Alexander Schmemann shows us the deep connection between Chrismation and becoming one’s self. From this point of departure, creativity as union with God is conceptualized.
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul! While I live I will praise the Lord; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.
Psalm 146:1
If you haven’t read any books by Alexander Schmemann, then I recommend you do. And don’t rely on this blog post to help you, because it’s not going to do this great theologian any justice.
Alexander Schmemann is just plain heavy–that’s all …
Nevertheless, with last week being the Feast of Theophany (Epiphany), I’ve been thinking a lot about Baptism and Chrismation, and thought it would be a missed opportunity if I didn’t post something about it.
One of the leitmotifs of this blog is the intersection of the spiritual life and creativity.
There’s a lot written these days about creativity as some kind of process.
Now I enjoy reading different books about creativity such as Stephen Johnson’s Where Good Ideas Come From and Stephen Pressfield’s The War of Art–but this is not what I’m talking about when I talk about creativity.
What I mean by creativity is work that comes out of a life that is in pursuit of Beauty, Truth, Goodness, and Love. In such a way of creating, the end product is the entirety of your life as a child of God called to love all of creation and all of humanity. The actual work of art is a mere epiphenomenon–the stuff you do as part of an entire life lived for God.
So what does Chrismation and Alexander Schmemann have to do with this?
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Chrismation–and forgive me, I’m not a priest or theologian hence the crude definition–it is what comes after rising from the waters of baptism. Chrismation is the reception of the Holy Spirit. The one baptized is anointed with holy oil over the forehead, the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the ears, and all the major joints of the body. In this holy rite of the Church, the one baptized is “sealed,” protected, covered by the Holy Spirit.
In light of this crude explanation, here’s what Alexander Schmemann has to say in his book For the Life of the World …
Confirmation [or Chrismation] is the personal Pentecost of man, his entrance into the new life in the Holy Spirit, which is the true life of the Church. It is his ordination as truly and fully man, for to be fully man is precisely to belong to the Kingdom of God. … [One’s] whole body is anointed, sealed, sanctified, dedicated to the new life. ‘The seal of the Gift of the Holy Spirit,’ says the priest as he anoints the newly baptized” (91).
For the Life of the World, 91
I remember my Father of Confessor telling me, to Schmemann’s point, that this gift of the Holy Spirit is like a present that has been opened, and that will take the rest of my life to unpack.
Here’s more Schmemann …
The whole man is thus made the temple of God, and his whole life is from now on a liturgy. It is here at this moment that the pseudo-Christian opposition of the ‘spiritual’ and the ‘material, the ‘sacred’ and the ‘profane’, the ‘religious’ and the ‘secular’ is denounced, abolished, and revealed as a monstrous lie about God and the world.
For the Life of the World, 91
What Schmemann is writing about, this abolishment of these pseudo-antinomies of the sacred and profane etc, is so important to living a life that is rooted in reality, a life lived in a world that God is ever-present and filling all things–including us! The way of Chrismation is a re-orientation to life itself–a reorientation of time and space, and matter and relationships, to worship and daily work–all of it.
Schmemann writes,
The only true temple of God is man, and through man, the world. Each ounce of matter belongs to God, and is to find in God its fulfillment. Each instant of time is God’s time and is to fulfill itself as God’s eternity. Nothing is neutral. For the Holy Spirit, as a ray of light, as a smile of Joy, has touched all things, all time–revealing all of them as precious stones of a precious temple
For the Life of the World, 92
Another great book in this regard is Father Stephen Freeman’s Everywhere Present. In this book, Father Stephen points us to the error of believing that God is somehow ‘up there’ and we are somehow ‘down here’, hence what he calls a “two story universe.” To Alexander Schmemann’s point, the act of Baptism and Chrismation is a reorientation of one to the reality of God and His world; a re-alignment through which one’s being is re-centred, one’s sight is restored and re-focused; a way in which one returns to the pre-fallen human state of being if only for a time.
Chrismation is thus a ontological reorientation of one to what is real and true. It grounds one within God’s world that is material and spiritual at the same time; it is like Moses removing his sandals at the burning bush for he was standing on holy ground.
For Schmemann, to go deeper, Chrismation is the opening step to becoming one’s true self …
To be truly man means to be fully oneself. The Confirmation [Chrismation] of man in his own, unique personality. It is … his ordination to be himself, to become what God wants him to be, what he has loved in me from all eternity. It is the gift of vocation …
For the Life of the World, 92
At Baptism, one dies to the world and arises with Christ a new being. In Chrismation, one’s body, soul, and spirit are aligned with the Kingdom of God through the seal of the Holy Spirit. The vocation, the calling, is to become a saint.
Confirmation is the opening of man to the wholeness of divine creation, to the true catholicity of life. This is the ‘wind’ the ruah of God entering our life, embracing it with fire and love, making us available for divine action, filling everything with Joy and Hope.
For the Life of the World, 93
Many people believe becoming an authentic self is something you achieve by reading self-help books about it; or by acting under the guise of ‘freedom’ and ‘autonomy’.
Merton talks about this quite a bit–this orientation to the self out of a sense of freedom and autonomy, simply ‘doing whatever the hell I want’.
A lot of artists work this way too, believing that to create authentic art is to enter into greater levels of obscenity or degradation; getting the ‘right’ experiences that open consciousness in just the right way to create that original thing.
Authenticity, art, self are thus simply states of mind.
What Schmemann gives us a glimpse of is that authenticity begins with a return to our uniqueness as creatures of God. This return is the waters of Baptism–dying to the in-authenticity of the manufactured world–and the seal of the Holy Spirit. It is a process of synergy: The Holy Trinity and our God-given freedom working together to bring about a new life in us that we actualize through our relationships with God, others, nature, and creativity.
It is the first step on the journey of living authentically, and receiving our true calling, our true vocation.
Thanks be to God who gives us, His children, abundantly more than we could ever hope or imagine!
