Athena: Gifts

Dear Augustine,

This line struck me so deeply, "In a world of consumerism, do you begin to feel less human and more like your parents' doll?"...and beyond just the immediate context of "designer children."

In many ways, it seems like the temptation is already so strong to mold children into our own hopes and dreams instead of letting them discover their own. Of course, I'm obviously not a parent yet, but I've felt this pressure sometimes in my own life and seen it among my friends who are parents. Having the option to possibly "design" a child in any way seems like it would exacerbate this even further. The tendency would be to consume and control instead of to receive things as a gift. Which of course sparks so many thoughts for me, but most of all one of my favorite passages in For the Life of the World, by Fr. Alexander Schmemann.

He writes so beautifully about the role of humankind on the scheme of the cosmos--humanity as the priesthood of creation, as those who receive the gifts that are given and offer them back to God in worship. It reminds me of the first sacrifices of Abel and Cain, and of the words we speak each Sunday in liturgy about the bread and the wine, “Thine own of Thine own we offer unto Thee, on behalf of all and for all.” 

 Schmemann writes:

"The first, the basic definition of man is that he is the priest. He stands in the center of the world and unifies it in his act of blessing God, of both receiving the world from God and offering it to God--and by filling the world with this eucharist, he transforms his life, the one that he receives from the world, into life in God, into communion with Him" (15, and it is worth reading the whole chapter at the link posted above).

 I love this because I grew up (as many of us did) in a church subculture that at times seemed very Gnostic. Most things relating to the body were treated as bad or shameful, and this life on earth was constantly devalued. Science was de-valued too, for its focus on the material world, occasionally to the exclusion of anything more. And that's perhaps why I love this passage so much...it's anti-Gnostic. It's a celebration of the physical world, but not one that is materialistic to the point of being devoid of God. Quite the opposite, it's a world sparking and alive, waiting to be received as gift and offered back to God in worship.

Perhaps if we were able to view things with more of that balance and gratefulness, we would see them rightly.

+Athena