The Garden of Eden as Cosmic Structure - St-Ephrem the Syrian

so one of the comments that I'm getting quite a bit is that people have noticed that I recommend send it from the Syrian and his poems the hymns of paradise 2 to read that in order to understand the story in Genesis and also the symbolic structure and many people have written me to say that they're not they're struggling to get out of sin Ephraim what I suggest they can get and so last month I was invited by father Jason foster to Shreveport Louisiana to speak at a clergy retreat for the Orthodox Church the OCA Orthodox Church of America but also to give to public to public speaking events at his parish and so what you're gonna see is the first part of that I'll post the second part in a few weeks but the first part was really diving into the palm of Saint Ephrem also connecting that poem with sangria Gaurav Nisa and his vision of the ascent of the mountain and so what we're really getting is this image of the mountain of paradise as this cosmic structure and so hopefully this will help people get through Saint Ephrem and get the golden nuggets that are found in his poem I would especially recommend that people a lot of the good stuff came out in the question period because it was the first time I was presenting trying to present these things systematically a lot of the stuff ended up coming out in the question period so please if you can take the time to to get through that as well the questions are difficult to understand but what I when they are I put up the question as text over the image and so if you are listening to it audio maybe take a glance at the screen to see the question if you want to follow that as well so please enjoy my first dive into Center from the Syrian and I hope you enjoy that [Music] this is Jonathan pezzo welcome to the symbolic world [Music] so tonight what I want to talk about is I want to talk to you a little bit about that experience that I had or try to take you along that experience that I had of seeing how everything is connected together to see how the Bible and our tradition of the father's the icons all of this is really a powerful series of embedded patterns you could call it I the way I sometimes try to describe it is that it reality has a fractal structure already know what a fractal is so fractal is like a tree if you look at a tree you have the basic tree but then each branch of the tree has the same shape as the tree alright so you have a tree and then the branch and on if you follow the branch if you could cut the branch off and hold it it would look just like a tree if you'd cut a smaller branch off it would also look like a tree because the pattern is the basic pattern but then at every level of the tree it's the same pattern which reappears and that's what when you start to look at the way that the father's were interpreting scripture and the way that then they use that and they they use that to form our liturgy to form our icons to form the way that they talked about scripture that that's what they're diving into they're diving into that pattern and so when a father will add some what we'll go through some of the detail when the father will add some little detail in the text it looks like he's making up some detail in the biblical text some tradition but he's not he's able to say that because he's noticed that there's all these patterns come together and the elements are there in each one so this is very abstract for now I can take you on the trip so hopefully you will you will you will see what I'm talking about so first of all we have this idea this embedded idea of patterns you could call it the father's st. Maximus the Confessor especially talks about it as macrocosm and microcosm so there's a cosmic structure and then there's a personal structure the human being is microcosm and then you have this massive universe which has the same shape as the human person so st. Maximus goes very far in this he says the entire cosmos consisting of the visible and invisible things is man and man consisting of body and soul is cosmos for the intelligible things participate to the substance of the soul as the soul have the same reason add the intelligible one's actually more complicated stick keep the first quote part but I'm still going to go through and they're sensible things bear the image of the body as the body and the image of the sensible things so we have in the created world there are invisible things there are principalities there are the Angels they're things that hold that they hold the world together then we have sensible things and in the person we also have an invisible aspect to us we have the soul we have the news we have we have even have our our desires which are invisible and then there's the body there's the physical part and those two are they're the same structure so because they're the same structure st. Maximus sees creation as being built for men because man ends up being the thing that holds the whole thing together like this is like an anchor that has just like the universe has a physical aspect and invisible spiritual aspects and then kind of brings it all together so st. Maximus talks about how the man is a he talks about him as being a laboratory in which because the human being pulls all those elements together right we have our thoughts we have our bodies you have all these elements to us and we pull them together into one being and then the human being does that also for creation itself and so it's interesting it's interesting too think about that it's interesting to think about that today because we're we're reaching we've gone through this time in history where we've had this kind of scientific materialism and we and Christians have been slapped around by a lot of that that thinking where we have this idea that there's the world the world has these rules and we just have to look at them and could measure we can calculate and then we can just say you know hear how here's how it works we figured it out but we're coming - we're coming to the end of that and even a lot of scientists a lot of physicists are coming to the end of that where they realize once we've reduced everything to the material world once we've done that we have a problem because then you have to explain the spiritual stuff it's high because before that they could kind of ignore it yeah this is stupid this is just stupid stuff let's not talk about that we're just going to talk about this material stuff then you reach the end of it you're like okay we can encompass everything in this material stuff we've encompassed everything and then at some point you're like okay well then let's take that stuff that spiritual stuff like consciousness like human experience like identities like qualities of things how do you now fit that into your material world and they're struggling to do it so they come up with words like emergence right how how is it why is it that we know that something has parts but it's also one thing at the same time your thought about that all right you look at a chair the chair has parts right it has different parts of it elements different yeah why do we think that that's one thing why do we say it's a chair why don't we just see the parts why don't we just see the parts all the way down because those parts go all the way down in the scientific world all the way down to this to the quantum whatever a quantum field of particles that are just floating around so then they stack up they stack up towards these different stages of unity and then in the human experience we we we've seen even more you know like why do we think that this here people coming here why do we think that that's one thing why do we think that the United States of America is one thing how do we get to that all right and so in the vision of st. Maximus same axis gives us a key same axis gives us a key is that the human person a modern way of saying that maybe something like consciousness right pop fathers don't use that word but it's a good word to use because people understand what it means today people know a lot of the other words like soul you say use the word soul today your people just have all these ideas of what it means like it's try to try to find words that actually have meaning for people today so you say so you say - we need consciousness or consciousness plays a part in bringing things together in making things one right you need a conscious agent to be able to say that tear is a bunch of stuff it's also one thing that jump into into unity and that's how same access talks about us that's what we do that's when we are that's what that's what makes us special in creation that's what makes us not only special that's what makes us in the image of God all right so that's this idea of this macrocosm microcosm right and how relevant it is to understand today one of the words that the physicists are using today they they they have a fancy theory they call it the anthropic principle because they're realizing that anthropic means the shape like the shape of of men they realize I realized that it's so complicated everything is so complicated then you almost need the world to be made in a way to give consciousness to bring consciousness about this consciousness is they're not able to explain it they can't explain consciousness but they can't explain the thing by which they're looking at the world with comes very great and then that's when people like say max my student help us get a key to something more all right so a lot of you like me come from kind of Bible believing churches the kind of Protestant and yellow world so what I discovered in reading the Church Fathers and today I'm gonna take you mostly through a church father whose name is Saint Ephrem mysterium San Deborah the Syrian is a Semite he's a he's an Arab air Mia Aramaic Saint who probably spoke Aramaic he actually did I know it wasn't air maybe Pope the early Syriac language I would think I think his sexes are written in Syria um and so he does this powerful interpretation of the Garden of Eden and of Genesis he has a text called the hymns on paradise and it's a poem it's a poem that talks about paradise but the way that you talks about paradise is so powerful because it does exactly what I'm talking to you about it shows us this pattern that is there it basically lays the Garden of Eden out as the pattern of everything all the way until we understand that it's also the pattern of the part of the human person alright so first off I want to show you how big yeah how big Saint Ephrem makes the paradise he says he had a vision like for him if he had this this vision of paradise and he says with the eye of my mind I gazed upon paradise the summit of every mountain is lower than its some okay so it's the highest mountain and then he talks about how the crest of the flood of Noah reached to the foothills of paradise but it didn't enter into paradise and so paradise ended up being above the flood okay now you also have to remember that paradise is a mountain right that's not actually in the Bible people forget that it's in the Bible it's not in Genesis it's in Ezekiel in Ezekiel Ezekiel give this description of paradise and he says you talked about paradise as the as this holy mountain as this mountain so you have to imagine this mountain now I'm already going to give you the image and so he has this idea of this paradise as a mountain at the summit of the mountain is the Tree of Life right and let's say above the Tree of Life or coming down upon the Tree of Life is the glory of God just like the glory of God descended onto the Ark of the Covenant he has he does he talks about how the blue or that the glory of God descended to encounter Moses on the Mount Sinai so to the glory of God is at the summit of the mountain and we have the Tree of Life so he talks about how the limits of the garden so imagine that so the summit of the garden is higher than all the mountains and the limit of the garden is beyond all the ocean so you imagine the way that the ant ancient people saw the world basically this giant island surrounded by Oceanus by the infinite ocean which is still true today there still is this ocean that kind of surrounds everything you know that's all connected together that kind of flows around everything and so he saw the paradise as the limits of paradise being beyond the ocean here's a description that he that he talks about he says Moses made a crown for that resplendent altar with the wreath entirely of gold that he crowned the altar in its beauty right so around the altar in the tabernacle there was this this golden brave or this golden crown which went around the altar so he says thus gloriously intertwine is the wreath of paradise that in certain circles the whole of creation so the crown of paradise the wreath of paradise encircles all of creation so its summit is beyond the highest mountain and its limit is beyond all of creation so so already we're trying we're starting to see that the place that he's talking about is maybe not the same kind of place that we're used to thinking about in our and a very materialistic world let's say that he is talking about a place but this place is is it's a it's the place of places you could call it fragrance then it's that which makes place possible something like that and maybe waited to describe it and so this mountain is also higher it's a hierarchy of beings or hierarchy of being itself so here's some descriptions that he gives he says when he made this intricate design he varied its beauties so that some levels were far more glorious than others to the degree that one level is higher than another so too is its glory the more sublime in the in this way he alots the foothills and the most lowly the slopes to those in between and the heights to the exalted so that which is exalted that which is high that which is glorious is higher up on this mountain and that which is confused or in between or is lower is lower on the mountain all right so hopefully things are starting to take shape and understanding what he's talking about so then say saint ever talks about the four rivers of paradise so we know that in the garden there were four rivers of paradise now if you if you think of the paradise as a mountain right all of a sudden the image of the four rivers will change as well because you it's hard you can't really see it otherwise as these four rivers that are coming down the mountain so you can kind of in Mack I mean you don't have to think about it too much but like a source there's a source some kind of source that is pushing the water and then it's coming down coming down the mountain so he talks about how its fountains delight with their fragrance but when they issue forth towards us they become impoverished in our country since they put on the savers of our land as we drink them so we had this idea that the waters of the rivers of paradise water all of creation they are the source of all the waters we always have to remember when we look at in the Bible and it talks about water flowing water always comes from above it has to it has to come from above there's no other way for it to be flowing and so it when we talks about flowing waters we're already in this notion of this hierarchy the water is coming from above it's coming from him the water is coming from so here are these four rivers that come down water the world and as they look get lower and lower on this mountain they lose their quality they become ixed today's talks about the beings he talks about the children of light so he talks about from their abodes the children of light descent they rejoice in the midst of the world where they had been persecuted they dance on the surface of the sea and they do not sink because he said Efrain understand that paradise is is always there it's always it's not something which was only there in the past it's always it's always there and then if we want to participate in paradise there are ways in which we participate in paradise and he gives us the way she tells us first of all he kept he tells us in the Old Testament what those were he says these this structure with this mountain and he divides it into three so he has the Tree of Life at the ha and that is is the same as the Holy of Holies of the Temple of the tabernacle and then he has the tree of knowledge of good and evil and that's the same as the holy place in the tabernacle or the temple and then he has the lower part the the gate or the fig tree which would be the outer court of the tabernacle so he divided into these three parts why is the fig tree why is the fig tree the third part do you know the story why there's the fig tree and that's in that story why is there a fig tree in the story of paradise remembers sorry they cover themselves exactly so that becomes the first covering so then everything else is going to flow from there this notion of the covering so imagine this these levels as three coverings three veils the three veils of the temple you have the veil to the Holy of Holies you have the veil to the Holy Place and then outside you have this rougher coverings you have the covering of skin the garments of skin ten different doesn't talk about the garments of skin but saying rigor Mesa definitely talks about the garments of skin and he explains how the covering of the tabernacle which was hairy it was made of animal skins is the same as the garments of skin that Adam and Eve put on themselves so as we as we get lower and lower on the on the hierarchy of beings there is this need to cover ourselves more right um and it's not that hard to understand that it's not that hard to understand it I always talk in my in my my talks about the garments of skin trying to understand what that is what does it mean that Adam need had to cover themselves with garments and it really does have to do with this moving out towards death so in the garden they were self-sufficient to the extent that they were only dependent on God and as they move away from the garden then they start to become dependent on they start to have to deal with the outside world more and more I think the reason why God gave Adam and Eve garments of skin was to encounter the thorns God said because of your fall the trees will start to produce thorns and so the world will be hostile to you and you have to cover yourself in order to face that hostility so you add a layer of clothing to be able to face the cold then if you want more cold you go further out into a place where human beings it's more difficult with the world is more hostile to you you add a house and if you want to go further out into a world that's hostile to you you add a wall to your city you add this and that and you add technologies in order to supplement your existence out in the world of the the hostile world the story of the fall you see it happening there's the fall Adam and Eve have garments of skin and then there's another fall or Cain killed his brother and then what does King do found the city so you have this garment around Adam and Eve and then Cain puts a garment around around let's say the group and then his descendants they end up creating weapons war and steel you know metal weapons metallurgy in order to add that and then the final result of that is the flood where it all breaks apart you can't at some point that garment you keep adding garments around yourself at some point no cracks and then and I went through that recently for those who know that I've been through a flood that our city they built a dike at the end of our city because they used to get flooded and then they started to trust that dike completely and everybody forgot that the dike even basically existed it was like this is just normal world the waters rows and rows and rows and at some point the Dyke gave in and the water came in so these garments of skin which are which are immediately described by the father's as our physical bodies that are that our fleshly bodies are the first garments of skin that you all know that those they give us they give us protection for a while but they're gonna break apart it's better to do what you need to do while you've got them you know because at some point they're gonna go away all right so so the notion is that this thing this mountain it goes all the way out until so I said it from have different ways of describing it he talks about when Adam and Eve fell then God chased them out of the garden and then they were lower down on the slopes of the garden and then when a Cain killed Abel then Cain was chased lower down still and then Seth was higher up on the mountain so it is it's a hierarchy of beings it's ontological higher the more you're closer to God to higher you up on the mountain the further you are from God the lower you are on this this mountain for all of these those who are Orthodox it's their ladder of divine ascent the same thing the ladder of divine descent is exactly what he's talking about here you know several centuries before that that text was written the the it's the same it's the same structure okay Saint Ephrem talks about how this is the same structure as the ark that Noah's Ark because the human beings were on top and then the birds were there after after I have lowered them the humans and then the animals were at the bottom of the ark like I said the same as the tabernacle the tabernacle had the glory of God at the India in the Holy of Holies and on the outside there was the outer court where they had these and around the tabernacle they also had these these animal skins that were around it so it's it's all of it is the same in the same structure and so then when when when it said in the Bible that the children of God mixed with the daughters of men right in this he actually gives such as able to avoid the problem of the whole angel thing because he he has it on a mountain and so you have the the dog the children of Seth the sons of Seth that go down the mountain and then they they mix with the daughters of King and so in they go they're going down the ontological and they're perpetuating this this fall like going further and further down and then finally like I said you have this fig tree that was an image of the covering and instead Ephraim does a beautiful thing he tells us why Christ curses the fig tree right that text which is the one of the strangest text in the gospel right Christ comes up to the fig tree and he curses it because it hasn't produced fruit Sanford says it in the Sanford is just like just makes total sense because that's how the fall started Adam and he fell and they tried to cover themselves and Christ is saying I'm removing those coverings I'm going to remove them and in the process he in the prophets it's also in the story of his entry into Jerusalem he's going towards crucifixion he removes the the garments of the fig garments and then he ends up by ripping the last veil in the temple and entering into the holy of holies and so Christ is going he's going back up he's doing it in reverse he's going wait he's going back up the mountain in that in that story part of it is cursing the fig tree all right so does that does that make sense to some of you like do you you can you kind of see how this pattern is repeated in Scripture in different places and the structure of a church the actual architectural structure of the church follows the same structure right our church our church architecture has three sections basic sections we have the altar the Holy of Holies and we have the nave which the the communions gather and then we have the narthex where is the buffer space between the outside right we chase we don't know what he does it anymore really but in theory we we chase the catechumens out at a certain moment in in the liturgy in order to create that actual ontological higher we're actually doing that so we have the priest in the in the altar we have the the faithful in the nave and have those that are in between right remember Saint Ephrem said that which is in between is lower on on so we have this in between and the narthex and then we have the flood or the chaos on the outside right okay hopefully I made my case for that at least because I'm not done yet and so because this structure exists at all the different levels when the Incarnation happens then it gets in like it falls into the personal level Christ has a person Christ is also the glory of God which descends down on the holy mountain that's what Christ is he is the ultimate he is the ultimate accomplishment of that promise of that image of the glory of God descending and and and coming down onto the Ark of the Covenant coming down onto the holy mountain all of this so inevitably the church fathers are going to associate who with the car did you look at the icon right behind you if you look at the icon to the Last Judgement there's an image of paradise and there are two images two basic images of paradise in paradise one is the bosom of Abraham right so think about think about this ontological hierarchy that I'm talking to you about you have a source Abraham then he has children they have children they have children they have children and it widens out right it becomes it becomes a pyramid at Abraham Moore has more and more children has more more children and then when they when they die if they're righteous where do they go they go back they go back into their place of origin they go back to paradise they go back to their source they go back to the bosom of Abraham you could do that we could keep going on - Adam if you wanted to then we go to Abraham but we could all say we're all in the bosom of Adam right but then the other image is Mother of God because she is the place where Christ came down and manifested himself through and so we see for example in this image I always tell people the reason why we put the mother of God in Paradise isn't just because she's in Paradise because she is paradise right the reason why we show the bosom of Abraham in Paradise isn't because the because Abraham is in paradise - because it is paradise that is an image of paradise okay and so the until the the Father's will bring us on that on that line you st. pro kleh says the holy mother of god and Virgin Mary has gathered us here she is the pure treasure of virginity the intended paradise of the second Adam so in that net quote there's a lot of things going on first of all she's the one who has gathered us here what does that mean means that the church is also paradise I are told right it's the same that this destruction this is this thing this is paradise I mean you could say it's not if you could say that there's an eschatological you know glorification of that reality where at some point all creation is going to to kind of come into this this this ultimate revelation of return to paradise but also the holy city like of course but we can participate in paradise already to the extent that we are gathered by the holy virgin into the church and then she is the intended paradise for the second Abbot the second item is of course Christ so what is it one of the names you do some of you know one of the names for Mount Athos Morocco's is called the garden of the mother of God not a great name what do you think they're referring to when they say the garden of the mother of God there again the monks the holy months in their in their divine intuition they referring to paradise they're telling me Athos is an image is a participation is is a participation in paradise and this image is one of my my favorite the the image of of the mother of God of the holy of holy fount where you if you look at her she's she's basically a mountain she's this mountain and then you can see that the water is flowing down from her like the water is flowing from the mountain to paradise there's another image as well - you have it in your narthex which is the mother of God as the burning bush if you look at that icon not all the time but often they'll make the burning bush in a way that it fills up the entire mountain and so it looks like the mother of God is like a mountain inside the mountain so you have this amazing image of the amount amount Sinai as being as being the mother of god herself alright so so the returned to paradise in the end and the father's especially in st. gregory of nyssa who is one of my favorite father he talks about it as the removal of the garments of skin so he says in order then to go back into this space we have to remove the coverings remove the coverings and the coverings have to do with our passions you have to do with our our sins and you have to think about it because it's not it's not arbitrary right why do we sin we often sin because we think that that's where life is right you think that that's we have you have a desire to eat and those desires are not wrong our desires none of our desires are wrong we have a desire for sexual sexual desire we have all these different desires but the problem is when we enter into that and we think that that is going to be our protection that if I eat then I'm fine right if I give in to the desire then I will find life there that I will I will be safe right but that's why we have ascetic practices because that's not where true safety is that's not where true life is so st. Gregory's have talks about this removal of the guard the the garments of skin but he talks about it in the sense for example he talks about how Moses when Moses went up into the mountain to see the burning bush it says that he removed his sandals in order to enter into the holy place and Saint Gregory will say you mean we need to remove the garments from the feet of our soul in order to come into the presence of God you think about st. Paul when he talks about he talked about the circumcision of the heart right so he uses the image of the Old Testament of removing this layer of skin right removing this layer of skin in order to go back to something which is rectified right to remove the layer of skin he says no no he said yeah fine that's that's good it's fine that the circumcision was fine it's an image of something which is way more ghee way more profound which is that you need to remove the veils around your heart you need to remove the garments which protect which which you use to protect your heart or you use to cover your heart until the entering into the the temple the entering into paradise all of those now come into the person where the structure of the person ends up being the same structure as paradise same structure as the temple the same structure as the church and so the church fathers talk about this hierarchy of be we have we have a capacity which they talk about the noose the spiritual intellection intellection the capacity to grasp God to to to to to come into contact directly with God that's would be up there at the top of the mountain you'll be up there you know where the Tree of Life is and then we have the soul part you could say that the thoughts the feelings the the desires all of that is in the middle part and then at the lower part you would have the body or you could also understand that the passions as being in the lower part to consist see it as a hierarchy you have the the the noose or the spiritual capacity the thoughts the passions and you could imagine the body as even being kind of outside say Saint Ephrem he talked he has his great in it he says that there are no animals in paradise I think that's weird right because in the Bible he doesn't say that there no Hannah was in paradise he says that I even in here I drew a different from what Saint Ephrem describes it he says the serpent was not in paradise said the serpent came up to the gate of paradise and Adam and Eve had to come down the mountain in order to encounter the the serpent at the gate okay and so this idea that the church fathers always attached our bodies to the like the animality mean it's not stupid it's obviously true that is what we have in common with the animals you know that the evolutionists evidence the fight Church Fathers knew that our bodies we have in common with the a no that's not a surprise do we have the same structure at the animals but this idea that they have to descend the mountain in order to encounter the animals so it actually gives them it gives a very interesting very interesting possible solution to the problem of death this whole problem of people talking about you know was their death before you know how is it that there couldn't be there could be death before but if you see the Paradise as an ontological higher instead of just just seeing it as a as a story then you understand that the animals that the the more tap the mortality was already there you could say down at the bottom of this hierarchy already was already possibility down below this this this cosmic is causing structure I'm just suggesting that I'm not saying that that that's a solution but it's something definitely something to think about all right so I had this this this great one of my favorite quotes from the same Nicodemus of the holy mountain he said he went there for keep in mind that as the center of a wagon wheel has a certain number of spokes going out to the circumference of the circle and returning to the center where they meet so also is the heart of man like a center where all the senses all the powers of the body and all the activities of the soul are united and so you can see that structure again he described it as a flat wheel but it doesn't matter it's the same thing as a as a mountain but you have a you have a spoke Center then you have all these things that come out which which emanate from the center but as they get further and further away imagine the wheel the spokes on the wheel as they get further away from the center what happens there further from each other there further from the center if you turn the wheel what happens the further you get out the wheel actually goes faster if you turn the wheel the further you are on the wheel the faster it spins the closer you are towards the center the slower it spins and as and if you come into the very center of the wheel doesn't spin at all it actually stops that the axis of the wheel is doesn't move it's this invisible point in a spinning circle that doesn't does it move actually and so this image this is it this is the image this is this is the image when the father's talk about going to the heart going to the heart get to enter into your heart it's because it's all the senses they come into the central invisible point this is this place in the human person where I guess movement stop I'm not a saint so I don't know it's like I don't but then it also but it doesn't mean that everything on the outside none of it is bad right all creation is good and it's a nephron emphasizes that to problem isn't that you know like the whip down on the mountain is not is not bad but it becomes bad to the extent that it forgets the top right that's the church fathers always talk about memory that's the whole idea memory so as you in your you have these desires on the edge of you have these things pulling you in different directions if you forget the memory of God if you forget God then that's when those things are going to destroy that's when they're going to devour you but if you remember God then like sin Efrain talks about the children of light that come down from the mountain and participate in all of creation they walk on water this beautiful image of how the saint can engage with all of creation without it being a danger to him he's able to come down the entire hierarchy and the flood for him is basically a floor that he can walk on like Christ walked on the water so this beautiful image of how everything participates but did you forget what happens I don't know I have the story of st. Peter know what happens if you're walking on water and then you you start to focus on what's going on instead of focusing on the face of your Divine Lord that's in front of you you say and in that image you get I can get what is what a st. Peter say when he's sinking Lord Jesus I'm gonna say the prayers like Lord Jesus Christ that person doesn't say did that exact words but that's that's the basic thing he's saying he's saying have mercy on me and that's our prayer right that's that's the whole of that's the whole of the mystical tradition of the church is this capacity to even when you're falling even when you're lower to remember the glory of God that you send it on to paradise it's all the same it's all the same structure so I this is everybody very silent okay this is the first time that I talked about this to the extent that I'm talking about it now okay and so I I know it's possible that I have stretched some people maybe beyond the breaking point and so is it okay if I take questions is that okay I would so what I would like to I'd like to take questions from all of you because I know that a lot of this stuff is you know I'm reading this your father's I'm getting all excited and then and I'm and I'm seeing it in the icons and I'm seeing this but I but sometimes yeah it's it's it's hard to think that way we're so used to this idea of this kind of materialist way of understanding the world that it's very hard to think of these embedded realities in each other so I'd like to open up questions for you to what you have you think it's so much the government or isn't the fact that if someone receives a garment by God like the comics is standing protect but they say anything to make connection and receiving the gift versus taking they forget like the prodigal son takes the inheritance goes out but when it's lost its returns back right but when everything to Satan he comes back to center - what is so it's all repeaters repeat the basic question just for the recording so the question was about the garments of skin whether or not the the garments of skin themselves are a problem you could say or whether it's because they they receive them in pride or they received them that they took them and they didn't receive them let's say in the proper manner right so so here's here's that here's this is actually a really powerful thing for me at least to have seen this and their fathers and seen this in the story is that Saint Ephrem talks about how the garments of skin the garment that before the fall human beings were not naked that they were covered in glory and we hear that right we hear that in the liturgy we hear that in art in the kind of the Orthodox culture that Adam and Eve were covered in glory and then when they fell God gave them garments of skin now what's fascinating about that tradition is that when you find out where it comes from it's a pre-christian tradition it comes from the early rabbinical era before like just just before Christ and the text they used to talk about how we Adam and Eve had garments of glory is a different reading of the word garments of skin so when it says God gave Adam and Eve garments of skin in the original Hebrew or Aramaic there's a way to read the word Garman skill as garments glory and so there's this idea that one can become the other right so the so saying Ephraim I actually talked about this he talks about how that which is the blessing which is like you said the blessing which is taken in pride becomes a curse right now then you can see it the other way around right that's when the image of Christ just appears to you you know when you think that you can take the curse in humility and turn it into a blessing right you could take the garments of skin you could take the consequence of Adam's curse which is death and that could be transformed into garments of glory and it then then all of a sudden that a lot of Christian practice just makes so much sense a lot of this notion have died yourself a lot of a lot of the ideas about why we do the things we do if you can see that on the sudden everything makes so much sense and then like the image I I always like to use the most is to me the crown of thorns is one of the most powerful images in the entire Bible it's one of the most powerful images because here is exactly that happening God said you have sinned because of you because of the fall the world will produce thorns the world will produce these spiky dead things that will be hostile and then Christ takes that exact consequence of the fall and he receives it as a crown and he flips it all around and this whole story of the crucifixion that's what it is all the time he's flipping it all around he's humiliated he's beaten they mock him they treat him mockingly as a king but in fact he's actually manifesting his kingship they put him on the cross they put a sign above him saying to mock him that he's accused the king of Jews to shame him but it's flipping back and he actually is the king of Jews and the king of glory and so that the image of Christ is to understand that idea of the garments of skin and you see how Christ transforms them into these garments of glory it's a yeah to me it's one of the things that I've seen in the father's and in and in the story of Christ that has knocked me over completely you know because all of a sudden a lot of it starts to make sense that Christ was really is solving the puzzle all the time solving this puzzle right here this puzzle that was set up right in the beginning of Genesis Christ is solving that puzzle yes because it cuz and also the whole idea of lots in terms of this idea of there's a lot of things in this story of Christianity which is which which have to do with this like the fact also that the foreigner is converted that's also really part of this because in saint gregory of nyssa and constantly describe the garments of skin as the egyptians in exodus he talks about you know he talks about how moses killed the Egyptian and killing the Egyptian is related to circumcision circumcision is related to baptism and then all of that it's like killing this idea of getting rid of that which is for removing the garments of skin right and so oh we do need to do that removing of the garments of skin you see Christ he actually takes the foreigner right and he makes them into his glory right he takes Rome he takes the bat of Babylon he takes the though those that destroy Jerusalem those that killed him and then flips that completely upside that it's pretty yes it's my book yeah whoa yes it's a form of hiding the garments of skin are they do end up being a form of hiding and I mean come on we all know that that's what it is that's why I wear clothes to hide myself but that but then a lot of the actions I have out in the world this false thing that I present to you guys know and end up you know my you know like my pretensions my all of these things that I present you there way to hide something obviously we all have that you all kind of engage in that transaction I would say maybe it's just me [Laughter] and so this what's amazing in their story in saint gregory of nyssa especially is amazing is that st. Gregory talks about removing the garments of skin right so he had this image of Moses drowning the Egyptians in the Red Sea right so that's baptism going down leaving the garments of skin at the bottom of the water then as he ascends moving his sandals and then shedding not just that but in and Saint Ephrem talks about this also is that on Sinai there's this hierarchy that sets itself up because the people are at the bottom worshiping the golden calf right then you have the the priests which are higher up then you have Aaron who's higher up and holy Moses goes to the summit so as Moses is ascending he sheds this quantity shed this quantity he leaves the people down below and they end up worshiping the animal right and then he leaves the the others and he even leaves his own brother and then he ascends into the holy place and so he sheds all these garments as he's going into the presence of God but then when he enters into the presence of God he's given the plans for the tabernacle which is amazing right because in the tabernacle there are garments of skin and so say Gregor ISA actually he deals with that he says don't be offended by the fact that here he is he ascends this whole thing he sheds all these garments then we need he attained the highest point he encounters the garments of skin and he says he says that that it is an image of their crucifixion right where Christ fully and you could say fully embodied the whole question of the garments of skin but even more than that it's saying that as you shed the garments you you get them back right because there's nothing wrong with them like I said they become these garments of glory there's nothing wrong with our body nothing wrong with our passions there's nothing that all of it is good God created it good problem is that is that they're not in their proper place but they're always they they try to pull on the blanket and be everything right our passions they try to convince us that that's all we are and add but if you if you ask I mean I tell you this I like I said I'm not a saying I did not get it I've never entered into the divine darkness so just know that but if you trust the father's they talk about this process so we can get glimpses of it though we get these little glimpses because we when we do when we are able to shed some passion then we we can see that our dependency on that passionless some so silly how is it that I was so taken up by that how is it that I thought that this was all that I was there was all my life yep right well there's definitely that there's definitely relationship between the two or I mean we see it in the story of Christ Christ comes down then he ascends and he promises that he's going to return and when he returns he's going to bring a judgment he's going to set he's going to settle it all everything's going to be set when he comes back and so I think that for sure this this notion of there is this idea of ascent and descent and I think that you get that you get that in the father's as well I mean and the whole idea of an anesthetic who reaches theosis but then you know out of love and out of mercy and out of grace will then give us his teachings will give us you know and we can participate in you know a little bit of what he has encountered you know by our capacity to to interact with them you know even the Saints it's the same rank we the Saints they they they help us to participate in something that they've reached and we haven't yet reached they kind of bring us up with them we hope the to bring us up with them yes Father one thing fundamentally what we're talking about is human beings and that's multiple cultures tire pattern so we're engaging isn't just abstract theology it's our what it means to us Greece Plato their style of the marketing their movies the direction they're talking about the same place but the human being is your estate be free partake of my soul and for us to be human is and the purpose is from those three good functioning according to the mind with the body the soul or body and thus coming to that state how do we do that by the in through the sacraments the church - understand right okay well I have I don't know if I'm gonna give you the I'll give you the answer that I understand yeah that's all I can give you is so in order for in order for this to happen let's say on an individual level it also has to be happening at all levels has to stack up and it can't just happen that's that that's the mistake that a lot of modern religious you know attitudes take is they just mean that it's not just doing God because all of these things stack up the pattern of you is the pattern of what a community and then it's also the pattern of the world you know and so Christ gives us a way for it to all stack up and and the sacraments and communion that's that's it he takes the things that he takes a lot of Communion is hard to talk about let's talk a little bit he takes the most basic the basic images of what uniting together is so there's the eating together right there's also certain sexual imagery of the bride and the groom joining and so all of this he kind of gives us as this point that we all come to and we all surround but he adds his scandal in it to he goes all the way to Christ always goes all the way to the edge goes all the way to the edge and he says something as crazy as eat flesh and blood like that is just crazy to say that but you have to understand like I said what Christ is doing Christ is saying all of this I'm gonna bring all of this up together I'm gonna give it I'm gonna bring it up all of it none of its gonna be left over and so he takes the most scandalous image right of offering us his own body and blood something which is completely forbidden and even in terms of sacrificial language that the the priest would eat the bread of the sacrifice he never would ever drink the blood of Zacharias every blood had to go down into the ground the Christ isn't all of it all of it I'm bringing all of this together and so and so to participate in communion is really to to come together as a community then also as we do that we also have to go to confession that we have to to come right in ourselves but then we also are communing with the entire cosmos the whole thing all the way to the edge and then and we talk about also how we are uniting with the angels as well during the moment of communion all of this is coming together and this image of communion especially I mean it is this it is this eschatological moment it is a moment that beyond all moments you know return to paradise but also the holy city all of that the beginning in the end Oh smash together everything smashed together in communion it's hard to think about communion probably best not to actually try the church fathers or these it doesn't shut up about community 5-minute stuff now paradise hmm well for sure in Saint Ephrem he really does talk about he warns us in some I think I have someone who cooks like he warns us to be careful when we're talking about paradise he says that these things that he describes in Paradise are names like he said be careful of the names that we use to describe paradise because paradise is is he he flirts with the idea that it is like a purely spiritual description that he's doing but in other places he seems to really talk about it as a place and I think that I think that if we understand it is a place it has to be a place right but it's a place I think that it's it's a place which brings all places together I don't know how else to say and I in in it the way that Saint Ephrem describes it it's definitely not a place you could find on the map that for sure I think that theory is really impossible to imagine that the way that he describes how you know it's like the summit is beyond everything and the base is beyond the ocean it's really tough to think that it's it's the whole map you know it's everything coming together and so I don't know in terms of the in terms of the actual rivers that we use those names for today like how he would have understood their relationship to - to that I sadly I don't know does that kind of answer your question it's tough it's tough stuff to think about it and stuff to talk about this stuff too all right so the the image the image of the the last image in Revelation is so amazing because it recapitulates the fall in Genesis right I told you we all would forget we read the genealogies people who need to read the genealogies in the Bible they're amazing but do you have great stuff in it so when they described the genealogy of the of the fall up to the flood it talks about how Cain built the city Cain builds the city not Seth the Fallen One builds the city and and and and that movement towards the city leads to the flood and more and all that and in the Old Testament there's a there's weird stuff about that - like Solomon has to get horn King to build the temple if there's weird stuff and it has to be a foreign King which sends the Jews back to Israel to build their walls around Jerusalem is this weird relationship between the city the construction the stable construction and this interaction with the stranger the foreigner or something like that but then in and Canaan represents the ultimate let's say foreigner or stranger or whatever but then when you get to the end of Revelations then it all is taken in together the city that the fall you have the tree in the middle and the city on the edge well here you have the same image that the tree in the middle and you have the city around it but now it's too glorious now it's this glorious city which participates which is fully remembers let's say the name of God and so participates in this totality and so you know the New Testament is always an answer to this problem in the Old Testament and I keep telling people that puzzle first chapters of Genesis are like a massive puzzle and then we're given the key you know in the in the New Testament I see yeah yeah the in the Bible there are several very powerful images of that exactly and sometimes it's presented both ways sometimes it's presented as God remembering someone or someone remembering God and so in in the story of the flood for example they go out into the flood and then when it's been all this time it says God remembered Noah that's it that's the connection and then Jonah when Jonah goes down into the fish go to the bottom of the of the the the ocean then after three days it says Jonah remembered God so it doesn't matter doesn't matter where you are right it's just depends which direction you're facing you get that sense - if you look at the this notion of the divine ladder right so you you no matter where you are on that ladder if you're looking up and you're moving up then you're you're good but if you turn even if you're at the top you're gonna fall like it doesn't matter where you are and so this idea of memory is really this this possibility of connecting to something when it's far away that's when then it is like if I if I remember my parents that's I'm connected to my parents even though they're far away from me and if I forget my parents then and then they start to fragment and you know I start to - - I'm not connected to them anymore so communion could be the perfect memory you could call it like it's perfect memory in the sense that it is obviously we're not physically sitting in the height you're not physically sitting in that room when Christ is giving out the bread and the wine but it is we're perfectly participating in that event to perfect memory so although we are two thousand years later although we are hundreds no thousands of miles away we have the capacity to to fully remember that moment and therefore participated in fully so that's the idea and when you hear the father I'm going to talk about the memory of God they know that if you remember God then you are you you're connected to God no matter where you are it could be in it and you get the sense you get that also in the story of the prodigal son fraud of the son goes all the way out and then all of a sudden you remembers his father it's like okay what am i doing and what I should be in my father's house and already he's starting his salvation started right there and no matter where you are and that's the amazing thing about Christianity too is that no matter where you are there's the possibility if you're the worst you know thief murderer whatever whatever anything that you've done doesn't mean that you're fine where you are but if you remember God you you can get on that road back if there's a there's a road for you to come back if you just remember God and so does that kind of help a little bit but everything works that way okay so that's like I keep talking about how that's the structure we have it that's is that that's like that's what it is for everyone so you have a you have a any object I was using the image of a cup people are gonna get a new exhaust you descendants of a cup so you have a cup it's a cup has a an identity it has a cup miss something that makes you the cup then it also has parts and it's made of stuff it has parts of the handle it has a height it has a it has it's made of stuff right I can make that cut forget it's cut this I can throw it to the ground Smash Ball it's forgotten it's forgotten it's Cutlass it's lost its unity it's fragmented it's it's broken its parts have stopped being assembled together and so when that happens when the part stop commuting with the whole that's forget and then but if you remember then that's how they hold together right and that's how even objects exist in the world they exist through memory they have an identity and they have parts which remember their identity we participate in that it's through access through it's through us being the the laboratory of the uniting things together we we make that not not to our not to our personal thing but as humans human nature participates in that existence but if that's how the world exists hope that make sense yeah right yeah it's a grittier visa talks about I think I have a bunch of spokes and I st. Gregory's has an amazing quote where he talks about okay here's here too this is a great quote the st. Gregory Lisa says liability to death then taken from Brut creation this idea that I was talking about this ontological hierarchy which lets a potentiality or death at the bottom so liability to death was taken from brute creation was provisionally made to envelop the nature created for immortality it enrapt it externally but not internally it grasped the sentient part of man but laid no hold upon the divine image which could be called like the heart of heart to consider right Christ seen the logos hidden in your heart now he says the sentient heart this outer part does not disappear but is dissolved disappearance is the passing away into non-existent but dissolution is the dispersion again into the constituent elements of the world which of which it was composed that's death death is center cannot hold Things Fall Apart that's death because when things break apart from what it is that held them together so that image of the garden right that's it this mountain further you go down the mountain the farther you are from the top but also the farther you are from the other things that are coming down the mountain it's that's what fragmentation does it not only does it isolate us from our source but it also isolates us from each other right that's what that's when communities break down that nihilism that that people are feeling today is because not only are we no longer in communion in the sense that we are all turned towards the altar all turned toward God all turned towards Christ but we because we have stopped doing that we're also not able to commune with each other and that is also we're being further and further away from each other and that loneliness that people feel is a consequence the incapacity to not and people who are trying to just find ways to to connect people here at the Marg and connect people up but it's not gonna happen it doesn't happen unless you all look in the same direction unless we're all moving towards the center you can do what you want around here but it's going to be tinder that's what it's gonna be it's not gonna be real connect connection it's gonna be artificial superficial you know passionate connections but it's not going to be the real thing unless we turn towards the middle unless we turn towards the Tree of Life toward the altar towards the glory of God which is in the middle and we all move in that direction that's when we start to get closer to each other goes together so a lot of the efforts of people who do now to say like oh we're gonna help these young people no it's a very provisional it's not gonna it's not in the long-term there's only we need something common to look towards sadly sometimes that sometimes people will find short gap like measures to get that and that's where a lot of a lot of the weird stuff we're seeing here today like coming up today like the kind of identitarian ISM that we're seeing that's that's what it is it's a short gap it's like saying okay we're breaking apart we need to find these things to bring this together until we attach ourselves on these little identities that we have whether it's on the right or the left you know you say oh all this and let's let's use this as our common thing so we can come together but that yeah give me dangerous yeah sorry yeah exactly yeah and ultimately that wheel if it remembers its center could be causing it could fly it's as big as the cosmos right everything is connected and yet in the middle yes go ahead yes yeah well there for directions there are everything in the sense that they're there you can imagine that's going in the four directions so if you look at if you look at look like purging Gardens you get a sense of this right there's that there's a fountain in the middle and then there are these four rivers that go out in the four directions I mean it's a cross it just it's a crosses across is is it's kind of everything reduced to the smallest that eased up let's say this the most condensed way to represent everything is a cross because it's an extension in one direction an extension in the other keep going it's fills up everything sorry it's it's it's the four directions were probably the best way to understand that it's like it's an extension out into the world the basic extension to fill up everything would be for right does that make sense yeah wait let me just finish that that's why there are also four Gospels right that's why there are four beasts on the the cherubim all right so it's like these four things that are on all the directions right yeah well the tower Babel is the same story as as as the garden it's the same story right so so this is on I didn't go into in the in this explanation but Saint Ephrem is he reads a Nephilim seriously it's amazing Saint Ephrem he presents Adam as in being in the middle of the garden so he presents Adam and Eve as being at the tree of good and evil that's where they are so God puts Adam and Eve in the middle of the garden between the Holy of Holies and the let you know the outer court thank you and so so so what so what sin Ephraim says which is amazing this is an amazing solution there's so many problems next time you be the gnostic this is the solution to this problem okay so so so ephraim says that God put Adam there and told him not to eat the fruit but he didn't tell him not to eat the fruit because he didn't want him to eat the fruit he told him not to eat the fruit because he wanted Adam to to obey he wanted Adam to be humble regarding that which was above had to have he had to be in his place in this ontological heart and sin effort literally says that if Adam had obeyed and not taken the fruit God would have given him the fruit God would have given him the fruit so that he could ascend and commune with the tree of life and commune with the glory of God right and so because he took it out of pride so when he ate the tree of good he says when you eat the tree of good and evil both your eyes open you could say your right eye and your left eye the right eye sees the glory of God and then the left eye sees the the bottom of the mountain right and so what God wanted was for Adam to in obedience receive the fruit so that when he ascended that he ascended the mountain he would he would see both sides as well right he would see the lower side and the top side but he would see it as someone who is healthy understands what sickness is whereas now because he took it out of pride and out of self-sufficiency the opposite happened and he got free of this thing up there he actually was afraid of it that's why he had to cover himself can deal with it so he had to cover himself then he falls and now ascend ephraim says now he has to learn about wellness from sickness and it's going to be a long road my friend it's gonna be a long road and so the Tower of Babel is the same thing the tower Babel is saying we're going to reach heaven we're good at we're gonna build the mountain we're gonna build a mountain you got chased us from that mountain I'm gonna build a map we're gonna go out and we're gonna get what's up there what's the result fragmentation forgetting incapacity to commune all of that it's the same story it's actually a good way to understand what the garden is talking about because you actually do get this idea of a breaking of communion as they literally go in different directions from this that's this thing and they they can't communicate with each other because they try to take it out of self-sufficiency out of pride and that that's the thing that's why pride is so bad because pride is not understanding where you are on this hierarchy thinking that you have like in yourself say Gregor if he says this amazing quote he says he talked about how sin is sin is the capacity for non-being to think that it's V basically capacity there's something which doesn't have being in itself to somehow think that they're self sufficient and then by doing that they they will break apart you've lost the ultimate thing that joins you together you've forgotten it forgotten that all of this is connected together this pyramids all this this hierarchy up all the way up to the eternal you know transcendent God if you cut that then things starts to break apart because you forget that all of this all this a logical hierarchy leads up you know to our unity in the logos so that's it's it's this like I keep telling you be it's a description of reality it's not arbitrary this is how things work I do think so yeah yeah the yeah he said the I kind of cyanide asana icon the famous icon with the two different eyes where one is kind of looking straight and the other one's kind of looking off but his left eye is looking off and his looks a bit angry and his and his right eye is is looking straight at you and his kind of appease or calm yeah I think that definitely has to do with this right I left I think but that's a long story if you want I gave it there's a talk on my youtube channel called sacred symbol sacred art where I go into also my description of the of the icon of the Last Judgement or I talked about the right hand and the left hand and the right I mean I don't use right eye left eye but it's like it's the same right hand left hand yeah you could tell you like if you think of Christ judging the sheep and the goats he says to those on his right come right he says to those on his left move away so imagine Christ now is the center of this wheel it's the same so those that are on the left side they they move away and they go into fire and forgetfulness and Penn State they stop being remembering there but then they're those that are on the right side come in to the to the kingdom I think it's enough I think it's enough I'm running out of voices when I know it's enough alright thank you everybody thank you so much thank you [Applause]

Channel: Jonathan Pageau

Views: 70,555

Keywords: garden of eden, prayer of saint ephrem, tree of knowledge, ephrem the syrian (author), adam and eve, st. ephrem, orthodox christianity, Symbolism, The symbolic world, Jonathan pageau, jordan peterson, biblical lectures, religious skepticism, christian symbolism, symbolism of space, time and space, eastern orthodox

Id: RXGdaJFIB8M

Length: 84min 55sec (5095 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 05 2019