Abbots, Sex, Crypto-Agrarianism, and non-Uberfrommity

I had the great pleasure this last Saturday to attend an all-day presentation (well I was there most of the day... My friend S and I were told by a fellow parishioner of a pawn shop having a 50% off sale on guns so we missed about an hour on our fool's errand- all the guns had sold out hours ago, aside from a couple exceedingly disreputable looking Turkish Mausers) by Abbot Jonah of the St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco Monastery, formerly at Point Reyes, CA, but recently relocated near Redding. My fiancee and I also attended a talk he gave at Fr. James house the night before about spiritual maturity. I was struck very much by Abbot Jonah's frequent denunciation of piety that is not judged in the light of love, God's love and our love for our neighbor. He also went into a lengthy discussion of how the dualistic and in some ways Gnostic errors of Origen had found there way down through the ages, tainting some of the writings of the Cappadocian Fathers, and generally contributing to the tendancy in Orthodox monasticism to despise the body, sexuality, and marriage. Abbot Jonah's honesty when confronting the errors of monasticism, and the way he exclaimed against Uberfrommity as I understand it, at one point saying, "All of this [indicating the iconostasis] and the Liturgy, and how we pray and cross ourselves will drag us to Hell if we don't love our neighbor.", were refreshing and surprising to say the least. Part of the morning session was on sexuality and family life. It warmed my heart to hear him explain how the collapse of the extended family which began after WWI and the collapse of the nuclear family that began in the 60's could really all be blamed on the Industrial Revolution. The full session was recorded and will be available as a podcast and MP3 download shortly, and I will provide the link as soon as it is available.