Trying to get back into the “discipline” of regular posting – this morning stumbled across this from Religion & Ethics News Weekly – describing an effort to recover, and restore the wealth of manuscripts, history, and artefacts in Indian Christianity. The video and related links are well worth viewing.

It is worth mentioning here that when – in the video – they mention the Portuguese effect on Indian Christianity in the 16th century – this has a direct link to our OC/IC history – more on this, another time however – as I’m off to lunch.

I fell into this article this morning while making my rounds. It highlights the impending arrival of Earth Day, and notes the rising number of religious communities reflecting on the links between ethics, environmentalism, our food, and our theology.

Today we take our food very much for granted. But this little article was timely not only because of Earth Day, not simply because we are increasingly interested in our personal and collective impact on our environment (and how it affects others), but because we’ve just exited the Great Fast – that time of year when we are very conscious of what we eat, how much we eat, how it is prepared etc.

Lent is over – but can we carry over some of the awareness of the lenten discipline into the rest of the liturgical year, and ask some tough questions about where our food comes from, how it is produced, and what effect that has on those who live around us?

I’ve been more aware over the past few years than ever before of the number of OC/IC folk who are comitted vegetarians and have always wanted to ask – is it because of your faith that you have chosen this discipline; and if so, would you be so kind as to talk about that with the rest of us (even here perhaps)?

Food is not just something you shove in yoru mouth to satisfy a need – it is a product of someone elses labour (maybe even yours) and that labour needs to be respected.

There’s a great exhibit now on at the Petit Palais in Paris on the history and art of Mt. Athos. The collection includes documents detailing the development of the Holy Mountain as an autonomous region of Greece, icons, liturgical items, and jewlery. Sadly the website (here) does not offer much in terms of information and images about the exhibit.

It is also worth mentioning that the permanent collection of the Petit Palais includes a substantive collection of icons from various regions – and is well worth a look.

While you’re there – have lunch at the cafe – unlike museum cafe’s here in the UK the food is rather good, and the view onto the garden is lovely.

Huw, another OC/IC Easterner has created this wonderful compilation of Paschal Troparia – sit down, relax, and have a good giggle over it.

The Irish politician Feargal Quinn has written in the Irish Times (27 March) that the EU must set a fixed date for Pascha. His argument runs that the movable date is inconvenient to parents and schools organising vacations, and time off. That it negatively affects the tourist industry, and causes inefficiency in other businesses attempting to market their Easter related products. The current system, asserts the Senator, is considered by many to be a hassle and needs to be fixed. The EU he points out is great at unifying and systematising things – so why not the date of Easter? Afterall, it would, he believes, be enormously popular since we all find the movable date of Easter so irritating.

First lets deal with the most obvious issue. As part of Quinn’s argument he attacks the Orthodox for, as he says, being the ones preventing the adoption of the WCC proposed unified date of Easter (never mind the fact that it would still be a moveable feast!). If the EU were to undertake the project, it is unlikely that the rest of the world will follow suit. Think about this for a minute, we need only look at developments in the Anglican communion over the past ten years to see that Nigeria and her sister churches would see this as yet another decadent, heterodox intrusion by the liberal homosexuals in Brussels. Now – we have three, no, four dates of Easter. I can imagine any number of churches in the US that would follow suit.

There’s another problem here too and that is – if the EU, a secular authority is to set the calculations for one religious festival, then for the sake of consistency, and fairness – it must set them all. So, what do you think of the new European wide Pascha-Ramada-Pesach? It would be efficient – Muslims, Christians and Jews would celebrate their major feast on the same day, making it easier for the tourism industry, soccer mom, and oh, of course lets not forget the all important businessman trying to make a living by hawking tawdry holiday crap at a time convenient for him.

Yeah, there’s a reason why it’s a religious festival and not a secular one. Our calendar is messy – true. But it’s got character, and history, and it makes the liturgical year have a sense of organic rhythm that it would most surely lose if we started pegging our movable feasts down – not for reasons of discernment, and good praxis but for “convenience”.

I’m all for a unified date of Pascha – it is, interestingly enough, the only festival that that ancient canons specifically state must be celebrated by the whole church on the same day. Other feasts have regional variations even now. But, it also took over 300 years to arrive at the decision for a unified date of Easter.

My own community, until recently, struggled with the problem of the two Pascha’s for over a decade – because we had both Eastern and Western rite communities and missions. Every year we would raise the spectre of debating the date, and every year we had to set it aside because neither side was happy to abandon its “traditional” date – and it must be said for some very interesting, and very well thought out reasons.

I raise this point not only to place this firmly within an OC/IC context, but to make the point that it is not a theological, or even a traditional reason that we should be concerned about a unified date of Pascha – but an ekklesiological one: that on this one day the whole Christian world confess “with one heart and one mind” our trust in the risen Christ, and to celebrate together our liberation from the fear of the dark places through which we must sometimes walk alone. Every year in our community as Great Lent arrived the old divisions between the two sides of the community emerged, and one side tried to push forward its own date. Every year we were reminded of how fragile a union we shared, and how, dis-unified in some respects we truly were as a “community”. Pascha is about our union with Christ, as much as it ought to be about our reaffermation to be in union with one another as community – locally, within our individual parishes and synods. If we can do that – then I’d venture to guess that we could learn to become a stronger “community” across the OC/IC movement.

Ok, so we’ve talked a bit here about the effect of social networking on religious communities, and outreach . . . . well . . . have a look (and a giggle over) this.

Sorry no posts thus far this week – I’ve been on an intensive (6 hours a day) French course. Now maybe I can read the letters of Abp. Varlet? . . . non.