Transcription
[Music] [Applause] [Music] became comforter of the spirit of truth. Who are everywhere present and fill us all things. Treasury of blessings and giver of life, come and abide in us and cleanse us from every stain of sin and save our souls, oh gracious one. Amen.
Um, I'm going to leave um the uh reading of the resume to Dr. Phillip um because he knows it better than I do. But I do want to say one thing. Um, we first met at the Montana Conference two years ago out in Montana and uh, we headed off right away and I was thinking, I've never mentioned to this to you, Philip, but I think we should go on the road and do a dog and pony show. We could fill stadiums, right? And anyway, but uh, he uh, he's uh, he's got a gift. He's got a gift and he spoke to the men really well. It was just beautiful. So, Philip, why don't you take it away?
Father, thanks for having me. Good evening. It's great to see everyone and thanks for letting me be a part of this. Um, and if you can un turn on your cameras, it's great, but if you can't, I understand, but I'd love to see some faces. So, my name is Phillip. Right now, I am a professor at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology. I teach pastoral care here. I've been teaching here for 20 years. I myself grew up in the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese. I grew up in a place called Milwaukee, Wisconsin with 11 brothers and sisters. And you know, my mom dragged us to church every week. And that's that's all I knew, right? She dragged us to church. I went involuntarily most of my growing up. Um, but interestingly enough, I really enjoyed serving in the altar. So I'd serve in the altar every Sunday starting at 10 years old or 12 years old. And a distinct memory of mine was serving in the altar was like no other space in my life or time in my week. You know, I I grew up with 11 brothers and sisters. So, you know, um I I had a I grew up pretty unattended, I would say, and you know, I had the normal life and, you know, dramas in school and life, but in that altar, everything just felt different.
So, I go off to college, uh, Madison, Wisconsin, if you've heard of it, not known for its churches and chastity, and I'm thrown into this world. And suddenly, I had to have an answer for who I was and what I believed. And it was striking how little I knew about what I what my faith was. Um, in fact, someone at the time asked me, there was a famous song, you know, "Kumbaya" by Mr. Minister, and they said, "What does that mean?" And one of my buddies who I had brought to Pascha, he said, "Philip, they say that at your church." I'm like, "Yeah, you're right." He said, "What does it mean?" I said, "Yeah, I I have no idea what that means." So that was that was the level of my understanding of I didn't even know how to say "Lord have mercy."
But the other thing that was really striking to me is I walked onto this campus in Madison, there all sorts of stuff. You had the people studying in the libraries, people drinking in the bars, people hooking up, all different Christian denominations, and and I I wanted to have a type of brotherhood and fellowship. Um, but most of them just seemed crazy to me and I thought, isn't that interesting that I I have a sense about what authentic is and what true Christianity is. I can't explain a thing about my faith, but I can spot a fraud a mile away. And I really had this sense that I was totally formed, but totally ignorant. So I I I kind of made it my quest as an undergrad to learn, you know, I went uh, you know, I did all the rules of this brotherhood, you know, developed a prayer rule, went to church, you know, followed the fast. I didn't I didn't understand, but I just kind of immersed myself. Never missed a Sunday, you know, um, and during the week was involved with Protestants and all sorts. Um, until I met an Antiochian priest who invited me to help start a mission parish in Wheaton, Illinois. So I, you know, I was 22, 23, and I would drive to Chicago from Madison on Sundays to do that. And it was it was an incredibly enriching, just intense experience of being that all-in in a community that all-in um with a church. You know, I lived close to the church, I was there all the time um, and that was really formative for me. And I remember as I was learning in my head what I had experienced in my heart growing up, I I really I was also, you know, essentially um, I don't know what to say. If if I was Protestant, I would say I'm being saved. But I was already saved in baptism. But what was happening now is I was having kind of an adult conversion experience. Like I was lost, like now I'm leading my own life and it was, you know, but this boom. So I felt in a sense that the church saved me. And I got a sense that as I more I understood this, I'm like, as I dug into Orthodoxy and I was just continually blown away about how we understand reality, how we live faith. It's like a bottomless well that no matter how much you know, there's a lot more there. But it's not really at all about stuff in your head. It's about this encounter at the altar and that that contrast of, oh my gosh, this is there's the church doesn't just have an answer for everything. It's got a great answer for everything. But it's not even about the answer. It's about being all-in with this liturgical experience. I'm like, I want to devote myself to this. Um, but also I was I'm from 12 kids and I realized I I would work with teenagers in in the little mission church and I realized all the teens, their problems really came from their families. And I said, I I don't want to work with the teens. I want to work with the parents at the home who are forming these kids because no matter what you do with the teens, you got to send them back to their homes. And so I'm like, I want to work with the home. I want to work with the families. But the church is this source of life. The church is the ark. Like I don't even I don't even have all the answers, but I am being transformed by church. So to make a long story short, I ended up pursuing both those interests. I decided I got married, decided to go to seminary where I got a Master of Divinity to study theology. And then I went on for a PhD in child development and family studies specializing in marriage and family therapy. So what I do is I work with people in the home. How do we live our lives as Orthodox between the end of church on Sunday and the beginning of church in the next week? Or how do we how is it that the life we live in the home? It's kind of the battlefield for how we're living out. And and, you know, as I learned more and more, I realized, oh my gosh, this is like liturgy. Liturgy is like a like a fountain that erupts on Sunday morning, but it just explodes throughout the week. Like if we're not living our daily life connected to our this liturgical experience, it's like we're missing out on this fullness. Anyway, I could go on and on.
So I looked at um so I worked with couples, I worked with families, I worked with men, I worked with individuals, and then I got called back, literally called back, not I don't know if I assume it was from God, but mostly from the president of Holy Cross Seminary who said, "You got to come back and teach there." So I came back to my alma mater where I've been teaching pastoral care here, working on the areas of mental health and Orthodox theology, marriage, how do we understand marriage? Once we understand marriage, we realize that marriage is not it's not about a guy and a girl falling in love. It's about our us and Christ and all of creation, you know, all of humanity in relationship to God. Like marriage is this foundational reality for each one of us and for everything. So I do a lot of work in the area of marriage. I also do a lot with contemporary theories and how but mostly how to articulate, how to express, how to engage people in and help people with living in that. And then I do parenting and u all the other stuff about um about pastoral care. But it's interesting because I've been learning ever since that time it dawned on me I didn't know what "kenosis" meant has been just an ongoing like I want to know this. I want to know this. And what's striking is it's like I'm discovering both experiencing and discovering kind of the interconnections of all of this revelation of God in the church and how it interrelates into everything into who we are into our relationships and from then on into this radiant love for the world which sounds cool and it is cool but it's meant to be encountered. And so one of the things we know is that we are created in the image of God. And we know that God is a relationship of three persons. He is three persons in relationship. So we are created in the image of a relational God. What's also really cool is we're created in the image of an unknowable God. That the the Father really reflects that he God is essentially unknowable. And as Orthodox, we're kind of comfortable with that. We're not really not in the business of trying to figure everything out. Like we can know God even if we can't explain him. So we're created in the image of a relational God who's essentially in his essence is unknowable. Which means we as human beings are essentially relational creatures and essentially unknowable. Like you can't ever figure out the human being. And you know, for as much as science and the social sciences will study human behavior and they're they're kind of always chasing their tail, which is fine. They do good work. But for the Orthodox, we're really comfortable. Oh, yeah. I can know a person, but I cannot fully explain them. But it's really powerful to reflect then about how we are relational beings. Our brains develop through relationships. Like I've got a a granddaughter who's two and a grandson who's nine months. And literally they study child development. A child the brain the the neurons and the the um neurological pathways literally develop as a baby interacts with primary care providers. Like the very formation of our our persons happens through these relationships. Like if you want kids to develop, they need interactions with human beings, touch. They need parents to like model their behavior. The researchers talk about it as serve and response. Like the constant back and forth between a care provider and a child, that back and forth forms the very person of a child. Our inner lives, how we view ourselves, how we view God, our our there's our whole inner world. We don't just drop out of the sky as adults. And we don't just form out of nothing. We are in some ways the product of the interaction of our own unique persons with the primary people in our lives. Like essentially we are products of the people who raised us, the interaction. So to know about me, you know, is to know that I'm one of 12 kids and that the very fact that I had 11 brothers and sisters and the particular parents and that that's shaped my inner life and that is all relational. It's like I'm I'm formed in relationships. In fact, what I know about myself, I've learned from relationships. Like we can't even know ourselves except by being in relationships. And it's something as silly as learning if you're good at something. How do you know if you're good at something? You don't know if you're good at it. You just do it until everyone around you says, "Wow, I can't do that." And you're the only one who can do it. You're, "Oh, I must be good at that." Like it's as if God God's patterns of created order are that to be and become human is in and through relationships. Not only that, we become through relationships. We learn who we are through relationships. And to be and become a human being is to be in relationships. And it's not some profound theology to think about it. In order to be in relationships, at the heart of being in a relationship is somebody knows you and you know them. So relationships are a process of allowing myself to be known by people and knowing them back. Now, there's a little more to that because because of the nature of the fallen world and sin, we need God to come into the world, right? And enter into those relationships. But again, he doesn't magically fix us. He comes, he he dwells in our midst and enters into a relationship with all of us. So at the heart of this is being known. But the fact is, when I was 19, I didn't know anything about myself. I would act in ways I couldn't understand. Couldn't control myself in certain areas. Try hard in these areas. What I did know is I'm never missing church. I'm never missing church. I'm never missing church. Like I knew that this is the path. But there was so much in my inner life that I didn't know and I even could tell like I know I'd freak out about something. I said, I don't know why I freaked out about that. So it's it's like you you enter into adulthood and there's this whole inner world that is part of us but we don't necessarily have conscious understanding and awareness of. So it becomes like a little bit of a black box, you know, and um as we choose as adults to allow ourselves to be known, as we choose as adults to enter into relationships with people, or the way I like to share it, share things in the right way with the right people at the right time. It's like this is this process of how I have gotten to know more about myself as I've grown.
So, a lot of times when therapists talk about this stuff, you know, it's pretty depressing because you're like, "All right, so now I'm 20 and I'm totally dysfunctional and I have nothing to say about it. You know, I'm just a victim of my parents' dysfunction, addictions, or abandonment." And as an Orthodox, I'll say that's half true, right? Because we have no say or control over where we were born, who our parents were, right? We are in a sense we're just we we suggest we think that God put us there, but we do enter adulthood as the victim of the sins and the virtues of our parents. And so part of the part of the hard part of getting allowing myself to be known is it can be pretty I'm pretty ashamed of all this stuff. But what what what the church recognizes is, yeah, that's true. It's just not the whole story because the rest of the story is Christ enters into our dysfunctional hearts, our dysfunctional relationships. And now as an adult, now I actually have a choice. It doesn't matter from whence I came. What it matters is now what am I going to choose to do? And what's beautiful about Orthodoxy is all right, if I had a choice, my choice is I'd like to magically fix myself. I would like to magically have everything go away and I'd like to be perfect. Thank you very much. And it's hard to argue with that. Who wouldn't want that? Well, guess what? There is a person who does not want that. God does not desire to fix us because what we recognize as Orthodox it's in the nature of God's love number one that he loves us in our broken dysfunctional self. Number two, the only reason we don't like being broken and the only reason it's a shame to be to have you know our woundedness is that we are afraid. We are afraid of being rejected. And the answer to that fear of being rejected is the same answer. God madly loves us. So God's love becomes his response to our broken nature that we inherited. God's love becomes the the antidote to the fear of isolation, rejection, you know. And number three, this is the beauty of it. He doesn't seek, he doesn't need to heal us. He just loves us. But that love is in fact healing. A byproduct of becoming preoccupied with opening our hearts to God's love. He doesn't magically make my wounds go away. Remember, we believe in a resurrected Christ with wounds. But suddenly I find myself, you know, no longer bound by them. That I I become free of being a slave to my bad habits. I become I God doesn't necessarily take away my loneliness, right? Or my anxiety. You know what he does is he frees us from acting out in destructive ways when I feel lonely or when I feel anxious. So, it's like all this stuff I'm learning, I'm like, "Oh my gosh." And like Father Han said in the intro, but Christ isn't an idea. Christ isn't some molecule in the sky. Christ is incarnate. He is a Jewish male, right? And he left his church and he says, "I am this is my body. I am with you." And so for me, I was like, I this church, this community isn't just some place I go on Sunday. This community are the people who know me. This community is the people who I'm living my life with. And it's not like, oh, then we have all these magic happy relationships. Oh, no. Because there's still sin. There's still dysfunction. What we do have is we have the ascetic sacramental life that allows us to continue to repent and to continue to be transformed so that in the face of our sin, we don't suffer the consequences when we repent and we end up being a community of broken people who feel close to each other, who coexist together, who know each other and who walk through life. And in a sense, the Holy Spirit, the church protects us so that our sins don't rip us apart and destroy us. That is why I'm Orthodox. It's because I recognize that when we are committed, we make a choice where we go Sunday morning, right? We don't make a choice. I didn't make a choice about my brokenness and my wounds, but I make a choice about what I do now. Repenting, struggling to pray, getting my body into a church, allowing myself to be known, and suddenly I'm both, you know, I wish this was gone, but actually I'm feeling close to these people. My my sins are not controlling me. I'm being freed up from being controlled by these desires and impulses. So this process of engaging in community with brothers is specifically a process of allowing myself to be known, but it's a scary process. And it's interesting, why am I why why are people hesitant to allow themselves to be known? And you know, no one minds sharing their political opinions, sharing some people don't even mind sharing theology or sharing their strengths. What we mind sharing is my sin, my struggle, my woundedness, kind of these darker dimensions of my inner self, right? That's that's the definition of vulnerability. Like it's easy to connect with people when we're guarded. That's in fact not real connection. Like in order for real connection to happen, in order for a real relationship to occur, two people need to choose to take down their guard, to disclose, to be vulnerable. It feels crappy to allow people to know my vulnerabilities. It's easy for me. Oh, yeah, just call me Dr. Malakis. I'm the professor. I have all the answers. Yeah, that's a really comfortable place to be in the front of the class. Yapping. Yeah, but it's just not the whole story. There's this whole other part of me that is confused, is lost, this sense that my life is spiraling out of control. You know, this this this ongoing struggles with our human condition of being alone, trying to engage in a relationship with my wife and how we navigate that, you know, well, that's this whole deeper aspect of who I am. So, it's interesting. And I will say that the older I get, the more tempting it is to hide behind titles, hide behind roles. But I know that those are just ways to avoid allowing my ongoing vulnerabilities to be known. But what what makes it hard? What makes it hard to share these other aspects? Well, first of all, it feels crappy to be broken. It feels crappy to say, you know what, this is a this is a something that's really I struggle with. You know, I'm not really proud of my ongoing struggles. You know, I don't like it when my wife says, you know, you're really like that. I'm like, well, it's a good point. You know, that never goes on my resume. It feels crappy. But ultimately, there's something deeper that happens. We are, like I said, we take a risk when we allow ourselves to be known. A risk of being mocked, a risk of being judged, and a risk of being rejected. Like I said, that's ultimately this fear we have of of putting our guard down. And we see that this is why the church is not in the business of fixing people. We are in the business of loving people. We are in the business of communicating God's ongoing love of living like this because the the the the antidote to addiction is connection. They like to say the opposite of addiction is connection. That's out of the recovery literature, but it really reflects this Orthodox pattern understanding that the answer to my dysfunction is God's love. The answer to the fear of rejection is to recognize God's love. So the church, rather than fixing us, invites us to receive God's love. That's why people are always asking me, "What's the church's position on this? What's the church's position on that? What's the church's position on same-sex attraction? What's the church's position on transgender?" You know what I say the church's position is? Tell me who you are. Welcome. Tell me your story. That's our position. The church invites us to a path. The church invites us to encounter a person, not the some position. And yes, the church has an anthropology. We have a theology of marriage. We have dogmatics. But the church's position is Christ's position to the Samaritan woman by the well. What was his position? "Tell me who you are and I'm going to reveal myself to you." And then he corrected her theology. But a sense, this is the beauty of being church is we are that community. But it's hard. It's hard to be vulnerable. It's hard to face that. And I want to say it's harder. I think it's harder for men than it is for women. Because in general, we are raised in a culture that men should be strong. Men should know things. Men should have an answer, you know. And yeah, I understand and that's good and that's true sometimes and but a lot of times I really don't have an answer which means men should pretend they have an answer. I I really don't I feel weak at times. Oh, then men should pretend they're strong. You know, we were we were created in relationships. We are created for relationships. In order to be human, we need relationships. Do you know what that means? That we are by nature dependent. We are by nature dependent human beings. But dependence is not an American virtue or a masculine virtue. Remember, a man is supposed to be independent. You know, that sounds really cool. The problem is that doesn't jive with reality. That we are created dependent. So I think there's this cultural things about men and and when we buy in and it's it's not just American. I mean, I mean, I'm a Greek. The Greeks are the same. Mexicans are the same. Come on. It's I think it's just a human sense that we should be strong. We should be smart. And we should be independent. And as an Orthodox therapist, I'm saying you know what's actually going on in all of our hearts? Yeah. Sometimes we know and sometimes we don't. Sometimes we feel strong, sometimes we feel weak, and we're created to need each other. So that image doesn't jive with reality. So it doesn't doesn't take a rocket scientist to say you can't thrive if you're not acting out of reality. And so it ends up when people get seduced to people out of fear. It's too scary to be vulnerable. So I'm going to try and be strong and how am I going to be strong? I'm going to be strong by putting other people down because that makes me feel strong and that's good. I'm going to be strong by being right and arguing because I'm right because then I feel strong because then I don't have to face the fact that sometimes I feel weak, right? Uh, you know, and independent. I'm going to shore up these material things so I can physically be independent, financially be independent, you know, to shore up my nagging sense that gee, I really need people. And that is a failed path because you're faking it. You're faking strength, faking smart, and faking independent. But guess what's real when you do that? You will really be alone because none of that's real. Because in order to have real relationships, yeah, we need to be strong. But strong in what way? Well, I think strong about sticking to what's true, right? And in the pressures we feel about we should be independent. Oh, no. We are smart. We know what's true. And as men, we are strong. I am committed to that church community. And I no matter what the world does, no matter what people think about religion, no matter what people think about church, I am committed to this path and no one is going to knock me off of it. I'm smart enough to know the path of communion. I'm strong enough to stay on the path of it. And I know that independence is a lie. It's dependence. And what's beautiful when we learn this path and walk this path, right, we end up encountering something and the church reveals that that's Christ, His Holy Spirit. And we encounter a type of strength. That's whoa. And then we end up encountering people within the church who are like, "Yeah, you're right." Like that's that's what I like to think is the red pill. The real red pill is to realize that this world it's not that this world is fake. Right? But when you when you take the red pill, you understand that this world of physical is not the whole story about reality. That reality is God in His kingdom. Now, the only difference is God isn't a malicious matrix. And number two, we access eternity through symbols, images, and ritual. Like the physical world gives us access points to the divine, right? So I'm smart enough to learn that. I'm going to be strong enough to stick to it. And then I encounter other people who are like, "Yeah." And then I find real connection and real fullness of life. And then it's like, oh man, so here I am, still broken, still struggling with the same struggles, but finding deep connection and a deep connection that feeds our souls. I still have to get myself out of bed and go to church. That it never becomes there's never any it's never downhill to church, right? It's never there's no escalator. It it always takes effort. I need to force myself or rather like St. Picios says, "You should never force yourself. You should choose and then use force." So, I chose to go to church every Sunday. And sometimes I had to use force to get myself there. But no one forced me. God does not force. I choose. And then I'm going to use force. And then I encounter real connection, real humans. And And it's not just going to these people who know me. They know what I struggle with. They know what I'm good at. They know what I'm along with. They know when I sin. And they know when I repent. And then I find exactly the antidote to addiction because I have these connections. And in the world, in therapy world, they'll say, "Yes, social support, that's good." I'm like, "Yeah, it's kind of true. It's just not the whole story." Because the connection I encounter in church isn't just with each other, but it's with God. It's with eternity. It's with life himself. And so that is what we're created for. And then if I had a choice, I'd say, "Okay, I did this. Now I'm going to go home and now it'll be easy because now we got that magic wand and this magically fixed us." God still doesn't fix us. That he teaches us, oh, in this life, you're going to constantly be invited to choose to choose this path of life. And the more you choose this path of life and then force yourself, the more you encounter fullness of life. So in fact, to choose the ascetic sacramental path isn't to give up the good life. Oh, no. It's to actually encounter the good life. And that's the bizarre thing. To cut off my impulses and desires. I choose the good life and encounter everything my heart desires. And this is where we hear the fathers here talk about these things, these desires and impulses and temptations, you know, and they seem powerful and they seem, you know, tempting. But when we encounter real connection, real fullness of life, it's like, "Oh, I'm I'm not giving up anything. I'm getting something." And I look around in the world to people who aren't choosing that. And you see nothing but pain and suffering and people chasing after momentary pleasures to cover up their their weakness, to cover up their ignorance, and to cover up their dependence. And you realize, why do I want to live a life that's working hard to cover this stuff up rather than walk in fullness of life? It's not easy. It just is true. And the only thing harder than this path is the life that we find when we fall off the ark, we don't have that direction.
So, the last thing I want to say, it's probably not, but it's kind of like a preamble. The last thing I want to say is, you know, I've been doing my job for 20 years. I I I built that I I started help start that mission church probably over 30 years ago. And I realize I'm 30 years into it and I'm still as strict as I am as I was on day one. I still need the same things. I'm still as strict on the same thing. Like somewhere in my head, I thought, yeah, it's it's sort of like going to school. Once once you graduate, you're done and you go off. Well, in the Orthodox life, you do this for a little while, then you're done and you're all set. And what's happening, which I didn't know either, I'm experiencing is you just go deeper and deeper and deeper. But to this day, I never miss a Sunday. To this day, I still go to confession. And occasionally now, I get people to say, "You're a professor at seminary and you do this." I'm like, you know, what do you think? You be become a professor and your sins are wiped away? And I wish or you you write a book on marriage and so you no longer have sin in your marriage? And literally people act like that. But when you think about it, does that make any sense? And if it did, I think it'd be awesome. Just write a book and now you have no more sin in your marriage. Wouldn't that be awesome? It's not. Guess what happens? You write a book on marriage and suddenly you start thinking that I should no longer have struggles in my marriage because now I'm smart, now I'm strong, and now I'm independent. Translation: Now I just got seduced into those same lies that don't jive with reality. And the reality is we are eternally created and dependent upon Christ's strength, Christ's wisdom to thrive. Which means to walk this path is to find peace not knowing peace in our weakness. Peace in our struggle. To recognize that this struggle is not a problem to solve. My my addiction, my my desire, they're not problems to solve. They are facts. They're just facts to be transformed in relationships of love. And once we move from trying to fix ourselves or have God fix it toward just offering ourselves, we realize that God doesn't fix us. Those facts are still the same, but we are no longer controlled by sin or enslaved by sin. So, I've been really strict with myself. And I don't tell everyone how I'm strict. And I don't tell people why I'm strict, you know. And some people say, "Well, why? Why do you?" I said, "No, this is just important to me." You know, boundaries around physical relationships, boundaries around who I talk to, right? Boundaries, you know, guidelines and rules for how I spend my money, use of alcohol, screen time, you know, I am so strict about my eyes. You know, it's like, do you ever outgrow it? No, you never outgrow it. Because if you're strict about where your eyes go, you can live in peace. And and people, you know, people say, "Well, I'm not that strict." I'm like, "That's fine." Whatever. I don't say people owe us understand. I just know it's true. And so, I don't tell those people, but there are people who understand. Oh, yeah. I'm strict. I'm strict. I mean, I work in circumstances that there's a lot of vulner risks and and vulnerabilities, but I don't walk in fear. I walk strict. There's certain things it's just no, you know, and that never changes. What changes is I'm becoming more and more free. What doesn't change that's kind of annoying is these struggles are still there. Like I I I still wish for that magic wand, but it, you know, even with Amazon, nothing's getting delivered.
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