The Wandering Earth

Yesterday I took my wife out on an actual date (!), something which has become for us, sadly, a bit of a luxury and a rarity since having children and moving back to the United States – and we went to see the new mainland Chinese blockbuster The Wandering Earth 《流浪地球》. I’ll try and give some of my impressions of the film. Just be aware that this review is coming from the same contrarian who gave The Last Jedi a rather half-hearted thumbs-up, ironically, because Rian Johnson proved himself to be more of a traditionalist than the Star Wars fanboys in regard to his treatment of the canonical mythos – Mahler’s ‘preservation of fire’ versus ‘worship of ashes’, and all that.

The Wandering Earth takes as its premise a cataclysmic disaster in which the Sun is going nova. It will consume the Earth within 100 years and destroy the Solar System within 300. Mankind embarks upon a grand project to use massive cold fusion reactors to move the Earth 4.2 light years into orbit around Proxima Centauri, using a massive international space station to pilot the Earth toward its new destination over the course of 2500 years. Things take a very literal wrong turn as the Earth passes the orbit of Jupiter, however, and it is up to a Chinese astronaut, Liu Peiqiang 劉培強, and his fellow Russian cosmonaut Makarov on the space station, along with that astronaut’s family still on Earth, to correct Earth’s course before it collides with Jupiter. In the telling of this story, the film makes several attempts to explore questions regarding humanity’s instinct for survival, the ethics of extreme measures in the face of world-ending peril, determinism versus free will, and the meaning and nature of family and home in a ‘post-apocalyptic’ (actually ‘peri-apocalyptic’) universe.

The Wandering Earth weds an ambitious, grand space-operatic high concept with the noisy, landscape-shattering, frenetic pacing and disbelief suspension-straining of a Roland Emmerich-style disaster flick. In terms of special effects (big vehicles, chase scenes, explosions and so on), director and screenwriter (also sci-fi author whose story this was) Liu Cixin 劉慈欣 and producer Frant Gwo 郭帆 really don’t do anything by halves. The atmospheric shots of the exhaust trails of the Earth Engines, of Jupiter, of the moving Earth itself are a cinematographic achievement in themselves: they manage to give the film an appealing æsthetic weight it wouldn’t otherwise have.

The fact that action star Wu Jing 吳京 (of Wolf Warrior 《戰狼》 fame) gets top billing should tell you something about the film’s core target demographic. And yet at the same time, for all the big, noisy pyrotechnics, the core message of the film is not a violent one. Human beings don’t fight each other over the preservation of their planet. Even Wu Jing’s character Liu Peiqiang (though he does get to cause an explosion and drop a typical badass action-movie one-liner) depends far more on suasion and pathos to save the day than on force – and as the emotional climax of the movie draws near, one of the major characters (the charmingly-cynical teenager Han Duoduo 韓朵朵) makes an appeal to hope and to an ideal of peaceful global coöperation that would have the late great Gene Roddenberry himself shedding big fat tears of joy. The problem that they have to solve involves (again, somewhat in defiance of scientific realism) re-rigging one of the fusion-powered ‘Earth Engines’ that are propelling the Earth out of its orbit, to act as an ignition torch to spark a hydrogen combustion reaction that will propel the Earth out of Jupiter’s gravity well. In the scene you see hundreds of people of six or seven different nationalities all literally pushing in the same direction to achieve this goal.

One thing that I fear is lost on American audiences about The Wandering Earth is that it can be loosely considered a New Year’s movie, which means something very specific in Chinese culture. Family troubles and reconciliation are a very common trope in New Year’s films, and The Wandering Earth is no exception to that; the emotional core of the movie is the bittersweet relationship between Liu Peiqiang and his estranged son Liu Qi 劉啓 (all the more impressive when one considers all of Wu Jing’s parts were shot separately from the rest of the film, essentially in post-production). In addition, there is an underlying (somewhat understated) œcological theme about the nature of home and its relationship to specific places. The Wandering Earth project required piling the surviving human population into massive underground cities located around the ‘Earth Engines’ that also provide heat and energy: as it moves further from the Sun, the surface temperatures plunge to negative 100° centigrade. All of the characters in the movie were forced out of their homes; all of them lost loved ones in the ‘lottery’ that was held to determine who got entrance to the underground cities. (These events are more alluded to than directly exposited.) Without spoiling too much: one of the characters, his situation hopeless, chooses to die in a collapsing apartment building – presumably his home before he went underground. As the global situation gets more desperate, the United Earth Government urges people to go home and spend their remaining moments with their loved ones.

A few of the characters don’t quite feel like they ‘earn’ their arcs. Wisecracking hapa haole sidekick Tim doesn’t really even have one, apart from being the comic relief guy who saves Liu Qi’s life from time to time. Han Duoduo’s backstory, though it’s compelling enough that you’re rooting for her at the end and you do care about what happens to her, still feels a bit compressed (coming mostly in flashbacks in the second half of the film). The characters who get the best ‘moments’, in my own view, are Liu Qi’s grandfather Han Ziang 韓子昂 who manages a nice mix of comedy and pathos, at one point getting in trouble for bribing a prison guard; and the Russian cosmonaut Makarov, who exudes a genuine friendly warmth for Liu Peiqiang, and whose (presumably Christian) religious sentiments manage to make themselves known and felt without feeling forced or lampshaded.

Much of the film does feel like it’s riffing off of long-established science-fictional and action film tropes, which is actually fine with me. It’s not like American films have been breaking ground in that direction for the past few decades at least. Instead, it’s the hopeful communitarian, pro-family social vision that manages to peek through the explosions and cliffhangers and futuristic Mack truck chase scenes, that in our cynical and near-nihilistic age seems to come off like such a breath of fresh air. In the end, Liu Cixin and Frant Gwo have put out a big-budget action movie, not to be taken too seriously, but one with a heart; one which holds up fairly well by contemporary action movie standards and extremely well by æsthetic ones.

Holy Hierarchs Finan, Colmán and Æþelwold of Lindisfarne

This week, on which this very Sunday of the Publican and the Pharisee happens to fall, is a particularly important one for the saints of Northumbria, and in particular for the saints of the holy isle of Lindisfarne, which is of such great importance both to those of us with Northumbrian heritage and to Christendom in general. Three saints of the holy isle had their feasts this week: Bishop Saint Æþelwold of Lindisfarne (12 February; not to be confused with the hermit of Inner Farne of the same name), Bishop Saint Finan of Lindisfarne (17 February) and Bishop Saint Colmán of Lindisfarne (18 February).

An example of the illumination from the Lindisfarne Gospels

One of the closest and most trusted assistants to Saint Cuðberht of the holy isle, relatively little else is known of Saint Æþelwold other than that he held the honour of the bishopric, and that he contributed materially to the production of the wondrously-beautiful Lindisfarne Gospels. (Æsthete that I am, I find that reason enough to glorify the man.) He had been, first the prior, and then the abbot, of the Abbey of Saint Aidan at Old Melrose during Cuðberht’s time; at the repose of Saint Éadfrið of Lindisfarne he succeeded to the bishopric and the abbacy at Lindisfarne, whereupon he took an active interest in the illumination work of the Venerable Billfrið and had commissioned a binding for the Gospels in gold and encrusted jewels (a binding which is now sadly lost). His relics were translated along with those of his beloved master Saint Cuðberht, along with a stone cross bearing his name which went from Lindisfarne to Durham when the Vikings invaded. In addition, he may have contributed the core hymnology (the ‘Ymnarius Edilwald’) found in the the prayer-book of Cerne.

Holy Hierarch Finan of Lindisfarne

Bishop Saint Finan of Lindisfarne, a proud and patriotic Irishman who was tonsured a monk at Iona, known also for his great discipline and holy life, was chosen as the successor to the Enlightener of Northumbria Saint Aidan of the holy isle upon the latter’s repose in the Lord. Saint Finan continued Saint Aidan’s work in bringing the Angles of the English North to Christ, including playing Nathan to Oswiu King of Berenice’s David, calling him to repentance for the murder of Oswine King of Dere and the annexation of his lands into the new kingdom of Northumbria. Saint Finan was the one who encouraged Oswiu to build and sponsor monasteries in honour of the slain prince (including the famous one at Hartlepool which would evolve into the cloister at Whitby), and lived on good terms with the repentant king thereafter. He also managed to convert two other English kings to Christianity: Sigeberht King of the East Saxons and Peada King of Mercia – this made the acceptance of Christianity in these two kingdoms that much easier in the long run. It was Saint Finan who called Saint Ceadda of Lichfield to Mercia to continue the work of spreading the Gospel among the common folk there. Saint Finan did not neglect his duties to his home parish and see, however, in his missionary work. He had built a cathedral upon the holy isle, entirely – as was the Celtic custom – in wrought wood, rather than in stone, and covered in bent (a tough and durable sea-grass that grows plentifully on the holy isle). Into this church he translated the relics of Saint Aidan, and his own relics would be lain, after his repose, alongside those of his beloved predecessor.

Saint Finan – as mentioned above, a patriotic Irishman – was an avid and zealous defender of the Celtic Christian tradition, including the method by which Pascha was calculated. For this, his hagiography in the history of Saint Bede is somewhat… shall we say, less than charitable. (Bede does, in fairness, fully acknowledge Saint Finan’s saintly disposition and holy way of life.) He famously got into a heated polemical exchange with his own countryman and fellow-monk Saint Ronan of Iona who advocated for the Roman calculation of Easter. Saint Finan apparently also had some dealings with Saint Wilfrið of York – who fell on the other side of the Paschal date dispute – in that he agreed to allow the Bishop of York to go on pilgrimage to Rome.

As Aidan's successor thou didst rule the See of Lindisfarne fearlessly,
Preaching the Orthodox Faith, O holy Hierarch Finan.
Boldly obeying the Gospel command, thou didst soften the stony heart
Of Mercia's pagan Prince Peada and win his soul for Christ.
Pray for us, O Saint, that Christ alone will rule in our hearts,
That He may save our souls.

Holy Hierarch Colmán of Inishbofin

When Saint Finan reposed he was succeeded in office by Bishop Saint Colmán of Lindisfarne. Colmán, born in Connaught, too was a monk of Iona. A staid and worthy successor to Saint Finan, he shared with his predecessor the zeal for defending the Celtic Christian customs and practices including the method for calculating the date of Pascha. Under the sway of Saint Colmán the issue came to a head, and this was when the Synod of Whitby was called by Saint Hilda (who herself, along with Saint Cedd of Lastingham, favoured the Celtic rule) to broach the subject and find a solution.

The main disputants at the Synod were Saint Colmán with Saints Hilda and Cedd on the Celtic side, and Saint Wilfrið of York with Saint Ægilberht of Wessex (later of Paris) on the Roman; however, there was a political tone to it as well. Oswiu King of Northumbria was a champion of the Celtic rule, while his wife Eanflæd and son Ealdferð (who was the second in line to succeed him as king, after his son Ecgfrið) was a proponent of the Roman rule. All of these sæcular nobles came to the Synod to hear the proceedings.

Both Saint Wilfrið and Saint Colmán disputed eloquently – and often, as was the style at the time, polemically – over the method of calculating Paschaltide. Saint Colmán appealed in his case to the authority of Saint John the Theologian, from whom Saint Columba of Iona had received the apostolic tradition through Bishop Saint Anatolius of Laodicea. This usage Wilfrið disputed, saying that Saint John changed his custom to accord with that handed down from Saints Peter and Paul and which were followed by the entirety of the Christian Church after Chalcedon – with the exception of a few small islands at the extremities of the known world. According to Saint Bede, it was Wilfrið’s rousing appeal to Peter that managed to convince Oswiu King to adopt the Roman rite – though more cynical historians contend that it was instead his wife Eanflæd who swayed her husband thus to decide. Whatever the true reason, Saint Colmán departed the Synod unconvinced and continued to uphold the Celtic rite in Iona, along with the Scots there and a few Englishmen from the holy isle. Saint Colmán took with him thither the relics of Saint Aidan, and had them translated at Iona.

In his later years, Saint Colmán established a humble monastery at Inishbofin (the ‘Isle of the White Heifer’) ayooff the coast of Connaught for the Irish and English monks who had followed him. This monastery was troubled, however, by the custom held by the Irish monks of leaving the abbey every summer on mission work when the harvest came in. The English monks complained that they were left to do all the hard work of bringing in the harvest, but that when the Irish monks came back they expected an equal share. In the end, Saint Colmán resolved the dispute by founding a separate monastery for the English monks on the mainland at Magh Eó, sold to Colmán by a pious lord on condition that the monks pray for his soul. Saint Bede praises the English monastery founded by Saint Colmán at Mayo for having a devout and austere way of life ‘after the tradition of the venerable Fathers’, and an abbot who is ‘canonically elected’ rather than appointed by the previous abbot.

Although Bishop Saint Colmán comes in for some censure by Bede the Venerable for his stubborn persistence in the Celtic rule (which Saint Bede holds erroneous), Bede nonetheless praises the Hiberno-Scottish bishop for his frugality and simple way of life, and by the single-mindedness of his devotion to God and to his brothers. Holy Hierarchs Finan, Colmán and Æþelwold of the holy isle, pray unto Christ our God that our souls may be saved!

As an upholder of Orthodox discipline, thou didst show forth in thy life
The pre-eminence of holy Tradition, O all-praised Hierarch Colmán.
With great personal sacrifice, thou wast true to thy teachers,
Wherefore we pray that we may unhesitatingly follow
Our fathers in the Faith with loyalty and devotion
And thereby be guided into the way of salvation.

Fei and Berdyaev contra Dreher

Reading Rod Dreher’s repeated attempts to talk himself into supporting Trump in the upcoming presidential election and re-coining the phrasing of ‘cultural socialism’ as a thing to describe features of hypermodernity which he doesn’t like, I really don’t have much better a riposte to make than that already made by Alan Jacobs at Snakes and Ladders.

[T]he strategies that Christians and conservatives and, in general non-socialists used to survive under Soviet-sponsored socialism are likely to become immensely relevant to many American Christians and conservatives in the coming years. But that doesn’t mean that what we’re battling against is a form of socialism, cultural or otherwise. I would argue rather that it’s the ultimate extension of the free market — a kind of metaphysical capitalism.

I think Jacobs is absolutely correct here about what we might call ‘the nature of the beast’, and you don’t have to look far to find where I agree on that. It’s worse than obfuscation to deliberately mislabel a cultural phenomenon like ‘woke neoliberalism’ (or ‘woke capitalism’ or ‘metaphysical capitalism’) as any kind of socialism, a term which refers to a principle of œconomic organisation, despite some socialists perhaps being attracted to it. But here’s the thing. If you want to understand why socialism has such a strong appeal among young people, including to myself, one has to look honestly at the history of conservative thought and praxis in the Old World.

A case in point – and one which Dreher might appreciate: Chinese sociologist Fei Xiaotong 費孝通, who has been one of my intellectual heroes since I first picked up From the Soil. Fei Xiaotong is most famous for his defences of the peasantry and of sociology in China, for the latter of which he was branded a ‘rightist’ and subject to the brutal excesses of the Cultural Revolution – he was stripped of his academic credentials and forced to clean toilets throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The degree to which Fei actually was a rightist is a matter of some debate. In his early years, he was given to no particular political worldview unless it was a mild form of conservative Chinese patriotism – and even that was tempered by a certain cosmopolitan sensibility engendered by his education in Christian schools. Indeed, his conservatism was more of a gentle, English reformism – he modelled his intellectual course after the Russian white émigré Sergei Shirokogoroff as well as the Polish-British functionalist sociologist Bronisław Malinowski. He militated strongly against both Marxist and Whiggish forms of developmentalism, and sought to understand the institutions of indigenous, rural and agrarian societies instead on their own terms. After his visit to America, this understanding manifested itself as a kind of ‘reactionary’ tendency that led him to briefly embrace Spengler – he retreated into a critical embrace of Chinese family life and the independence of familial bonds from the state.

Fei Xiaotong, like poet and fellow Anglophile Wen Yiduo 聞一多, embraced left-wing politics fairly late in the day, and that largely in response to the corrupt, brutal, callous and authoritarian right-wing rule of the Chinese Nationalists (Guomindang 國民黨). It is really necessary to understand how hated the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石 had made themselves in the 1930s and 1940s with their internal policies. Flush with American aid money, their grandees lived in luxury while peasants starved to death by the millions or were shot and bayonetted by the Japanese, against whom they fought a war that was characterised by their total lack of concern for Chinese livelihoods in bello. The Communists under Mao Zedong 毛澤東 managed to attract to themselves a great deal of sympathy by the fact that they promised to undertake the reforms that the Nationalists wouldn’t – in effect, they won by capitalising, violently, on the promises made by the father of the Nationalist Party, Sun Zhongshan 孫中山.

Fei had never been a particular fan of the Communists, or of Marxism. But, as Arkush describes, starting in the 1940s he was led more and more to embrace explicitly left-wing and socialist political positions because he was able to see, at the ground level, the impoverishing and demoralising effects Nationalist political repression, Nationalist concentration of wealth and Nationalist corruption had on peasant family life:

Fei probably only became really interested in politics during the war, in 1943 or so. As a boy and in college, he had been unconcerned with such things. He later mentioned a ‘radical atmosphere’ at the London School of Economics, but there is no indication he was caught up in it. In Peasant Life, written in 1938, he fleetingly criticised the government for its inability to carry out practical rural reforms because of spending so much money on anti-Communist campaigns, but he also suggested that political issues were unimportant, the result of mere factual misunderstandings which would be dispelled by books such as his about ‘actual conditions’. Similarly, in his articles on rural policy written during the early war years, he offered suggestions to the government, but his criticisms were mild and the tone calm.

A little later, just before and during his trip to the United States, Fei seems to have become more concerned over the Nationalist Government’s behaviour. In April 1942, he signed with eight others a long statement protesting the harmful effects of inflation, and proposing government controls and heavy taxes on the rich… Finally, his articles from the United States praising the American war effort implicitly threw Chinese wartime policies into a bad light. In the preface to the first collection of these, dated October 1944, Fei’s disgust with the Nationalists’ corruption and demoralisation was explicit and bitter:

One thing is the same in each article, and that is that I was taking the United States as a mirror to ourselves… In their society the distance between rich and poor is decreasing because of the war, with us it is increasing daily. In order to win the war they have devoted half their citizens’ total income to military expenses, with us it is probably less than one tenth and most of the nation’s wealth is locked in foreign banks. Their sons all do military service without regard to rich or poor, high or low; we have a special class which enjoys honour without the responsibility of protecting the country. They go without coffee and meat at home so that the front lines won’t lack these; with us the rear consumes ceaselessly and frontline soldiers die on the road. The sons of their leaders are first in the line of fire; the relatives of our important people use foreign exchange to travel abroad. I need not give further examples of the difference between the two. I just want to ask, how can we be this way—are we richer, stronger, less afraid of national extinction, more shameless? What can I say?

Amazingly, the exact same criticisms that the elected ‘socialists’ in our day – Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley and others – are making about our social order, come not from Marxist principles but from the same observations that the temperamentally-conservative Fei Xiaotong was making in his day about his own country. They see a growing wealth gap; they seek to lessen it. They see capital flight; they seek to stop it. They see poor and indebted young people fighting and dying in endless wars which seem to have no point; they seek various means to end those. They see a political class immune from the consequences of its evil actions; they seek to hold it accountable. I do not share the cultural priorities of these elected officials, but I also have to acknowledge that they do not seek violent or destructive means of accomplishing these goals, but work within the legal confines of our established political system.

The end result in China, of course, was not that the Nationalists changed direction and backed down. Bending an ear to those who held that the reformers were really just Communists in disguise, the Nationalist leadership cracked down on the critical reformists and gunned down the Christian activist Li Gongpu 李公樸 and the aforementioned Wen Yiduo in cold blood on the streets of Kunming. (They had made plans to assassinate Fei Xiaotong as well, but he had fled with his family and several other reformist intellectuals to the American consulate in Kunming.) Arguably, with those and similar actions around the country, they practically handed the moral high ground over to the violent revolutionaries under Mao Zedong, and forfeited the sympathy not only of the peasantry but of the critical intelligentsia whose support they required to rule. The Nationalists had pushed Fei Xiaotong from being an apolitical sociologist with certain ‘reactionary’ sympathies hard to the left by virtue of their brutality – and he was by no means alone. Again, Arkush:

To say he [Fei] was an implacable foe of the Nationalists is not to say he was really close to the Communists in his political views. As late as 1947, he was still writing longingly about Anglo-American democracy and constitutionalism, freedom of the press and rule of law, and the peaceful democratic socialist revolution of postwar England. These political values kept him somewhat aloof from the Communists in the 1940s and were to cause friction between him and them in the 1950s. Yet, a few people who were students at the time have told me of being radicalised by Fei’s articles in the late 1940s, and it seems not unlikely that many young readers must have been encouraged to join cause with the revolution by the persuasive and popular writings of this calm and reasonable scholar about rural distress, Guomindang oppression, American international capitalist exploitation and minzhu 民主 (democracy). The disaffection of intellectuals from the Nationalist Government was a significant factor in the eventual success of the Chinese revolution, and it is worth a close look to see the process by which one so little inclined to radicalism as Fei Xiaotong came to support it.

Dreher’s book promises to be an anthology of voices from white émigrés who lived under communism and fled it, and seek to warn us of its consequences, and these voices are well worth listening to. But it strikes me that he could stand to read more carefully the experiences of not only Fei Xiaotong but also Nikolai Berdyaev and his own impressions of the Soviet revolution as he lived through it. Berdyaev, along with the rest of the Vekhi circle, bitterly opposed the revolutionaries of 1905 – it goes without saying that he was no Bolshevik and had no love for them. But as his book on The Russian Revolution written some time later made clear, he understood the 1917 revolution within its historical context in a Dickensian way, as the judgement of God upon a society which could not and would not listen to those of its members who urged timely and necessary reform within the existing rule of law. ‘Revolutions are a payment of the debts of the past.’

It therefore strikes me that if we want to avoid a violent revolution of our own – and believe me, I want to avoid a violent revolution if at all possible – then we need to start paying down those debts now. It should not be the case, but the elected ‘democratic socialists’ are the only ones right now promising to do just that. With a very few honourable exceptions on the right (such as, off the top of my head, Republican Senators Rand Paul and Mike Lee) literally nobody else seems willing or able to push back on the problems of endless war; imperial overreach; a hollowed-out œconomy; a rapidly-warming planet; mountainous consumer debt; a widening wealth gap; and a callous, greedy, hubristic political class on autopilot.

Holy Bishop Sigefrið of Växjö, Enlightener of the Swedes, and Priestmartyr Unaman with his two brethren Winaman and Sunaman

Our father among the saints Sigefrið of Växjö

Today in the Orthodox Church we celebrate the feast of the English apostle to Sweden, Saint Sigefrið of Växjö, who built upon the wracked foundation that had been laid in that land by the bold missionary Ansgar of Bremen over a century before. Sadly, documents pertaining to this great missionary saint are lacking; most of York’s written records of its holy men were destroyed in 1069 during the Harrowing of the North by the invading Normans.

Sigefrið, an Englishman according to the tradition born in Glastonbury, was baptised by the saintly Archbishop of Canterbury Ælfhéah and ordained a priest – later a bishop. At some point he was transferred to York, where he laboured for several years. One of Sweden’s kings, again by tradition named Olof – probably Olof Skötkonung, ruler of Svealand and Götland – made appeals to the English to send missionaries among his people to convert them to Christianity. By the time of Sigefrið’s priesthood, northern England – including York – had been retaken from the Danelaw by Eadred King of Wessex, who thus united England under his rule. It is therefore entirely reasonable that the king of England at the time, Æþelræd Unræd, should have chosen a Yorkshire priest with a knowledge of Danish customs to undertake the mission to Sweden.

Bishop Sigefrið sent out across the North Sea and landed in Norway. It is very likely that Sigefrið was in contact with the Church at Bremen with regard to his missionary work: Bishop Sigefrið had entrusted Osmund, who was part of his mission, to the care of the Church at Bremen on his voyage to Norway. Church politics seems to have taken up some years of his life – for some reason, apparently Olof Skötkonung soured on the idea of having an English mission in his country and forbade Bishop Sigefrið from entering the country. Instead he appealed to Bremen to replace him while Saint Sigefrið worked among the Norwegians.

Eventually, however, Saint Sigefrið did make his way eastward into Götland, and found himself at the small town of Växjö which once had been under the sway of Olof Skötkonung, and which was a holy place among the heathen and which housed a hof for animal sacrifices. There, in the midst of the heathens’ holy ground, at great plight to himself he righted a rood and built a wooden stave-kirk around it; he held the Divine Liturgy therein and preached the Gospel to the folk of Växjö – at first with the help of local interpreters. As Christ gathered to himself twelve apostles, so too did the saintly Sigefrið win over the twelve tribal elders of Växjö, to whom he entrusted his work. One of these died, and was given a Christian burial with a cross upon his grave.

Bishop Sigefrið laboured long and hard in the heathen land of the Geats. Unlike Saint Ansgar, whose hard work before him had not borne fruit in his own lifetime, Sigefrið was rewarded by the Lord with seeing the fruits of both his work and that of his Frankish forerunner blossom and ripen before his eyes. Many Geats and Swedes were drawn to the hof at Växjö, where now there was a holy spring and fountain for baptism. Having appointed successors, Bishop Sigefrið could undertake journeys around Sweden, visiting Uppsala (which was ‘not far’ from Birka, the site where Saint Ansgar had carried out his first mission, and which still had a small group of Christians living there) and Strängnäs, founding churches and ordaining priests there.

Saint Sigefrið had entrusted the care of Växjö to a priest who was also his nephew, yclept Unaman. Heathens attacked the church at Växjö while Sigefrið was away, stole away the ornaments for plunder, and beheaded the Priestmartyr Unaman and his two brethren, Sunaman and Winaman, therein. The banes of Father Unaman hid the heads of the three witnesses in a chest and threw it into the lake nearby. When Sigefrið returned, he set at once to work rebuilding the kirk, and bade that the chest be retrieved. So it was, by the help of God, for a light shone over the spot in the lake where the chest had been thrown. He translated the relics of the slain priest and his two brothers into the kirk at Växjö, where they remained until the Reformation had them removed.

The murderers of Priestmartyr Unaman and his brothers were caught and bound, brought before the irate Swedish king, who wanted their blood. Saint Sigefrið, however, intervened on their behalf and begged that their lives be spared. The king therefore sought weregild for the three men from them, to be bestowed upon Sigefrið. However, although both man and parish were armly and in great want, the selfless saint would not take any part of the weregild for Father Unaman and his kin.

Sigefrið continued in his tireless labours for the rest of his life, and reposed and was buried in Växjö. His relics were placed in high honour in the kirk there, where they worked a great many wonders. The Western Church acknowledged Sigefrið as a saint in 1155. Holy Father Sigefrið, pray unto Christ our God to save us!

For thy patience and zeal, O holy bishop Sigefrið,
Thou hast earned a great reward from Christ our God;
For having laboured continually in the vineyard of His Church,
Thou hast been granted to dwell in the garden of paradise for all eternity.
Wherefore, beseech Him without ceasing,
That the land of the North behold His salvation,
And that our souls be saved.

Matushka Olga, the Theotokos and the ‘stolen sisters’

Today was the the annual march, hosted by the Minnesota American Indian Centre here in the Twin Cities, that was meant to draw attention to the nationwide plight of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. This is a crisis that is affecting indigenous women, not just nationally, but in our own state, on and off the reservations. Indigenous women are ten times as likely as women of other ethnic groups to be murdered, and multiple times more likely to be victims of sexual violence or human trafficking. The statistics are staggering. An overwhelming 85% of indigenous women have suffered from violence at one point in their lives. In 2016, 5,711 indigenous women in the United States were reported missing – in 2017, 5,646 more ‘disappearances’ were reported. In most cases, this happens because law enforcement (i.e., the FBI) does very little to help indigenous communities, or passes the buck to tribal authorities which don’t have the resources to pursue investigations thoroughly, and which very often aren’t even notified of missing-persons cases in their jurisdictions!

The heartbreaking plight of indigenous women in the United States – the violence and the cruelty that they face on an everyday basis – was something I was only vaguely aware of before coming to the march itself. The photos and names of the ‘stolen sisters’ at the march spoke volumes. I have spoken up before on this blog on the need for Orthodox Christians, not only to become aware of and to embrace our historical legacy of indigenous solidarity and culturally-sensitive social evangelism on the ‘Irkutsk model’, but to listen attentively to indigenous persons and communities themselves as part of that same social witness – because they have often witnessed better than we have to the labour truth and the community truth that were implicit to the very life and ministry of our Lord.

We of the Orthodox Christian communities in North America need to pay particular attention to the life and example of one of our local saints, Mother Olga Arrsamsuq (Michael) of Alaska. A slightly-built Yup’ik woman of Kwethluk, Alaska, she was placed in an arranged marriage from an early age with a local post-worker and general-store owner named Nikolai O Michael. The first years of her marriage to Nikolai were difficult – they did not communicate with each other very well, and Nikolai was often out of the house on business. However, Olga bore thirteen children in her marriage, of whom eight survived to adulthood; these children she raised largely on her own. She became known as a skilled midwife, and assisted many of her fellow Yup’ik in giving birth to their own children – she was even able to tell if a woman was pregnant during her first month. Eventually, Nikolai himself became interested in the Church and became tonsured as a reader; from this point it seemed their marriage improved. Eventually Nikolai was ordained to the priesthood, and Olga took readily to the duties of being a matushka, ever hospitable and understanding to those who came to their door in need. She herself sewed Father Nikolai’s vestments that he used in Liturgy, and also baked prosphora, fashioned parkas, warm socks and other clothing for her children and those of the parish. She was generous also in giving away any spare clothes their family had to families who needed them more.

But she was most active in sheltering and giving aid to women in her village who were victims of abuse – and particularly sexual abuse. She would often invite young women into the banya (sauna, or steam bath), which was the one place in the community where women could be alone and out of the gaze and earshot of men. There she would counsel and encourage them, do whatever she could to heal their hurts both physical and emotional, and work even within the confines of a tight-knit and male-dominated community to speak up for them.

A humble and self-effacing woman, in her later years she enjoyed travelling with her husband to regional meetings of the Church and speaking with women in other Alaskan parishes – though she would always be glad to return to her home in Kwethluk. She fought for a long time with cancer, and eventually succumbed to a relapse; she reposed in the Lord in 1979. Before her funeral, which was held during the early winter when rivers would freeze over, a warm southerly wind melted the frozen rivers such that people from neighbouring villages could attend – and hundreds of them did, filling the little church which she had looked after in life. She very quickly rose to prominence as a local saint; with any luck, one day she will be recognised as such by the whole of the Orthodox Church.

The following ‘miracle story’ comes from the Athonite Pemptousia website, and speaks of an encounter that a native Alaskan woman had with Matushka Olga:

“One day I was deeply at prayer and awake. I had remembered an event that was very scary. My prayer began with my asking the Holy Theotokos for help and mercy. Gradually I was aware of standing in the woods still feeling a little scared. Soon a gentle wave of tenderness began to sweep through the fresh garden scent. I saw the Virgin Mary dressed as she is in the icon, but much natural looking and brighter, walking towards me. As she came closer I was aware of someone walking behind her. She stepped aside and gestured to a short, wise-looking woman. I asked he “Who are you?” And the Virgin Mary answered, “St. Olga.”

“St. Olga gestured for me to follow her. We walked a long way until there weren’t many trees. We came to a little hill that had a door cut into the side. After a little while some smoke came out of the top of the hill. St. Olga came out with some herbal tea. We both sat in silence drinking our tea and feeling the warmth of the sun on our faces. I began to get a pain in my belly and she led me inside. The door was so low I had to duck like bowing in prayer.

“Inside the hill was dry and warm and very quiet. The light was very soft coming from a shallow bowl and from the open hole on the top of the hill. Everything around me felt gentle, especially Mother Olga. The little hill house smelled like wild thyme and white pine in the sun with roses and vio­lets mixed in. Mother Olga helped me up on a kind of plat­form bed like a box filled with moss and grasses. It was soft and smelled like the earth and the sea. I was exhausted and lay back. St. Olga went over to the lamp and warmed up something which she rubbed on my belly. I looked five months pregnant (I was not really pregnant at that time). I started to labor. I was a little scared. Mother Olga climbed up beside me and gently holding me by the arm, she pretend­ed to labor with me, showing me what to do and how to breathe. She still hadn’t said anything. She helped me push out some stuff like afterbirth which kind of soaked into dried moss on the box bed, I was very tired and crying a little from relief when it was over.

“Up until this she hadn’t spoken, but her eyes spoke with great tenderness and understanding. We both got up and had some tea. As we were drinking it, Holy Mother Olga gradu­ally became the light in the room. Her face looked like there was a strong light bulb or the sun shining under her skin. But I think the whole of her glowed. I was just so connected to her loving gaze that I didn’t pay much attention to anything else. It was like the kind of loving gaze from a mother to an infant that connects and welcomes a baby to life. She seemed to pour tenderness into me through her eyes. This wasn’t scary even though, at that time, I didn’t know about people who literally shone with the love of God, (It made more sense after I read about St. Seraphim.) I know now that some very deep wounds were being healed at that time. She gave me back my own life which had been stolen, a life that is now defined by the beauty and love of God for me, the restored work of His Hands.

“After some time I felt like I was filled with wellness and a sense of quiet entered my soul, as if my soul had been crying like a grief-stricken abandoned infant and now had finally been comforted. Even now as I write . . . the miracle of the peacefulness and also the zest for life which wellness has brought, causes me to cry with joy and awe.

“Only after this did Holy Mother Olga speak. She spoke about God and people who choose to do evil things. She said the people who hurt me thought they could make me carry their evil inside of me by rape. She was very firm when she said: “That’s a lie. Only God can carry evil away. The only thing they could put inside you was the seed of life which is a creation of God and cannot pollute anyone.” I was never polluted. It just felt that way because of the evil intentions of the people near me. What I had held inside me was the pain, terror, shame and helplessness I felt. We had labored togeth­er and that was all out of me now. She burned some grass over the little flame and the smoke went straight up to God, who is both the judge and the forgiver. I understood by the incense that it wasn’t my job to carry the sins of people against me either. It was God’s, and what an ever-unfolding richness this taste of salvation is.

“At the end of this healing time we went outside together. It was not dark in the visioning prayer. There were so many stars stretching to infinity. The sky was all shimmer with a moving veil of light. (I had seen photos of the northern light but didn’t know that they move.) Either Matushka Olga said or we both heard in our hearts -I can’t remember which -that the moving curtain of light was to be for us a promise that God can create great beauty from complete desolation and nothingness. For me it was like proof of the healing -great beauty where there had been nothing before but despair hidden by shame and great effort.”

What is one to make of these accounts? If nothing else, for now, one can acknowledge the special place that Matushka Olga has had in the lives of certain native people and a growing number of contemporary women. But it is in the slow and gradually expending process of knowledge which moves from local veneration to broader awareness that God reveals how He can be “wonderful in His Saints.” Matushka Olga herself was a midwife and may also have known from personal experience the traumas of being abused earlier in life. Perhaps it is in this role as an advocate for those who have been abused, particularly sexually, that God will continue to use Matushka Olga in drawing “straight with crooked lines,” His work of “creating beauty from complete desolation and nothingness.”

As one of the signs at our march said: ‘Our women are sacred.’ That, they very much are: every single one of them an icon of the living God and of the Most Holy Theotokos. As Mother Olga might tell us, though they might be forgotten in our justice system, not a single one of them is forgotten in æternity. Again, the relevance of this miracle story as well as Matushka Olga’s service in life to the young indigenous women of Kwethluk to the current plight of her ‘stolen sisters’ in the modern day, all over Turtle Island, is immediately apparent. It’s an excellent thing that several outlets of our church already acknowledge it – but we should certainly not stop there. This protective, healing and advocacy work of Saint Olga of Alaska must continue, as it can, with us. Holy Mother Olga of Alaska, pray to God for us sinners!

Blessed Matushka Olga Arrsamsuq (Michael) of Alaska

Queen Saint Eormenhild of Ely

Venerable Eormenhild, Abbess of Ely

Today is the feast of Saint Eormenhild of Ely, the daughter of Eorcenberht of Kent by Saint Seaxburg, the wife of Wulfhere king of Mercia and mother of Saint Wærburg, niece of Saint Éanswíþ of Folkestone on her father’s side and on her mother’s Saint Æþelþrýð of Ely, and in her own right the third Abbess of Ely.

She married into a rather deadly intrigue. Wulfhere of Mercia was one of the eight children of the fierce heathen Penda of Mercia, who was defeated and slain by Oswiu King of Northumbria at the Battle of the Winwæd. Oswiu granted half of the spoils from that victory to Peada, who was poisoned by his wife the following year. Wulfhere was the next in the line of succession; out of love for his dead brother he generously patronised the Abbey at Peterborough which Peada had begun to build jointly with Óswiu King. Also, at the urging of his wife Saint Eormenhild, Wulfhere King received Bishop Saint Wilfrið of York (then out of favour with Óswiu King) hospitably and granted him land within his own kingdom with which to build a cathedral.

Wulfhere King, unfortunately, was prone to his father’s temper, and his foes used it to their advantage. A heathen thegn named Werebod approached Wulfhere hoping to wed his and Eormenhild’s daughter Wærburg. Their two elder sons, Wulfhað and Rufin, who were followers of Saint Ceadda of Lichfield, objected to the match on the grounds that Werebod was not a Christian. Werebod, seeing that the brothers’ gainsay would not be overcome, instead whispered into Wulfhere King’s ear that his sons were plotting to overthrow him. Wulfhere believed Werebod, flew into a rage, and ordered the deaths of his own sons, who went to their deaths as martyrs. After this, Saint Wærburg prevailed over her remorse-stricken father never to arrange for her another match with any man but Christ, and Saint Eormenhild managed after this to steer her husband away from his wicked rages.

Saint Eormenhild also prevailed over her husband to begin visiting Saint Ceadda frequently at his cell, and to begin promoting Christianity within his realm. Wulfhere King began to destroy heathen temples and replace them with churches; he founded a priory at Stone, near where his sons were laid to rest. In 674, Saint Eormenhild and Saint Wærburg prevailed over Wulfhere to grant his daughter leave to enter the cloister – and the king led a royal procession, as to a wedding-feast, for his daughter to Ely, where she was received with great joy by her great-aunt Abbess Æþelþrýð.

Wulfhere died the following year, and Eormenhild was overcome at first with grief, but later was drawn to where both her mother and her daughter had gone: to the cloister. She put aside all her earthly glory and finery, and took the veil as a simple Benedictine sister-nun. She went at first to the cloister of Sheppey in Kent where her mother served as abbess, and she in turn became abbess when her mother was sent instead to Ely. She herself moved to Ely after her mother Saint Seaxburg’s repose and became the third abbess there. Her son, Cœnred, would also himself later become king of Mercia and retire to a monastery toward the end of his life.

Holy Mother Eormenhild, Venerable Abbess of Ely, pray unto God to save us sinners!

Money, law and crypto-currency

The classical Athenian agora

One thing I learned about Plato in my year of reading him is that he is not just an able philosopher but a great dramatist with a master’s eye for detail, subtlety, irony and nuance. When reading Plato, then, you need to keep both eyes open at all times, take account of the setting and understand the subtext between the characters. In the Republic in particular, you need to pay attention particularly when Socrates is questioning his young learners – and particularly when the two of them are building up their ‘city in speech’. You need to pay particular attention when Socrates is grilling Glaucon, because Glaucon is the one whose very soul is at stake. Adeimantus’s soul is, too, but not in the same way – Adeimantus is a secret lover of comfort and wealth, and not a true ‘dangerous youth’ like his brother.

Let’s talk a bit more about what Plato is exploring for us when Socrates is speaking with Adeimantus. What they are exploring in this early, ‘large-print’ foray into what justice means with the ‘city in speech’, after the challenge from Thrasymachus then taken up by Glaucon about justice being something only instrumental for gain, is precisely the foundation of œconomics. Let it not be said that Plato was ignorant of ‘œconomic principles’; those principles are front and centre for the first part of the Republic’s Book II! Adeimantus speaks precisely about the basis of social life as being in the meeting of basic needs: food, clothing and shelter – hence the need for the ‘city of utmost necessity’ to be peopled with farmers, carpenters and weavers (a division of labour). Smiths arise from the need for those engaged in primary occupations (ahem) to have decent tools to hand for their work. Herdsmen arise from the need for plough-oxen, draught animals, hides and wool. The need for trade between them arises – and thus arises the mercantile class. But only when we arrive here does he use the word ‘market’ (αγορά), and immediately afterward does he use the word ‘currency’ (νόμισμα), which is a play on the Greek words for ‘convention’ and ‘law’ (νόμος). Here the conversation about justice turns precisely away from meeting natural needs and instead toward establishing conventions.

Plato’s Socrates isn’t merely being cutesy with Greek etymologies here the way he is in Cratylus. This is actually an important turning point in the conversation, because it is concurrently with this exchange that what we would consider the state is established in the ‘city in speech’. The need for the enforcement of contract arises only with the establishment of trade. (It is only a few lines later that Glaucon jumps back into the conversation, irritably, to complain that a city in which only basic needs are met is a ‘city of sows’, and to insist on luxury, glory, fame, danger, risk-taking – and ultimately war – as human needs. Tellingly, this happens only after the establishment of the state.) In Plato’s examination of œconomic needs, he places exchange, money, law and thus government all at precisely the same point. For Plato money is not a natural feature of human society, but instead a customary and legal one whose correct purpose is to guarantee a fair exchange between the producing members of the city. Plato insisted in the Republic that the value of money is not natural or intrinsic but instead symbolic (σύμβολον).

As an aside, gentle readers, here’s a bit of historical irony. It’s something of a truism of American life that we tend not to take wisdom from our elders but instead insist on finding it out ourselves. And it’s rather always been this way. Edward Kellogg, the self-taught radical œconomist from Connecticut who started out as a dry-goods grocer and began to write treatises on ‘the currency question’ under the name of Godek Gardwell after the Panic of 1837, came to the exact same conclusions as Plato on the nature of money, I guess we might say, ‘the hard way’.

Kellogg became convinced that for something to be considered currency, needs to have four proper features: it has to be able to represent, measure, store and exchange œconomic value; and it can only acquire these features by the force of convention and law. Markets can only function under the legal conditions set forth by these conventions; subjecting the conventions themselves (that is to say, the medium of exchange, or money) to the conditions of the market in fact introduces distortions and contradictions. Plato (or, say, Saint John Chrysostom) could have told him all this, but credit should be given where it’s due: Kellogg was wise enough to notice that tagging the value of currency to that of a market commodity, like gold, leads precisely to market distortions and speculation on the standards which allow the market to function in the first place. Despite Plato’s convinced elitism, a Pythagorean symbolic reasoning which we can only describe as ‘Platonic’ undergirds the entirety of the œconomic thought of North American populism – and the laws governing money were largely learned through trial-and-error in the same way that Meno’s slave learned the laws governing the areas of quadrilaterals.

Unfortunately, it seems we are doomed to keep learning these lessons by trial-and-error. The Platonic intuition that money given its properties by the force of custom and law is one which has gone completely overlooked through most of modern Western œconomic history; we’ve instead cleaved unto the Aristotelian error that money is a commodity whose value is derived from supply and demand. This is true particularly with regard to digital crypto-currencies, whose values are explicitly derived from the massive computing power necessary to generate the self-referential blocks that in turn serve as transaction records in the currency itself. Discussions over crypto-currency tend to get sidetracked into questions of whether or not crypto-currency is a ‘bubble’ or whether or not it has ‘actual’ value; speculation in crypto-currencies is only a symptom of a much more deep-rooted problem, and the question of crypto-currency market values is a red herring.

Instead, our reliance on checkbook money has given us a false idea of what wealth actually is, and how it is related to the problem of money. Faced with the glaring structural problems created by a system in which money is created and circulated by volume of private loans, many libertarians and conservatives guided by commodity-money logic go looking for a ‘sounder’ form of money distinguished by its scarcity and utility – whether that is gold or a more high-tech commodity like bitcoin. Many leftists and liberals, on the other hand, despite having truly trenchant critiques of the exploitative banking system and the manipulation of the process and factors of production by the hyper-capitalist financial sector, offer little by way of cogent critique of the medium by which this manipulation and exploitation occurs. As that most excellent peripatetic al-Fârâbî would doubtless tell you: if you do not understand the lower-order functions, it’s a foregone conclusion that you won’t understand the higher-order processes that depend on them.

The one place where it seems a critique of money (which amounts to a critique of credit) is being taken seriously is among the post-Keynesians generally and among the ‘modern money’ folks in particular (a subset of the post-Keynesians, from what I gather), who operate from the Platonic-Socratic intuition that money’s sole source is in the power of law, and that the medium ought to be symbolic if it is following its proper function and end. Ultimately, the answer we need to give to the culture is the same as Christ’s answer to the Pharisees on this exact same question. The money used to pay tribute to Cæsar bears Cæsar’s image and superscription. Once this fact is shown, it becomes a bit easier to get disentangled from false ideas about where the ‘value’ is and where our debts are to be repaid.