A Christmas Carol.

This past week I’ve been extremely sick. Laid up on the bed or the couch. Radically hallucinatory fever dreams and waking visions. The standard lack of satisfying answers from ER testing after having to go and receive IV fluids. The…affliction persists. I missed the opening quads for both wrestling teams I coach and that means missing the start to both my sons’ seasons (They are doing fine. Both went 2-0). Anyways, in my fevered states of many unwanted visitors, unwelcomed guests, and other pesky boggles and gremlins, it occurred to me that perhaps this is curse work.

Any Christian worth his salt should know and respect that witchcraft is indeed real. Not like these idiots on Twitter or whatever. And indeed many people wield it as a tool to help people. Much of the praxis does work. It IS ‘real.’ You can improve an awful lot in your life or your friend’s lives with it. It just doesn’t have Christ at the end, and I wanted/needed help and healing in my life more than I wanted to be a witching type. Its not all bad or evil and neither are people that practice it. We can fight about that later when i’m well. But curse work I know. And this feels…a lot like…curse work. So if you are out here on substack, hats off. Game recognizes game. It worked. Things really suck a lot right now with no silver lining to be found. However. The thing about the Cross, is that it simply endures, in Love. And so if you need to hear a Merry Christmas that is meant, I mean it. I will pray for you without your consent. You do not have to accept Terms and Conditions.

Whilst laid up I’ve been watching A Christmas Carol. Which one? All of them. There’s so many. The Muppet’s one, Scrooged (a family favorite), the one with Jim Carey, this that and the other one. I actually don’t know if there has been a story created that seems determined to carry it’s creator across the finish line at all costs. Think about it. All of those versions are unique, some are more entertaining, some are funnier, some more somber, sure, but none of them are bad.

The story has been one of my favorites since I was a child and its one of the easiest to journey back to any point in my life. I think perhaps this would be true for many people. Outside of the Bible, it might be the greatest western myth in telling. That’s because of course its framed in Christian theology and if you are Greeking your Christian theology correctly, you know by now there isn’t a philosophy or science in this cosmos that can break it. If you are slow to play, that’s alright, just getting stretched in my words saying that its the Truth.

That’s a big boast for this story by Charlie Dickens but it’s quite simple. At its core, it has what every single human being desires in their core; forgiveness from others and from yourself. And through that forgiveness that requires your repentance (and for that repentance requires your metanoia, change of heart— we can keep going) and through that you step into authentic freedom. If you do not desire this than you are a sociopath or psychopath, and so not entirely human, are you, ‘ubermensch’?

So. My surprise my surprise when last night, with the kids asleep and the cat laying on me (until I have to mad dash for the restroom) I see the FX Special: A Christmas Carol starring Andy Serkis and Guy Pierce and what’s this? It was a TV-MA rating? Well roast my chestnuts, I think, they managed to ruin another thing trying to make it Grimdark or ‘adult’. I’m in a bad mood thinking even THIS story has to be perverted. Even this! Tolkien’s Tweed Jacket these people piss me off.

I was wrong. Its quite good. I’m about halfway through and the performances given so far are fantastic. And they have fantastic material to work with. This is where maybe this version comes with more teeth and why it has the TV-MA rating. Mistakingly I figured that mature rating would be wasted on some dumb Victorian over-clothes-sex where it never looks like much is being accomplished or that it would be gore-porn. Like some idiot in the think tank came in all coked up and said ‘What if we do Dickens’s Christmas thingy but like, we had a crossover with the our others IP, The Strain, wouldn’t that be sick?! No, it wouldn’t, Peyton.

So far what they have used the MA rating for is to delve pretty darn deep into Scrooge’s soul. Now think about all the versions you’ve seen. The Ghost of Christmas Past generally deals with Scrooge’s regrets. Thing’s that hardened Scrooge because he felt perhaps he could return to these nice things once he did his big time things of becoming a ‘finance bro’ and ‘self-maxxing.’ (Andrew Tate, I do not want to be you when the Andy Serkis version of the Ghost comes to your soul one Christmas. ) However we as an audience are never really clued in to what caused Scrooge to not only be anti-social, but twisted like bad heartwood. In the FX version, we get intimately acquainted. The first seen for Scrooge with his past is heartbreaking. And then it gets worse. And then it gets worse. And then we see a very un-Dickens like darkness; we see what hurt people do to other people. And it is monstrous. Because it is very real.

And it is here, deep into the most terrible midnight of this man’s soul inside this Ghost story that we find its most Orthodox expression of man. Since Cain. When a man has begun to justify the hurt he causes and the greed he enjoys because of what was done to him and enjoys such a degree of success that things like charity and hope seems made for chumps. That might makes me right because they’re living proof that is so. That every single damning decision was innocuous because its just business. When a man enters this drama, and we all do, there is a point where he believes he is beyond forgiveness from others because he cannot forgive others. He is thinking in temporal terms. Its too soon to think of Christ’s forgiveness, the mind simply wont let the heart rest there. And it is too soon to see freedom from ourselves is true freedom. He is still thinking that power and money over others lend less of the same over him so logically it means that he has more freedom as others have less.

What is to be done? How can anything be done with this Great Tragedy in which we inherit our father’s demons? I sure did. Man oh man oh man did I. Every. Mother. Fucking. One of them. My indulgent languishing with this lot and the resultant strain on my family it caused is what my Christmas Ghost was that made me stop. Take a look around and realize I didn’t want God. Wanted nothing to do with Him, actually, but I did need Him.

It made me realize in a way, as I sit here right now, listening to a grandfather clock we inherited with my dad’s passing, looking at a piano my wife happened by that my older son has taught himself, the themes to Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Carol of the Bells, that towards the end of life, I was his Ghost. I was his patient witness to things he couldn’t ever tell me happened to him and his brother. Still. I found forgiveness for him, for his father, probably even great great grandpa Radislav too. It is only through this process first, that I can be open to forgiveness from others for the hurts I have caused them. And so my sons and daughters witness for me. This process is arduous and terrifying. It is much longer than any one wants it to be. Perhaps a lifetime.

You see this has nothing to do with a stupid ‘conversion experience’ or when people say ‘they are on fire for God!’. The sentiment is perhaps nice, but its a pixie sick worth of wisdom. I’m a fireman. You know what happens to all fires eventually? They go out. The only fire that burns forever is the Fire of God. And you don’t get to claim or declare that like you are going through customs. Its a gift. And if its true, it wont burn you up, it will gently refine over a long long time. Over many Christmases and many failures. Seventy times seven, one might even say.

And the story of the Carol goes on and on too. Through the hands of dozens of creators and artists. Trying to give us this deep wisdom. Like the Theosis that is represented by the Ghost of Christmas Present. The Ghost is not haunted by his past, for his represents repentance. And he is not haunted by his future because he has given up everything in his absolute joy and reliance on God. And I think this is why perhaps he seems the nuttiest of the three. He can be free of himself partaking in the joy of creation. And that is what he shows Scrooge, not the party he cant be at right this moment. The joy of salvation expressed through Theosis- Sainthood, that he wont allow himself. Which is the aim of every single Orthodox Christian on earth.

I hope this gives you some things to think with. Perhaps a different way to share those stories with your kids if you are blessed with any. If not, to share them with friends or a way to meditate on them yourself. What? The third Ghost? That’s you. coming back at the end of God’s Time and merely pointing to what you already know your decisions are leading you towards. At what is opposite God.

Merry Christmas