally. And this is what we are all called upon to do, nothing less than this. This, Msgr. Papal Theologian, is what Christ’s “other body”, as you call it, His Mystical Body, is all about.

P.S., So if Ruthie Van Lockeren never got the point from that day to this, and neither did the rest of the Van Lockeren’s except Dave, and neither did any of the Plummers – that’s the fault of Ronnie’s, and of Cecelia Plummer Galante’s parents, not Herbert’s fault. In fact, when Cecelia Plummer was in junior high, I think it was, she joined a CCD class of mine for a field trip from Milford to the Russian church in Pine Bush, NY. She spent the entire trip – literally, I kid you not – telling the other girls how wonderful Mt. Hope was, and insisted that I drive past so she could show them where the pool was, where the thoroughbred stable was, where the main house where we had dances and parties was, etc., etc., etc. Then at some later date I ran into Terry, who had then just gotten back from Medjugore, where she said she was telling the priests how horrible Herbert was, and they said they had already heard such complaints from others from our community who had come to Medjugore. And then Terry – right there in the parking lot - started in on a screaming tirade against Cecilia, their oldest – they have about 8 children. “She just doesn’t get it,” Terry shrieked repeatedly, yelling how she couldn’t convince Cecilia how horrible our commune was. That was quite a few years ago, and clearly at some point Terry did convince her. I wonder what the prospect of being a published author, doing book signings, etc., might have had with Cecilia so radically changing her tune.

Keywords: Cecilia Galante, Herbert Schwartz, Laura Jones

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