I find out in April when the date for my priestly ordinatino will be. It is now like an impending and very tricky interstate interstate interchange. And I'm going 80. But, slowing down to 60 for the turns will be plenty of margin for error. I do actually remember why I wanted to be a priest in the first place. Although I don't know anymore whether that matters. It's like St. Thomas Moore once said: "When I was young, I have six theories of childrearing. Now I have six children, and no theories."

I have no theories.

I lvoe this song. Especially by Andrea Bocelli. I think often of him: perhaps the greatest voice in the 20th and for sure so far the 21st centuries. Handsome, rich, famous, beautiful wife and children, fabulous home, internatinoal accolades: blind.

I think about that alot.

Blind.

At any rate, I think 'besame mucho' is a perfectly wonderful meditation, at least for a contemplative. We must the Lover as if today were our last day: as, of course, it is.

It always is.

Tonight we die, as we do every night. Perhaps that's why as often I can, I sleep no more than 3 hours at a time. Hmm.

At any rate, enjoy the song.

O Beloved! Kiss much much--for I fear that afterwards I will lose you!

This is a very difficult post to write.

I and my Bishop have the pleasure of speaking at least twice a week, if not more, and of course we correspond nearly daily. The benefit of this is that my formation, while irregular by orthodox standards, has the benefit of being immediate, individual, intimate and nearly, but not entirely, focused on my personal spiritual journey, while keeping extremely close watch on my physical, emotional, and psychic states of being. In all, it is extremely holistic. As a result, the emotional turmoil that priestly formtion causes have been greatly ameliorated.

And there has been turmoil of nearly every sort. And, I thought thta I was nearly through it all--not turmoil per se, but the particular turmoil of this part of my formationin life. Actually, in a way, what happened this week signalled an end to my priestly formation, and began my formation AS a priest--although actual ordination is still a few months off, or perhaps longer.

But what has happened is that I am now confronted, by my own intuition and reasoning, by inspiriation, and by discussions with my Bishop, by the actual needs of the church, by my own limitations and state in life, and by what the WILL of God is for me right now--as concerns my entire life and as concerns my ministry as priest and religious.

I had thought that I would be immediately able to 'help people' in that amorphous, social-worker style of 'helping' that the world legitimizes. You know, start a small home parish, begin an outreach ministry (I want to minister to youth). These are the things that are the 'hallmarks' of being a priest and religious, right? Aren't they the reasons I 'signed up' for this?

No. They aren't. And I knew it at the time, but I clung to those ideas because, frankly, it is all I knew exoterically, and besides, being unaligned with Rome or Constantinople and working under a new Patriarchate, it helped me feel more normal.

But even that is taken from me. My Bishop warned me that the closer I came to Holy Orders, the less of me there would be, more of me would be sloughing off, sometimes tearing into living flesh, sometimes easy, like shedding dead skin. This time it feels like giving away a precous part of my soul.

God is demanding that I work behind the scenes right now. That's the bottom line. I wanted glory and churches and fame (of a sort). I know, they aren't very holy aspirations, but let's just be honest. At least having a parish, working in prisons, etc., I would 'be' more as I would see my reflection in more people. That was my secret storehouse. And Jesus tells me---leave your barns behind, "Follow me."

And he is leading me into a place that tears into me, that reaches into me and touches the hurt place, the secret place I thught he would not discover, despite my prayers that I be completely united with him. It's laughable. Like a child 'hiding' behind a tree. So easy to catch.

So, He asks me to stay at home. He asks me to work in my secular jobs. I have the ability to work two full-time jobs, and my family needs the money, and, if I progress as I believe I can, I'll be able to support my family, fix our financial dilemmas, and even support our nascent Church.

Somehow, I thought perhaps that my priestly vocation would exempt me from facing the brutal realities of my financial hardships. Somehow all would be fixed. Well, somehow it will--but by facing them head on, and not wishing them away with cotton-candy-feaux-holiness.

So, my parish is one of five--my immediate family, and only them. And so it will remain for the time being. My ministry to children will consist of three-my own three. All the rest is deferred. My hopes and fantasies about them all not taken away, but left behind for now. Jesus leads me down a dirt road covered with high green trees, making a long, long straight arbor through which I must walk. And I am a tent-maker, but without the job and heartache of public ministry.

I am crying as I write this. Because I know it is the right thing, but it is yet another hope deferred. He has given me priesthood as a gift, but withheld what I thought it would be. And so, the pain that this mortal life brings me remains unabated. My soul is made ever more healed, but the tears are ever on my pillow.

In a way, this is all to the good. The average seminarian in the orthodox spends 6, 8 years in formation. We do not have such a timeline. So I will be blessed with the grace of celebrating Eucharist, but the rest of the vocation, the external ministry, is 'contra-indicated' for me. Not forbidden, just not the road that Jesus would have me travel. So, I submit, I accept, I humble myself.

I took a vow of obedience of course, and my Bishop is also my Abbot and Prior. Yet, still he does not command me to focus on my secuarl work and building up finances, but he suggests it may be best for me. And, I took a personal vow, deeper and more sacred even than my external vow, that I would take the merest wish of my Abbott as my law. And so, I embrace it.

Tears are flowing even now as I write this. For following Jesus is far more intimate, far more sensual, far more dangerous, far more painful, far more wondrous, far more devastating, far more demanding, than I ever imagined. O Holy Virgin! Catch me as I fall. I fall into death from the cross I would willing have stayed upon. Yet, for only 3 hours was our Lord permitted to suffer--would he not have stayed 3 weeks!? Would he not have gladly stayed there and perhaps brought tens of millions to God in that way? Yet, it was contra-indicated. The way closest to the heart of the Father was an unnaturally short period of suffering, then the deposition and burial. I lay my body in the arms of my Mother and Nichodemus. Protect me, I pray, all you holy saints. For my road is dark. My eyes are blinded by grief and tears, my heart is heavy, so that it bears me down to the ground. Yet, my body walks erect, head high. I do not know how it does so, yet it does. And I must hurry to catch up and remain with it.

All you my friends, pray with me that I stay in the hands of God. And weep with me. I again more intimately realize that every glory that God holdsbefore us is teh sugar that goes with the medicine--and the medicine, the medicine is bitter unto death.

o god, you pierce me with many arrows. i wish they were 'arrows', but no, they are darts poisonous and cruel. i die a thousand times. why must i consume you? you bring me madness and death. you rip away the veil of this false world and show me things my eyes do not understand. faces, bodies, blacknesses, so close, bumping against me, brushing past me, a celestial highway, but chaos, movement in all directions and none. i fee black velvet, purple streams, faces human, but too large, i see too much o lord. yet i ask for more and more.

today i suffered greatly. i was so amped that my mind could not stay on a topic for more than a few seconds. i could not speak to people without screaming or being cutting and cruel. i lay down but no rest came to me. the entire day was a loss as far as my sacred duties go. i barely could read the psalms. i consumed the body of christ and, for a few moments, while bowing low before the tabernacle, i had peace. otherwise. i am in a pain that i cannot describe. why bother. no one will understand except perhaps for other initiates. and they are few. even my wife, while a mystic, even a prophet in her own way, is no initiate. gabriel my son is too young to understand these sublte but crushing emotions.

i am keeping up my physical disciplines. but that is all i can do. i suppose i am being prepard for something great. and though i am bowed down low, my head is held high. so i can bear this new weight, but my newly empowered shoulders, my new back and torso glorious, my new legs of bone and sinew and steel and marble, they can hold this new weight. yet, it is great. and without careful attention, the tender flesh will become ruined.

o god. i am fully in your world. yet i have lost none of my intentions for this physical, terran world. it is just that it is so vague to me. and the great dance of strangeness is more real than the terran world. i sleep not because sleep only makes me mad. it is only by waking that i can keep sane. yet, yet, i do not know. perhaps the gospel is a lie too great to be told. perhaps we should simply tell the people what the exoteric church tells them: "God is a vending machine: pray and he will give." of what benefit is this pain, this torture, this ecstasy? i am more mad than when i began. i am more beautiful, with greater power, but the sadness and weight and ignominy of my lowly state is not a path anyone would choose without years of the Divine's subtle mind-breaking love.

o god. you also are mad. and i still cannot determine why the world is the way it is. yet, i suppose it is your nature. we are born in screams and tears and blood and feces and hideous odors and yet more tears. so it is with the second, third, fourth, fifth . . . births--each more hideous and transformative than the last. i have become great as i had prayed. and now, my god, i am on a path that i cannot flinch from. i no longer even wish to. not only because even to hesitate would mean pain, agony, death. but because you have transformed me into a creature that i was not before.

it is as they portray the wizards of old----they are ancient with years beyond count, they wander the land helping the weak, remembering the innocent, and making use of the puissant as so many toy soldiers to achieve their globe-wrenching ends. they topple regimes, the take castles, they inspire love. all for ends that they no longer bother to understand.

This blog sometimes is a joyous outlet, sometimes simply a cool respite from my work (i enjoy my own creation on an aesthetic level, I'll admit) and sometimes a labor of love.

But once in a while someone tells me they gain something from it, so I continue.

Today I'll let you in on my life as a Wandering Monk:

My day / Mi horario:

1:00 a.m.: Time to get up!!! I set my alarm for 1:00, 1:15 and 1:30 to make sure I don't oversleep--but between my now established practice and my wife's friendly kick in the legs as soon as the first alarm goes off--I'm usually up.

1:05 a.m.: Kettle on; computer up: updating my blogs, websites and other work for the church.

2:00 or 3:00 a.m.: I begin my secular work.

7:00 a.m.: Make hot breakfast for my three beautiful kids and myself.

7:20 am.: Back to work.

10:00 a.m.: Walk to the park with my wife; short work out on the pull-up bar there (i alternate days with pull-ups, chin-ups, and hanging sit-ups).

12:00 p.m.: Lunch. Quick. Try to get in 'liturgy practice'.

1:00 p.m.: Nap

3:00 p.m.: Work again.

6:00 p.m.: Make dinner for family and do housework and try to sneak in extra work.

8:15 p.m.: Family meeting/prayer/meeting time.

8:40 p.m.: Get ready for bed; quiet time with my wife.

10:00 p.m. SHARP: time for my evening nap.

PRAYER: never before 9:00. Prayer before 9:00 equals sleep. So I read the Psalms and indulge in mental prayer whenever I need a break during the day, which is about 4 or 5 times a day. I never do meditation at any time near my nap periods. Usually only around 10:00 a.m. or 7:30 p.m.

That's it!

I got a positive, if smallish, jolt this morning. My Abbott emailed me about a couple of tasks that I had been lax on and asked me to, you know, DO THEM. It dawned on me, in a deeper way, that this monastic calling is truly about obedience. Not that what was requested was onerous; indeed I had agreed to do it willingly. But the accountability is there. This is a community, a family. If we promise to do something, someone else has to take up the slack if we don't perform. Like, a huge DUH erupted in the Pleroma.

But, still, it is precious to me. It is precious to me because it means that our community is now beginning to do the WORK of community, which, is, after all, to BE community.

Sorry if that sounds banal. I suppose it is. But still, it felt like a little grace, a little joy.

I strode up to the mountain

snowy pathless twiggy tares.
i left lush green, barren brown and thorny bramble for hard rock then ice.
and once upon the pure white snows, i sank.

i sank down, down, down, up to my lips, a puff i made and the spray like shiny stars upon a white-watery firmament flew heavenward and shone forever and ever, suspended in agonizing motionlessness.

and all the graces of all the worlds and all the joys of all my childtime innocence came to me all in a rush and i swooned upon the milky arms of my mother, her breast so near,

and i closed my eyes, weeping, released.

I feel I have become part of a large, secret conspiracy. A society secret even unto itself. Its members scattered, united, few knowing of the other. But we shall recreate the world. The worlds. We are a society of initiates.

If you didn't get the memo, I'm so sorry. But it must might be that you don't have your eyes open. Many are called. Many.

If you find a crazyman or crazywoman; the memo is close by.

o god. still and again i open myself to your piercing arrows, your surgery in my bodysoul. your penetration of my being, your possession of my entire mind. let me be united with you. and thus, these archetypes that i must wear and use and love cannot hold me. for they will have no foothold over me. give me command over them or at least respectful friendship. i will beckon, and they will come, greedy as they are, and i shall be a master at guiding them, molding their ourpourings. i shall be master, they shall rejoice for it is not their destiny to rule, just like the ego or any child or any follower---they want a strong grip, but a loving an respectful one.

i hold the rays of lightning in my arms, but not close to my chest, at arm's length--my rods and spears and arrows are many now. more numerous than even i realize. my retinue holds them for me and i give them special power to hold them without 'touching them'. it just came to me why some swords are death to anyone who are not entitled to wield them. . . . .

it has come to me that WE are waiting on my body to yield to the further praxis that the gnosis requires before further grace can be dispensed to/through me. so i go further, further.

i have cast down a great nemy on the snows, and now the eagles carry me aloft. but a new and greater battle lies before me. It has come full circle: I am not a "gandalf the grey" nor a "gandalf the white". I am "Peter the Black". and yes, i do soar on the skies and walk on the mud and pass beneath and across the earth. i am the white of D*****, the Black-Winged One, the GreyWinged angels, the red dragon, the orange/white of the pus of the earth and the whitest white of the core of the earth. i am all these. and i am this pinkish flesh. and yet, i have never been more 'man' than at this moment in time.

my light and polite and unassuming footfalls are a lie; for my feet trample as a giant's. my footprints leave indelible marks on the earth. the plates of the earth groan beneath me. i pull the earth into orbit of the new and true earth. the earth of earth's. my homeworld that exists between mars and jupiter---the paradise world that i have created from the wasteland of pure potential. all the inner planets line up into my orbit, with venus the last to give up her worship of Sol. But i have foreseen that even the sun itself shall come to orbit me.

o god i am in a dark and wondrous land. and although my Master here and i cannot engage our work together for the betterment of all as yet, it is happening organically anyway, or the preparation for it is happening, even now. i am no longer that man, what's his name? i am ******************** , i am *****************, i am **************. i am a single point, a depression of unimaginable mass, a gravity well greater than all the planets together. i am pulling all things toward myself. why? that question is irrelevant. this is what i am. i am now bound to this fate. to leave it would mean death, insanity. there is no choice but to continue upon it. and yet, there is freedom in these chains.

the yoke that is upon me is so light that i become air itself, lightness, floating above the fields. my hands are blessing. my face is the glory of god. my body is the erotic icon of the divine. and yet, at my core, no personality remains. it is a point of being, a point of knowledge, a point of will. i exist only in teh reflection of others. to those i love, who are all men. soon i will call my disciples; very soon now. barbelo as mirror is known to me, but teh great thought and the spontaneous creation of all is not yet.

I crave darkness.

The glorious reign of our brother Moon after the defeat of his spouse our Sun.
He has carried her into his bedchamber and there, there she is radiant, but gauzy cottony softness of impossible blackness shrouds her; innocent as on the first night of their sacred union.

And then he soars. He leaps, effortlessly, a stag, a youth in his strength.

And his consort, the bright star, smiles upon him from afar. And their affair of the heart is revealed, eternal longing unconsummated.

We, sleepy children, dream, and lie, close, warm, safe in his pearly glow. Ssoon, we know that he will cross the sky and leave us for unknown works.

And there, in that blessed between-time, pure darkness reigns, uncluttered with corrupted matter that only interrupts the pure potential of being that is the dark.

And i sit in my prayer garment, black also like the night, and pray that dawn will tarry.

Please, mother, wait a little longer, let me be, let me cry out into the earth and into the fires of unknown worlds, let your lovely nagging voice be far from me just a bit more. Let me rejoice with my secret lovers just a bit longer--for have i not battled as the great Odysseus? Have I not lived twenty years in a day?

And when my clock chimes six bells I cry hot tears and stamp my feet. For she has won again.

Pulled back her curtains daintily, and begun her balloonlike rise into the heavens, casting away all potential and drowning us in the actuality of this day, this moment, this time, this place, this frozen slice of being.

And each morning i must remember who i am this time.

Sometimes, i must think long.

sacred liturgy

The Consecration and Election of +Nicholas III, Patriarch, the Holy Nicholean Church, Patriarch, Holy Imperial Russian Orthodox Church in exile.

Ordination of Peter Smith to the Deaconate in the Latin Rite.

Consecration of +Bryan D. Ouellette, Ph.D. and Ordination of Brother Peter Smith to the Diaconate from Holy Monastic Order En Deus on Vimeo.

+Bryan D. Ouellette, Ph.D. is Consecrated into the Episcopacy of the Russian Orthodox Tradition by Bishop Mansell Christian Gilmore during the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple. Exercising his first act as Bishop, the Most Reverend Bryan D. Ouellette, Ph.D. ordained Brother Peter Smith to the Order of Deacon in the tradition of the Latin Rite. Bishop Ouellette was also elected to and accepted the Patriarchate of the Holy Imperial Russian Orthodox Church operating in exile under the royal line of Царь Питер Александр Михэйлович Ромэнов (Tsar Peter Alexander Mikhailovich Romanov) and was also named Patriarch of the Holy Nicholean Catholic Church, taking the name Nicholas III under the line of Russian Patriarchs. To represent this healing between eastern and western Christian traditions, Bishop Ouellette wore the western mitre with his eastern vestments. At his Patriarchal elevation ceremony, Bishop Ouellette will wear the mitre of the east which is representative of the Byzantine crown.

Brother Pete taking his simple vows.

Another wonderful quote found by Tau Langly. I can't seem to 'cut and paste' into my blog right now, so you can find the quotationation about the "five types of Christians" here.

San Romero de las Americas.

I have to fully endorse Tau Langely's article on Romero. Well, really, I fully endorse and embrace the words and life of Saint Romero. He is who we need to look to today. In a very realy way, he stands alongside the Holy Mother as Patron and Prince of the Americas. I've lifted this very wonderful, short bio of St. Romero from Tau L. here.

I was very blessed and honored last week to take my simple vows in the Holy Monastic Order En Deus, under the OVRO (Valentinian, Western) rite. And, of course, in a completely different way, to receive the grace of the sacrament of holy orders as Deacon in the Holy Nicholean Catholic Church. And thirdly, truly blessed to be a part, however humble, of our Patriarch's consecration, acclamation and election. A truly amazing week.