A religious-philosophical meditation on a stir-fry

The material aspects of the Christian faith are – and have been for quite a long time – very important to me. Orthodox Christianity is wondrously sensual: in its iconography; in its participatory, harmonic hymnody; in its physical movements and processions; in its incense and censers; in its imparting of the Gifts. Through the Liturgy of the Church Orthodoxy approaches us through all five senses. What’s more, the material, the ‘stuff’ of the Church’s life, is not transfigured or symbolic; through the Liturgy, the liminal boundary between material and idea tends to become porous and fade entirely. (This is one of the points on which I find myself in thorough agreement with Fr Alexander Schmemann, let it be known and proclaimed far and wide.)

Let’s think materially, then. Here we are, two weeks out from the ‘high’ of Holy Week and Pascha. In my kitchen I have about eight skinless red onions in the fridge and a bottle of red wine vinegar left over from dyeing Easter eggs; a couple of uneaten heads of Lenten cabbage; Chinese cooking apparatus and condiments of various sorts left over from when my mother-in-law was here; and a good five pounds of spare ribs bought specifically for Pascha and Bright Week. What to do, what to do?

Prime pork spare-rib stir-fry à la Cooper!

Needless to say, this shamelessly culturally-appropriated (and literally-appropriated; this is equipment my mother-in-law gave us, after all!) Asian fusion dish made an instant hit in the Cooper household and there have been requests from certain quarters for encores despite its decided lack of political correctness. And so, I have been honing my technique a bit. This post-Lenten cooking has engendered some interesting meditations on certain material aspects of the art.

When you’re stir-frying, it’s necessary to be a bit sparing with the oil to start with – but you can’t have none. The pork has plenty of fat on it, and it’s usually enough to impart the flavour without making the veggies slippery and greasy while you’re cooking. Oil spits when it gets hot; the more of it in the bottom of the wok, the bigger a mess it tends to make if you’re not careful. And lastly: oil doesn’t evaporate (at least, not in quantities sufficient to matter for cooking purposes). The amount of oil you add to start is pretty much the amount of oil you’ll end up eating.

The same is very much not true of water. Again, the veggies have their own water, which is fine. So do the vinegar and the soy sauce. But the amount of water you add is not the amount of water that you end up with in the dish when it’s ready to serve. Water does, and is meant to, evaporate. It’s still a necessity: if you start by frying the vegetables and add the meat later when it’s still cold, you have to add water to the veggies to keep them from being overdone. It also helps brown the meat a bit better and carries the aroma better. But the main purpose of adding water to a stir-fry is to add time to the process: to give the cook more space to think, plan and experiment, to add other ingredients to taste. In this style of cooking, anyway, water is time.

Not for nothing were the first clocks – in ancient Ægypt – powered by water. The Ægyptians used them for sacral purposes: to accurately measure time during the night so that the appropriate times for sacrifices and offerings to Amun could be observed. These were people, it must be understood, who also fully appreciated that water – that of the great river, certainly – could lengthen or shorten men’s lives in very proximate and immanent ways. ‘Water is time’ had the same material immediacy to them that it would to a certain cook 3,500 years later. Thank the Alexandrians for one thing at least, for all they seem to have led us by the noses (and other organs) since the days of Saint Mark. This definitive attitude toward the elements they managed to impart also to the Orthodox Church in its various forms. The Red Sea water. The water of the Jordan. The water of baptism. The water that flowed from Christ’s side. Christ as the water of life. We are immersed in water when we are born. We die in it and are given new life. I’m not being ‘cute’ with this: of course there is something definitively Ægyptian about this whole relationship of the Orthodox Church to water – where else do you think Christ spent His infancy and youth?

It is therefore in a similar material immediacy that the Orthodox Church uses and demarcates water as (not just a ‘symbol’, not a ‘transfiguration’ of) time, but also æternity – whether in baptism, or at Theophany, or in the blessings of houses. The material, the temporal and spatial ‘stuff’ of the world, is fully present and fully participating in the worship of the Church; all of creation is glorified – it is not the stuff but rather the logic of the world that is broken and overturned when it encounters Christ. Christ, the living water, is not exhausted by use. He doesn’t evaporate as the water does when I’m cooking. There is not less of Christ to go around when His body and blood are ingested, but rather more.

It’s important to be careful here. I still need to cook. I still need to eat. My body is still seventy percent water – and the rest of it is literally made up of the stuff I eat. Christ is Risen indeed, but I’m still going to die. The overturned logic of the world at Pascha doesn’t do away with or destroy the world proper or with its material dimensions; it doesn’t whisk us away into the world of the Platonic Forms; it transforms and subsists in what is already there. It is only by the mystery of baptism and by the Gifts that the living water, that æternity, becomes present in us – physically, materially, spatially and temporally. But this overturned logic of Pascha is something we get, along with Saint Thomas, to not only see, but touch and taste, every week. It looks us in the eye. Not in a symbolic way; not in a metaphysical way; not according to some abstract doctrine – but materially. It requires a true heart of flesh and blood, a heart of love, to be sensible to us, but the stuff, the matter of it, is all still present and in us… Anyway, that’s what a Saturday afternoon stir-fry conjures.

Zoroastrian distributists

I just happened upon the most remarkable website!

Holos means the Whole. Chrestian comes from a Greek word meaning ‘useful to’. Holochrestianism is about ‘being useful to the whole’ or ‘serving the common good’.

By Democracy we mean that political influence is widely distributed. We believe power should be shared among a large number of people. Nevertheless we also believe that power should be wielded by those most able and inclined to wield it to good effect. This implies both that people need to work at developing the ability to be good political actors and that not everybody will have the same abilities or should wield the same amount of power.

All of which I am in favour of, naturally, from a political point of view. But wait, there appears to be more...

Holochrestian Democracy is not just a way of running a society but also a project to create the conditions that a Good Order of Society be achieved – in other words primarily the creation of the Holochrestian Demos. This process is one that could happen from the grassroots upwards with many individuals working to build little ‘droplets’ of the Holochrestian Demos. Each droplet being a small cluster of people orientating themselves to the task at hand, growing the strength of their association, strengthening their mutual bond of trust, discovering and developing the group culture and modes of action and greater resilience in adversity. Then educating and developing themselves to serve the wider common good with greater commitment to the goal of a well-ordered society, greater enlightenment to reality and greater capability of useful action.

Such a process is one that will be or will at least look similar to the growth of a religious movement. In the first instance it is up to each leader of each droplet to decide on his own religion. Nevertheless the chances are that they will find assistance within the long-standing religious traditions such as Jesuchristianity and Mithraism.

This blog promotes Mithraism (or Zoroastrianism) as our preferred religious tradition while recognising the huge contribution that Christians have made and continue to make. In particular we recognise the value of the Christian Social Teachings also known as the Catholic Social Teachings which are largely based on a natural law approach and are relatively accessible to non-Christians. We also see a lot of common ground between our Holochrestian Democracy movement and the older Christian Democracy movement.

Modern Zoroastrians, finding common ground with localism, Christian democracy and distributism? Sounds like a particularly awesome idea! The website features several articles authored by Chesterton expert Dale Ahlquist. And this view in the Zoroastrian community is apparently one with no small amount of backing elsewhere. Ervad Marzban J Hathiram of the Parsi website Frashogard has posted a touching obituary to one of India’s great advocates of local organic farming, the lately-departed Bhaskar Save, celebrating his fight ‘against corporate cronyism and the machinations of pharma and agro multinationals’. Sounds like as good a fight as any!

Back in the Burgh with a killer case of jetlag

I need some orange juice – got as much as I could during my thirty hours on flights and in airports, but apparently not nearly enough, and that’s the only thing that has been proven to help me with jetlag. I’ll probably pop over to the Sunoco station soon and see if they have any. Got to bed at about 10:30 last night and got up at 3:00 in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep, so here I am typing random thoughts which will be posted later to my blog.

So, I’m back. And main glad to be – I missed Pittsburgh quite a bit. The bridges, the rivers, the skyline dominated by the Cathedral of Learning, the familiar streets and sights and smells (it’s been awhile since I’ve walked past a Jimmy John’s)… but that was before my streak of infernally bad luck hit. In my jetlag-drunk stupor, I left my house keys on the table and left the apartment to walk to the post office to check up on a package that had been marked ‘delivered’ but which had mysteriously gone missing. Neither post office I went to could help; and it was then I noticed that I was missing my keys, so I went to campus and called my landlord on a phone I borrowed from the Card Office. At that point, they were not willing to let me back into the apartment without proof that I was allowed to be there (the lease is in my roommate’s name, and he’s in DC at the moment), so I went to the computer lab to send an email to them, which I just managed to do before the skies opened up, complete with thunder and lightning, and the power went out. All over Oakland. For four hours.

Thankfully, I was able to borrow somebody else’s phone to contact my landlords, and they let me back into my apartment, if just to grab my computer and phone and keys and head out again in search of electricity and internet. Hillman had electricity, but internet was sketchy to say the least. (I’d gotten some orange juice at one of the only stores open on Forbes – 7/11. The others were Starbucks and McDonald’s; a passerby remarked to me that if ever Starbucks or McDonald’s shuts down, you know that it’s the end of the world.) Eventually, I gave up and went home with Jessie, and slept off some more of my jetlag.

So… yep. Here I am. Still jetlagged, and still writing about it. Can’t really much think of anything clever or worthwhile to say here; just let everyone know how I’m doing. I’m only back in Pittsburgh these couple of days; I fly out with Jessie tomorrow to Providence to visit the family. I’ve had just about enough of airports, I believe… At any rate, best to my readers, and hope these past few days have been kinder to them than to me!

A fond farewell to Cathay and all her glories

Drum Tower 鼓楼


Kabobs and beer 串啤 - VERY spicy!

Well, this is quite a way to go. I’ve been suffering recently from a persistent headache that has sometimes gotten to migraine strength, the internet has been notoriously temperamental (more so than usual, that is) of late, and it is currently raining but not too hard (it was pouring earlier). Still, yesterday I got to do some more touristy things, exploring around the Forbidden City, the Drum Tower 鼓楼 and Andingmen 安定门 for fun, eventually going for kabobs and Yanjing beer and later karaoke with a few of my friends here. A fitting way to end my time in Beijing, actually!

The kabobs we had at this place (mantou 馒头 along with roasted chicken thighs with peppers) were ridiculously, lip-numbingly spicy; as a side dish we were served chilled pears with crushed ice as a ready fire-extinguisher (they disappeared in a hurry, that I will say). After that we talked about history (mostly ancient history - 夏商周 the first three dynasties of China, and what the defining marks of each era were) and spent a few hours at a KTV bar belting out tunes (naturally, the ones I picked out were Black Sabbath, Nightwish and Queensrÿche - though I was surprised to see the power-metal act Last Successor 末裔 on the setlist!). A lot of the available selections were pretty mainstream pop and pop-rock, mostly Chinese artists I hadn’t heard of (though I did a passable rendition of ‘99 Red Balloons’!). A very fun guys’ night out before I return home in a couple of days.

It’s strange; I’m very eager to get back - I miss my girlfriend terribly, along with mostly-English conversation, good cheese and internet that isn’t blocked / service-denied. But there’s a strange melancholy in my leaving, as it probably should be; I deeply love this country, and it comes to feel like home in a number of ways.

Visiting a Russian Orthodox Church …

… is definitely different from visiting an Antiochan Orthodox Church in the US. This past Sunday I went to Alexandrovski Church in С— to worship. The first noticeable thing about the church was how dark it was inside. St. Mary’s in Pawtucket was well-lit, with a sky-blue roof and great windows. Alexandrovski was much more atmospheric, with a plain wooden roof and four small windows to give the candles that were placed around the church their full effect. Before the service, the candles were blessed by the priest with holy water (from what looked like a plastic washpan of the sort we use in the монша) before being lit.

There were no pews, only some benches near the back for the older women to sit on during the service. Everyone else stood for most of the service which was almost entirely sung (in Russian, so my understanding was limited at best). Basically I offered my own prayers in English, and did as those around me were doing – crossing myself (with three fingers rather than two, right shoulder before left) and bowing, even getting on my knees and touching my head to the floor (as is done in a mosque). The service lasted a good two hours – it seemed to me that I was among the few who stayed inside the church building for the entire service, though. I met some of my students from English class outside, who greeted me with an eager ‘Мистер Купер!’ (‘Mr Cooper!’), and we went into an adjacent building for lunch.

Grace was sung both before and after the meal, facing a portrait of our Lord as an infant in the arms of St Mary Theotokos. The meal itself was борщ (borscht) with mayonnaise, bread, cookies, chocolate and tea, naturally. The church seems to be the closest thing I’ve yet seen to a community centre in С—, but only for ethnic Russians. Only Russian was spoken there; I had to manage with my incredibly simple, incredibly broken survival Russian. I didn’t manage so well when the priest tried after the service to engage me in a theological discussion; he resorted to drawing his point on a piece of paper – what looked to me like the centred-set model of the Church, with Christ as the sun in the centre and with people following the rays towards him. Definitely an interesting cultural experience! I must not have made such a bad impression, since two of my students invited me back to the service next Sunday. Time permitting, I will definitely take them up on that, but I will arrive at 10:30 instead of at 9:30 this time!

Айт қабыл болсын!

Wow. Twenty-three years old as of yesterday – I’m getting old.

My local host family threw a big birthday party for me, but since my birthday falls on the second day of Ait, which marks the end of Ramadan on the Muslim calendar, the joke among the Trainees was that it was just the food they’d prepared for Ait that they were using for my birthday dinner. For Ait, the Ramadan fast is broken and all households make or buy tonnes of fried food (like bauyrsaq бауырсақ, which are round or diamond-shaped puffs of fried dough, shilpek шілпек, which bears a striking resemblance to Navajo fry-bread, fried eggplant and chicken and beshbarmaq) and buy tonnes of candy (marmalade and chocolate seem to be favourites), put out tea and keep their doors open for any guests who might come by and drink and eat with them. After eating, usually an older man will recite the Fatihah, which is the opening prayer (or Exordium) of the Koran: ‘Praise be to God, Lord of the Universe, the Compassionate, the Merciful, Sovereign of the Day of Judgment: You alone we worship, and to You alone we turn for help. Guide us to the straight path, the path of those whom you have favoured, not of those who have incurred Your wrath nor of those who have gone astray.’ Then they will take their leave and move on to the next house. The women all wear headscarves and dress up, and the men wear skullcaps and formal attire (at least on the first day of Ait).

But the joke regarding my birthday dinner and Ait is only half-true, since Bota and Quanysh really pulled out all the stops – they got me a really nice cake, and put out lots of juice, and invited all my fellow Trainees in Saimasai, as well as Nagima, Asem and Emiko, and some of the extended family of my generation (Dariya, Laura and Quat). My stomach is thankful that they cooked pumpkin manty instead of beshbarmaq for my birthday dinner.

I got some really nice gifts from everyone who came, including a very high-quality dress shirt (neon green) from Quat, a book of Qazaq folktales and a towel decorated with the Qazaq emblem from Dariya and Laura, some caramel-filled chocolates and a pair of sunglasses from the trainees and some good markers and a binder from the training staff (very useful). My host family got me a toothbrush holder and an umbrella (also very useful, the latter particularly around here and at this season).

Second week of teaching has begun, and it’s getting really stressful since I have to bum textbooks off other people (both other trainees and local teachers) in order to prepare my lessons. On the other hand, though, the computer teacher at school has promised us some level of free access to the Internet (if we can find him), so I won’t have to go all the way to Essik or Almaty in order to post to my blog, check my e-mail and all that other jazz. Also, my lessons are steadily improving, which boosts my confidence and causes my lessons to be even better (like an anti-death-spiral or something).

I feel somewhat isolated here, but my family is telling me that’s probably a good thing, since the news from home (particularly the ugly temper-tantrum the Republicans in general and Joe Wilson in particular were throwing recently over health care) would just make me angry, and they’re probably right about that. In Qazaqstan, all the stuff that used to make me upset I simply can’t afford to pay attention to anymore – but then again, I don’t really have to, on my government-sponsored, government-run health-care plan which every American ought to have. The downside to my isolation, though, is the lack of The Daily Show, which I think would help improve my mood from time to time – generally, I make time to entertain myself watching movies or writing in my journal (some of which is posted here). But I'm keeping busy, and I enjoy my work, so that helps immensely.