The Ballad of Jane (Austen)

Below is a filk  I  wrote recently while on a bit of a Jane Austen kick. I couldn’t help it, the chorus kept ringing in my head….Jane! The lady called Jane!

I hereby release these verses into the public domain, so have fun! I would however appreciate it if you could try to keep my authorship attached if you should repost it.  I would also love to hear if you have added any more verses—feel free to make suggestions in the comments to this post—and if you can capture any performance on YouTube or the like, please let me know!

For any who don’t get what this is all about, have a look at this blog post:

and now, without further ado, we present: 

 The Heroine of Hampshire or, The Ballad of Jane (Austen)

By

A Lady

aka Donna Farley

Jane! The lady called Jane!

She put down her sewing and picked up her pen

She wrote about ladies and rich gentlemen

Our love for her now is not hard to explain

The Heroine of Hampshire, the lady called---Jane! (spoken, aside: Austen, that is…)

Now Jane saw the unmarried ladies

Just wanting to get on with life

But their homes were threatened by entailments

(in Mrs. Bennett’s voice): “They need a rich man in want of a wife!”

So Jane said, “Let me invite you to my shindig—

It’s all about Prejudice and Pride.

The gentlemen will all be dressed in tightpants

Because they are in want of a bride.”

Oh, Jane! The lady called Jane! ….

Now the Bennets had five lovely daughters

Lizzy, Mary, Kitty, Lydia, and Jane

(spoken, aside: Not the same Jane as Jane Austen the Heroine of Hampshire, you understand, just a character in her book, and not even the main character, that’s Jane Bennet’s sister Lizzy, also known as  Eliza, Elizabeth, and Miss Elizabeth Bennet. In the eighteenth century, Jane is a name as common as pins.) 

All right, let’s try that verse again—

Now the Bennets had five lovely daughters

Lizzy, Mary, Kitty, Lydia, and Jane.  

Not one prospect of a husband amongst them,

But at least they had a good family name.

(Though I’ve heard that there was another sister

--the family had to have her locked away

In some backwater place known as Canton--

As I recall it, Vera was her name.)

Oh Jane! The lady called Jane! (sing it! Jane, Jane, Jane, Jane, Jane—Austen!)

She put down her sewing and picked up her pen

She wrote about ladies and rich gentlemen

Our love for her now is not hard to explain

The Heroine of Hampshire, the lady called---Jane!

When the Bingleys invited the Bennets

To come to the Netherfield ball

The sisters put on cunning bonnets

So the rich men would dance with them all.

Now, Mister Darcy gave a poor first impression

And Lizzy’s family made her want to die

This romance would never find expression--

Till Darcy noticed Lizzy’s fine pair of eyes.

Jane, the lady called Jane…(spoken: Jane Austen’s pen is just getting warmed up now, folks!)

Then Lydia ran off with Mister Wickham

While her mother collapsed in a faint

Darcy said, “Lizzy dear, I love you but I fear

Your family is quite a disgrace!”

Lizzy said, “Sir you know I am a lady

But a gentleman you certainly are not.

Man up! I need a big damn hero!

And you are the only one I’ve got.”

Jane, the lady called Jane….

Well Darcy was properly chastened.

As it turned out, he wasn’t all that proud,

So when Lizzy got a look at his mansion

She said, “All right, I’ll marry you now!”

The young man having changed his manner

The young woman therefore changed her mind

Now Jane Austen’s novel had a happy ending

And the marriage register was signed.

Oh Jane! The lady called Jane! (sing it! Jane, Jane, Jane, Jane, Jane—Austen!)

She put down her sewing and picked up her pen

She wrote about ladies and rich gentlemen

Our love for her now is not hard to explain

The Heroine of Hampshire, the lady called---Jane!

Now this is just one of Jane’s stories

(I haven’t yet read all the rest)

She wrote five other very clever novels

Back in the day on the old Earth That Was

So here’s an end to the ballad of Jane Austen

A heroine for you and for me

I hope that you’ll read all her stories

And I hope that you find Serenity.

Oh Jane! The lady called Jane!

She put down her sewing and picked up her pen

She wrote about ladies and rich gentlemen

Our love for her now is not hard to explain

The Heroine of Hampshire, the lady called---Jane!

==========================================

The Original “Ballad of Jayne (The Hero of Canton)” from  Firefly

lyrics and easy guitarchords found here: 

Or listen to it here:

And lastly—I don’t know who these people are other than fellow Browncoats, but they do have pretty cunning bonnets and that makes them THE COOLEST.

Tracy McMillan- The Sequel: Jane Austen's Evil Twin

The recent spate of discussions on Facebook over Tracy McMillan’s snarkticle “Why You are Not Married” got me thinking about the huge challenges our Christian singles face, both men and women.

And I think Tracy McMillan is Jane Austen’s evil twin. Or maybe just wannabe.

The Huffington Post article is here. 

My response is in my previous blog post.

Having made that lengthy post in response to the article, here in Part Two I address not so much the article per se as the flurry of excited reposts.

Now, I want to begin by mentioning that the single men who crowed at McMillan’s caricaturization of  today’s wannabe-brides as bitchy, shallow, slutty, selfish liars who have poor self-esteem—those men who crowed do actually have some excuse. They are trying as desperately as single women to navigate the murky waters of today’s marriage market. The article is so funny to them because it actually does speak to their unfortunate experiences with some women.

And kudos to those single women in the various discussion forums who had the humilty to admit that, yes, there is a grain of truth to it all.

Props also to the loyal and true and honest married women who piped up in defence of their single sisters with the obvious: this constellation of nasty character flaws is shared out equally enough among married women and single women. (Some of the points no doubt apply to men, married or unmarried, as well.)

But those married women, and even married men for gosh sakes, who saw this mud flung at the single ladies and then snickered and made cutting remarks sotto voce to each other, like the Bingley sisters at the country dance, looking down on the local girls in their outdated ball dresses…

Ahem. Mr. Knightley has a few words for you.

If your Facebook community were Jane Austen’s world, it would be a country shire full of people who know what you are saying about them to whom. Believe it or not, everything that gets posted on Facebook is personal—or at least has the potential for personal repercussions. 

So go down your long, long list of Facebook friends and look at all the single ladies. If, before you posted your ‘likes’ you didn’t think about how offensive Tracy McMillan’s  article could be to those who are single by chance not choice, perhaps you have been what Ms. McMillan calls ‘selfish’, or more precisely, self-centered.

On the other hand, if you –did- think of any of those single ladies before you gave thumbs up to the list of character flaws slapped onto them by Tracy like a mailing label addressed to hell, maybe you just committed an act of passive-aggression. Something that’s generally loathed by both men and women who are on the receiving end of it, in my experience (Tracy really missed the boat on that one when she didn’t include it in her list of courtship-killers). In any case, the single ladies who found your ‘likes’ on her vicious remarks would have to wonder, Is that how they see me? And do they really mean to tell me so in this indirect way?What am I supposed to do about it? (And later, perhaps: Well, who the hell asked them, anyway?)

You see, in Jane Austen terms, you married ladies are the haves, and the single ladies are the have-nots. In our confused but sometimes still stratified postmodern social order, you have a “higher status” than they do. Although each of them, just like you, was born a Gentleman’s daughter, in terms of the “wealth” of marital status you are rich and they, like Miss Bates, are poor.

And Mr. Knightley says of hitting people while they are down, Badly done, Emma!

I call Tracy McMillan Jane Austen’s evil twin because, very much like Jane, she has made some sharp observations of the particular world in which she moves. However, Jane’s satire of the foibles of her fellow gentry is fine and accurate as needlepoint, while Tracy’s is a post-modern in-your-face performance piece: ugly as sin and yet astoundingly self-righteous in a way that Jane’s work never is.

To the single fellas who thought the article was hilarious because Jane’s evil twin had managed, in the middle of her snark, to put a finger on some of the things that discourage young men from coming courting these days: Mr. Knightley may not have anything specific to say to you, but I believe you may well have earned yourself the disapprobation of the likes of Mr. Darcy and Colonel Brandon. And if you do not know what the heck I am talking about, time to swot up on your Jane Austen, if you ever truly hope to make a match with a suitable young lady. You too need to have a look at all the single ladies in your friend list and think about how your enthusiasm for Jane’s evil twin sounded to them. Let us hope that your approval of Tracy McMillan’s rude and unkind terms describing them has not already so lowered you in all their estimation that they will ‘cut’ you in public (that’s the Austen equivalent of defriending, in a big way and with great savoir faire.) It is possible you will never know how they might one day have received your suit, “had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner.”  

No, we don’t live in Jane’s world any more, so Tracy McMillan’s article is quite explicable in terms of her life experience. She is a worldling, and one much in need of compassion due to her history. It is not surprising, although it is annoying, that she is utterly oblivious of the very existence of both men and women who do put character first, and who choose chastity while they wait to find their proper mate. I don’t blame her so much for the stupidity of spewing all over an entire class of fellow females in the article, though I think her conclusion is a hypocritical and fatuous attempt at some kind of postmodern ‘spirituality’.  But oddly enough she has lived a life in some ways just as constrained and narrow as Jane Austen did, though Tracy seems to be unaware of her own lack of freedom.

What I did find appalling was the speed with which the chortles at this ugliness made their way around Christian circles. Christian singles have a hard enough time as it is, being made to feel  in subtle and mostly unintentional ways that they are failures in some way for not yet having found the person to whom they wish to be yoked for a lifetime of service in and to Christ. To have this sledge hammer of mockery lowered upon them is way over the top.

The ancient attitude to humour was rather negative, it must be said, and the reason is that so much humour is in fact aggressive at heart. Jane Austen’s humour is, as I said above, subtle and artful, but her evil twin’s is violently and crudely mean-spirited.  

It certainly does no harm to encourage those Christian ladies hoping one day to be married to behave with discretion, kindness and every other virtue. But it must also be said that a Gentleman’s daughter rightly wishes and expects to one day be wed to a gentleman, and to live in a community where others behave like ladies and gentlemen.

Knightley is able to deliver a deserved rebuke to Emma for her failure to behave like the lady she was born to be because he has known her forever, and Emma knows how much he thinks of her. Mr. Knightley would never stoop to participating in humour that demeans the entire fair sex, nor would he presume to offer even a deserved rebuke to anyone from whom he had not previously earned the right of a hearing.

Be a Knightley, gentlemen, and you will have a good hope of one day finding your Emma, who in turn will experience what Austen’s Emma did:  “It darted through her with the speed of an arrow that Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself!”

Tracy McMillan's Nasty Article about Single Women

from my Facebook note:

You read my title right. The link is making the rounds on Facebook right now.  One commenter said something along the lines of while they agreed with some of the points, they felt it left kind of a nasty taste in their mouth in some way, and I think a closer look at the article will help sort out why. 

Yep, it's amusing, and on the surface has some good points. The comments at the Huffington Post (so many that comments have now been closed) are all over the map, from feminists outraged at what looks like a ‘good little wife’ portrait, to men cheering her on, and various other points in between or out in left field.

A few commentators suggested there needs to be a “why you are not married—men’s version” rebuttal article, but I think they have the target completely wrong.

The true rebuttal article should be ‘Why you ARE (or have been) married”. 

So let’s see what it would look like if this article was written by single women and addressed to Ms. McMillan. (Warning: some crude words included, necessary to respond directly to those in Ms. McMillan’s article.) Please do not tell me 'but she's talking about herself'; I explain why that is not exactly so further down. 

Point for point, Ms. McMillan, why you are married:

 1.)    You’re a bitch, by which I mean, yes, you are angry. Maybe you are/were married because you managed to find yourself a man who isn’t strong enough to stand up to you. Believe me, there are people who have stayed married for fifty years on that basis. Or, more likely in your case, you are pissed at the way your three marriages turned out, to say nothing of your relationship with your father (check out her memoir if you want to know what that’s about); but in order not to take out your anger on your husband or, let’s face it, yourself, you project the anger—onto, say, single women. You deal with your life’s disappointments with an aggressive style of humour.   

 2.)    You’re shallow. You could be making the world a better place by being single and  spending your time volunteering with the Peace Corps overseas or with a local soup kitchen.  Instead you spent a year’s income on the dress, the party, and the honeymoon trip. Meanwhile, you didn’t really wait for a man of character—you settled, three times in a row, and the last one was apparently the worst. Shouldn’t you have been learning from the earlier mistakes, and making improved choices as you went on? But the only thing that mattered was that ring on the finger. Oh, and being funny, no matter who gets tarred with the broad brush of your snark.  

3.)    You’re a slut. You’ve already been married three times, once when you were pregnant. But you still don’t really have the concept of chastity, and blame your neediness for a permanent relationship after you have sex with men on oxytocin. Yet somehow you have decided to quietly ignore that other popular chemical scapegoat, testosterone, and talk about looking for a man of character. Meanwhile, you can’t even imagine that there would be single women of character who aren’t even getting the time of day from men (of character or otherwise) because they are committed to waiting for marriage.

4.)    You’re a liar. Your man is cheating on you, and you tell the world you are happily married and that a good little wife  should just feed him his mac and cheese.

5.)    You’re selfish. All those single women whom you called bitchy, shallow, slutty and liars? You don’t call them that when you want them to babysit your kids for you. (Oh, wait, maybe that one should go under ‘bitchy’ above…)

6.)    You’re not good enough. Oh, I don’t think that, you do. You are so thrilled and excited to have made it to the altar, yet you still feel so inferior that you have to put down other women,  the women who don’t happen to have a ring on their finger yet, because you are envious of their freedom to do what they want and when, and the kudos and money they are accumulating on their career paths.

Of course, this is not as funny as the original because I don’t write snark for a living. But you get the idea, I hope. If you think many of these points are not only offensive to married women but also ridiculous, you are correct.

Now, I know McMillan wrote her article out of her own experience and when she addresses it to “you”,  she sorta means herself. But only sorta.

Because it sounds funnier, in that vicious sort of way that popular snark has, if it’s aimed at somebody else, so she addresses a ‘you’, which the article makes clear is mostly women on career tracks who suddenly wake up and realize they actually do want to get married. Which demographic, in fact, is nother own —she was married three times and had countless other failed romantic relationships. She’s apparently got something against these women whose experience of singlehood is in fact not what her own ever was. And while she has only directly targeted career women who now realize they want to be married, all single women are basically getting sideswiped by the namecalling “bitch” “liar” “selfish” and so on.

And when considering how useful her advice about marriage might be, let’s remember, however amusingly she makes her points, her own relationship track record is piss-poor. She has boasted, and demonstrated, that she knows how to get married—but not that she knows how to stay that way, let alone make it a good marriage too.

Tracy McMillan’s concluding paragraph is so wrong in so many ways— wrong because it’s –almost- right, and then she goes and spoils it. When you get to the most important point of it all—“Accepting your own dear self”—you go back to the beginning and notice what a condescending attitude she has towards men. Worthy of any 19th century missionary out to reform those savage natives. And don’t forget, these aren’t your average men she’s talking about—they’re men of character, because she wouldn’t marry any other kind:

“The bottom line is that marriage is just a long-term opportunity to practice loving someone even when they don't deserve it. Because most of the time, your messy, farting, macaroni-and-cheese eating man will not be doing what you want him to. But as you give him love anyway -- because you have made up your mind to transform yourself into a person who is practicing being kind, deep, virtuous, truthful, giving, and most of all, accepting of your own dear self -- you will find that you will experience the very thing you wanted all along:

Love.”

That bit about transforming herself  “into a person who is practicing being kind, deep, virtuous, truthful, giving” is damned poetic, especially the punchy conclusion “the very thing you wanted all along: Love.”  Wow, is she ever a wonderful person…I know, because she just told me she is. Even though, with three failed marriages and many bad relationships behind her, she is coyly not telling us in the article if she is currently in a stable relationship or if so how long this one has lasted…..

Meanwhile, the kind, deep, virtuous, truthful, giving Tracy McMillan smugly snarks at single women, blaming them for not being married like she is, and looks down from this towering moral height on those undeserving, farting men. 

All I can say is, any man who really wants a woman who thinks like this, deserves what he gets. He may get his macaroni and whatever it is that she calls Love—but he won’t get any respect, for she has none to give to men, women, or herself.

Part Two: Tracy McMillan and Jane Austen

Prevent your vent

When you get cut off in traffic, dissed by acquaintances, or double-crossed by a co-worker, you need to vent, right?  Flip them the bird, swear, yell, call them names? Or maybe not vent so directly...instead, rant about it to a friend, pummel a punching bag, run a few miles, break some old dishes?

Not according to the study discussed in this blog post:

"Venting feels great. The problem is, it accomplishes little else. Actually, it makes matters worse and primes your future behavior by fogging your mind....If you think catharsis is good, you are more likely to seek it out when you get pissed. When you vent, you stay angry and are more likely to keep doing aggressive things so you can keep venting. It’s drug-like, because there are brain chemicals and other behavioral reinforcements at work. If you get accustomed to blowing off steam, you become dependent on it."

The study  discussed was conducted in the 1990s, but somehow this devotion to venting seems to still be the default in our society. And it explains what I keep seeing in internet discussion forums. Maybe it explains something about the UK riots too. Venting feels good, and we are predisposed to do what feels good. As if that weren't enough, the world keeps telling us we -ought- to do whatever feels good. Saint Nilus the Ascetic says that "anger is akin to gluttony; both result from our craving for personal physical pleasure and psychological self-satisfaction."

The author of the study, Brad Bushman, also notes one particularly worrying matter raised by some of the results regarding 'displaced aggression'. The subjects in the study who read an article falsely claiming the effectiveness of venting their angries by hitting a punching bag, it seems, were also those most likely in a later part of the study to take aggressive action against other persons. Bushman suggests that this raises the possibility that 'media advocacy of catharsis [i.e., displacing your anger in violent physical action] could have the socially undesirable effect of fostering displacement of aggression onto innocent targets.'

Do note that neither the blog author nor Bushman are advocating stuffing your anger down as an alternative. That's the opposite error. But I think it interesting that the traditional Orthodox approach doesn't advocate anything like venting. Anger is one of 'the passions', the inflamed appetites and compulsions that so easily rule us fallen and imperfect humans.

What do the Scriptures and the fathers say about dealing with anger?

Well,  I guess we all know the verses about 'Be angry and sin not' and "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath'.  Which is our starting point, but in itself only tells us the what and not the why or how.

I find it interesting that some of the sayings from the desert fathers and others have things to say that are right in line with the results of this study.

"The first step toward freedom from anger is to keep the lips silent when the heart is stirred." John Climacus

And here is another, from Partiarch Kyrill of Moscow: "What means does the Church offer us for overcoming the vice of anger? The first and foremost means is silence. Set, O Lord, a watch before my mouth (Psalm 140:3) – we must remember these remarkable words of the psalm each time we suddenly feel the urge to vent our anger against our interlocutor or against someone with whom we work or live. The ability to keep thy tongue from evil means to do good (Psalm 33:13, 15)."  
No venting there, eh?

Secular psychologists suggest the same: 

"The 4 Ws of Venting: 1. Wait. When you feel triggered, commit yourself to giving some time for the situation to process. In other words, allow that prefrontal cortex to make sense of it all. Angry at a driver? You can choose not to act on your reaction. First, take at least a minute to just breathe."

Bushman suggests that when angered, rather than hit the punching bag, we delay our reaction, relax, or distract ourselves with  an activity 'totally incompatible with aggression'. Sounds like:

"Stirrings of anger are calmed by psalmody, magnanimity and mercifulness." Abba Evagrius

Fr. George Morelli describes how a 'time out' to meditate on the goodness and humility of our Lord  and of course pray for His help can defuse anger:  "We can reflect on the words of St. Mark the Acetic: Do you want the tree of disorder -- I mean the passion of bitterness, anger and wrath -- to dry up within you and become barren, so that with the axe of the Spirit it may be 'hewn down and cast into the fire' together with every other vice (Matt. 3:10) ...If this is really what you want keep the humility of the Lord in your heart and never forget it...Call to mind who He is, and what He became for our sakes. Reflect first on the divine light of His Divinity revealed to the essences above [the angels] (Eph 1:21)...Then think to what humiliation He descended in His ineffable goodness, becoming in all respects like us who were dwelling in the dwelling of darkness and the shadow of death (Mat 4:16)." Petition Our Lord's help in this way to help restructure."

and here is another, on the Jesus prayer:

One more very good article on the topic of anger.

and I'll just stop now. This isn't a very organized post, but all the articles at the links are worth a look, so if you want to prevent your vent,  I do urge you to have a look at one or more of them.

No more special than a grain of sand....

I just found the poem below in a notebook from last year's trip to Rockaway. It seemed such a perfect fit with the story about these images of individual grains of sand, from this story. 

Sun like love on my cheek

Breeze like comfort on my shoulders

Clouds like promises bright and full

I have hit the road and won’t turn back

Nothing can stop me now

As I kite down the beach,

Not even the string of mundanity.

I do not need to be more special than any

individual grain of sand on the shore

content to know

I am no less

Christ is Risen! Celebrate the Feast of Feasts

I'm not here...this is being auto-published. Because I'm probably at church, or feasting, or catching a nap between church and feasting....

Everything you didn't even know you wanted to know about Holy Pascha, the Feast of the Resurrection of Our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ, aka the Eastern Orthodox Easter, can be found at this wonderful site, Feast of Feasts.  

I have two articles among the many by other Orthodox authors. Enjoy the site-- you can spend a lot of time there!

Tearing at Icons

Göreme valley open air museum; Cappadocia, Turkey, photographed by George Jansoone on Wikimedia

Defaced. Desecrated. Mocked. Scorned. 


.....and Orthodox Christians are doing it this Lent. 


Not to these fresco icons in Turkey, of course. To each other. 


I am ashamed. 

Each and every one of us human beings is an icon of Christ. Yes, that leper over there too. 

Yes, that "gay guy" there and that "right-wing bigot" here and that stuck-up cheerleader here and that abortionist there. Everyone, including these villains we love to hate, according to our own various definitions of villain at any given time. 

That woman, that man, that family member, that stranger, who disagrees with you. 

Please understand, I am not a relativist. I am not just saying "Why can't we all get along?" I am what most would call a very conservative Christian, though I really detest labels. I am where I am -- in the Orthodox Church-- because I believe it is the true faith. My family did not leave the Anglican Church for Orthodoxy to flee any particular politically correct issue, but because we were already going in the direction of the apostolic Christian faith while our church was going away from it. There is a difference. 

 I'm not a bandwagon-jumper-on. I'm not an Orthodox Peace Fellowship kinda gal, but if I were American I wouldn't be a tea-partyer either. And yet I am not a Pollyanna either, who thinks we should all stick our heads into our icon corners and stay there.

It's not enough to say, Let's get our minds out of the gutter and concentrate on the beauty of our Orthodox services. Beauty can so easily mask the passion of anger. Beauty will save the world, says Dostoevsky, and I certainly wouldn't argue with him...but unless the beauty we are talking about is soul-deep, it is no better than a whitewashed tomb. We need to face our difficulties, but we don't have to be ugly while we do it. 

As St. James says, "With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness." We'll be at church this weekend, with our awe-inspiring chant and lovely candlelight and glorious icons...well, and the not-so-glorious icons. The ones that have been dirtied and warped by our fallen nature and our life-wounds. The ones just like us.  And next time we look at the internet, we'll be 'seeing' more icons just like us. Why do we think it is okay to 'curse' them, when they are made in God's likeness? 

I am not invoking 'civility' as a means of short-circuiting the debates and smoothing over everything nicey-nice. That's the way things tend to be done here in Canada, but as I said, I am a pretty conservative Christian, and thus out of step with the mainstream Canadian culture. I am just saying that lack of civility reflects worse on those who employ it than on their opponents. These tactics are means of defacing and desecrating your fellow human beings, the walking icons that God Himself made. 

The troubles disturbing our Lent are not small. We should not ignore them or minimize them,  though not everyone can or must spend time engaging in discussions. At the same time, humility demands that we acknowledge that we are like those five blind men and the elephant. I understand that some earlier participants in this brouhaha 'started it', with occasional language that could have been moderated somewhat. But frankly that 'side' of the debate has been far outstripped by the newcomers from the 'other' side, who have attacked them with cruelty and sarcasm that they have honed to a comedic art form. When these newer folks first arrived on the scene, I willingly gave them a hearing as providing another part of the elephant, but now it seems to me they have grown overfond of the sound of their own voices.  They seem more excited about the myriad ways they can stick it to the other side, earning applause from their readers for the entertainment, than about finding solutions to our problems. 

I personally don't do gentleness very well, so I have a long way to go with this stuff. But for a start, could we stop seeing the mockery and scorn in the satirical headlines, Straw-Man-and-Pharisee videos, and insulting graphics? The truth is, the addiction to these kinds of debate tactics suggests a bondage to the passion of anger. Leaping with delight on every opportunity to mock other church members in dehumanizing ways is exactly like an iconoclast tearing the faces off icons, leaving them blank and unreal. That is, unreal in the minds of the iconoclasts. God knows how real each and every one of us is.  

We need to let our light shine before the world-- not run around setting our own brothers' and sisters' hair on fire with our unbridled tongues. How did the early Christians manage to do this? Tertullian paints a picture that looks nothing like our current situation: he says the pagans would remark about the Christians "See, they say, how they love one another, for they themselves are animated by mutual hatred. See, they say about us, how they are ready even to die for one another, for they themselves would sooner kill."

Wow. Does that sound anything like what's going on across the Ortho-net right now?  Maybe Tertullian was painting too flattering a picture of the Christians of his day-- but should we be proud of how far we are from this ideal?