Vasilios Theodorakis – An Online Author

There’s a Sci-Fi short story called “Lets Go To Golgotha” by Gary Kilworth which explores the idea that time travelling tourists were present at Christ’s death, got coached to do what the locals where doing and participated in His condemnation. The reader eventually discovers that the locals of Christ’s time had nothing to do with the event, and that the crucifixion only occurred because those who travelled back in time, participated in the spectacle.

The tale is quite haunting and I’ve often thought about its implications in regards to how much of a public figure Christ was in his own time. The thing that’s most intriguing, is that reading between the lines of scripture and what the traditional Church teaches, one can’t help but notice that Christ himself did not seek the limelight or even like it. The best supporting evidence we have of this is how He implemented numerous techniques that emphasised his own words and works but not Himself. One of these techniques was of course never writing anything down. In spite of this, His story has been passed down from generation to generation, and it’s often retold as though His presence brought Jerusalem to a stand still – on more than one occasion. I fear this is inconsistent with the nature of the God-Man, who we are told was quietly spoken and “did not even break the bent reed” (1 Ki 14:15; Isa 42:3; Mt 12:20).

Like many of the greatest figures in history, what he said and how he lived his life was so inspirational that people couldn’t help but place him on a pedestal for others to worship – our species has done this from the very beginning – idolising those who have something new to offer. I expect that He Himself was quite invisible outside of those who knew him. The message he left behind was so amazing however, that it changed the course of human history (and spread exponentially).

At the core of the oldest forms of Christianity, this humility is still acknowledged and followed. We who fall under the Orthodox Christian umbrella are taught to live our lives well, follow His example and not make a big deal out of our way of life. In the East, this approach is understood to be the best way of encouraging others to do the same. The original Christians, the Orthodox, still don’t proselytize as many of today’s Protestants do. Sincere Orthodox Christians offer up their lives as an example of the Faith – and in so doing, hope that people who choose to join the religion, do so because they like what they see in regards to the Orthodox lifestyle and worship.

Unfortunately our media driven world has led many people, even within Orthodox Christianity, to choose the opposite road to anonymity. The need to be the centre of attention is a very seductive thing – just like the rest of our Western lifestyles.

For better or for worse, I have tried to live my life the way I believe Christ did, though not always successfully. Rather than stand at the front and postulate, demanding that people look at me, I stand at the back and hope that what I have learnt and how I have lived is a helpful guide to others. My philosophy is therefore – “stay invisible”, for in so doing, you may in fact have a personal impact on those around you and you will in fact be following in Christ’s footsteps.

Cheers – Vasilios Theodorakis – May 2009

This week’s pieces include a commentary and autobiographical snippet written on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively.

The commentary: Hope For The Planet… is a thought I had while on the train heading into Brisbane. Pulling into Roma Street Station I noticed a slab of concrete that had grass growing through a crack in its centre. Contrary to what Queensland Rail might think, I found this very encouraging.

The autobiographical snippet: Having No Desk… is something I’ve been wanting to write and upload for some time, but I didn’t have a place on the blog for autobiographical prose. In the end I’ve decided to just list it as a general posting.

The highlighted author for this week is a Futurist and Inventor – Ray Kurzweil

Cheers – Vasilios Theodorakis – May 2009

Back in May of 1989, I had no money, no qualifications and no real job. I found myself in a share house with the Brisbane youth sector’s very own Casanova, as well as, a chain smoking Japanese exchange student who hadn’t grasped the notion of emptying an ashtray. Each time he filled a tray, he’d go down to the shops and buy a new one. For some reason, he preferred to do that rather than empty the contents into a bin. Invariably, no one could get into his room because of the piles of cigarette butts and ash, strategically positioned on the carpeted floor. What made this truly disgusting is that I’ve always been a non-smoker.

Most of that winter was spent in a tiny uninsulated room, trying to complete my degree’s third year social work subjects. I had to turn a drawer upside down and balance it on boxes on either side of my legs – just to get a level surface to write on. I can’t remember how much material I wrote in this setting, but it was horribly uncomfortable and incredibly demoralising. I was supposed to become a Physicist, for goodness sake, and here I was churning out Marxist dribble on the bottom of a drawer in Brisbane’s dampest suburb – Graceville.

During my darkest hours in 1989, I often thought about my grandparents and how they had migrated to Australia in order to ensure their descendants had a better standard of living. My parent’s actions inevitably put an end to that dream leaving me to fend for myself. Ill health and a lack of resources subsequently left me homeless. The fact that Graceville’s resident Casanova was kind enough to let me use his spare room, before I froze to death in my antiquated Subaru Sherpa, was my only break.

As someone who values writing above all else, it is interesting to note, that each time I found myself homeless in the late 1980s / early 1990s, the main thing that bothered me was having no desk. My lack of food and the absence of a bed seemed to come a distant second. When I finally bought a new desk, I was so used to “not having” possessions that I found it difficult to give myself permission “to have” the desk – even though it was desperately needed.

Now that its 2009, and life has greatly improved, it’s time to make way for a more functional writing environment, especially if I want to complete that piece of speculative fiction, that has clung to me like a 400 pound gorilla. :) Once the room is set up, I’ll post a few pictures of my custom built writing environment. Regarding my writing from 1989 – thank goodness for wide drawers and cardboard boxes! ;)

Cheers – Vasilios Theodorakis – May 2009

What I find hopeful is grass growing out of crevices on a concrete wall or weeds appearing through a crack in the pavement.

These defiant acts of nature remind us that life is waiting in the wings for humanity to stumble. And were we to trip and fall, the Earth’s ecosystem would take over and run things the way they should have been run in the first place.

It’s heartening to discover, that life will out last our destructive presence even if we don’t.

Cheers – Vasilios Theodorakis – May 2009

The poem for this week is: A Lie???

This piece of verse belongs to the “Growing Up” anthology and was written in April 1988 – the exact date in April was not recorded. As with many of my pieces from that era, it too is about the emotional turmoil associated with identifying a partner or life long companion. If I had just focused on finding someone that wanted to go out on a date first instead of marriage, I may have had better success! :)

The highlighted author for this week is another children’s writer – Beatrix Potter

Cheers – Vasilios Theodorakis – May 2009

This week’s post: Uniqueness is a short commentary based on a conversation I had with a friend about how angry I have become in loosing loved ones – never to see them again after they die.

At a head level I’ve always found that religion and theology are helpful in dealing with loss, but at an emotional level it makes no difference to the ongoing grief because I know that even if I do encounter them in an afterlife, they will not be the same being I knew on earth.

I also pointed out to my friend, that I often look for my lost friends in other humans / creatures only to discover and rediscover that nothing more than aspects and traits of my friends’ personas are ever present in others – one never, ever, sees the whole again.

Once dead, their uniqueness is always lost to the world, irrespective of what one might believe happens in an afterlife.

This week’s highlighted author is: Thomas Keneally

Cheers – Vasilios Theodorakis – April 2009

Every life form is truly unique. It can never and will never be reproduced on earth. The combination of DNA, environmental experiences and individual responses to those experiences guarantees statistically, that that entity can never again occur in this space time continuum – this universe. The odds of it happening are virtually zero – this is a fact.

The only way to witness a life’s uniqueness again, especially after it dies, is to step outside of time, travel along the continuum, open a portal and witness it within its living context.

Additionally, when outside time, no life is the same as it was while alive within time. This is because the time variable and the time variable’s effect on the being has been removed. One will never again see the being that’s present before them after the moment has passed. Which makes it even more important that one appreciates each encounter and each engagement.

In a very real sense then, each time you see a being, it is the first and last time you will see them in the form that they’re in, for all life invariably changes as each moment passes.

It therefore follows, that every time you look out into the world, you are in fact seeing it for the very first time, even if you think that you’ve looked at that very same scene each and everyday of your life.

Savor the moment – as the ancient’s used to say. Savor your witnessing of a life, for you will never see it in quite the same way again. Both you and it will be different beings by the time you next meet.

The living are truly fortunate as trillions of unique moments are seen and experienced before each and everyone of us dies – no matter how short our lives. What an amazing thing it is then, to exist within time, even if it is filled with flaws, loss and sadness.

Dedication – For our little girl Molly…
Copyright © Vasilios Theodorakis 2009

Today is the Orthodox Christian Good Friday. Traditionally, a day for the Apostolic faithful to reflect on life, death and everything in between. It always falls just after the Jewish Passover, in order to acknowledge and pay tribute to the Jewish Faith – Christ’s own religion, and to ensure consistency within the Orthodox Liturgical calendar.

Some of my earliest memories include attending Orthodox Christian services on this day. My maternal grandmother – Olga, would drag me around to all the liturgies during Holy Week, and though I understood nothing, she was determined to show me everything.

Since then, most of my adult life has been spent exploring and defending my Faith in spite of its adherents’ many short comings. My ability to “turn a blind eye” however is rapidly failing, not because anything has changed in my relation to the Faith, but because the abhorrent attitudes and behaviour of so many Orthodox Christians has become metaphysically dysfunctional – a lot of people below the age of 40, now follow the ritual without the spiritual. This approach has reached such epidemic proportions, that many are guilty of what the Protestants have always argued – i.e. that all we’re capable of is meaningless spectacle without any real relationship to God.

Those who know me, know I have always argued that our lack of reverence for God and worship is a direct outcome of the Faith being locked behind ethnic languages – especially in counties like Australia i.e. not being able to worship in the language in which one thinks can’t help but seed such a religious disaster. If the basis to the issue was that simple though, all one would have to do is change the language of the service and the problem would be corrected. Unfortunately, it’s becoming obvious that much more than language is to blame.

The problem also includes how “transplanted peasant culture and parishioner ignorance” has been fostered for generations, so much so, that many people born into Orthodoxy genuinely believe that as long as you go through the motions of the Faith, you are religious, (spiritually cleansed and ultimately saved). I’ve lost count of the number of people I know who are Atheists, but who show up every year at Pascha (Easter), hold the fast, attend services and even take communion though they don’t believe in Christ, let alone God. The religion is just a subset of their ancestral nationalisms and nothing has been done to educate and in turn discourage such an approach.

Which brings me to my main point – at a time when we should be reflecting on Christ’s suffering and sacrifice for humanity; at a time when we should be trying to emulate His infinite compassion for all creation; and at a time when we should be repenting from our dysfunctional and destructive natures – most of my brethren are obsessed with the deprivation of ritualistic fasting and unable to wait for their orgy of over indulgence come Sunday morning around 3:00 am. So much for faith helping with one’s personal evolution and the fast being a personal sacrifice we offer back to God!

The fact that Australia’s Orthodox will smash millions of battery hen eggs then toss those eggs into bins, seems to be a non-issue – it doesn’t matter that there’s an inconsistency between Christ’s message of compassion and how these animals suffer unspeakable miseries in order to produce a resource that just gets wasted. The fact that countless animals will be slaughtered for an overindulgence that is not necessary (especially when we have grains like amaranth, chia, quinoa which use far less of the planet’s resources) and that we openly ignore how much of the earth’s human population doesn’t have enough to eat on a daily basis – is conveniently forgotten as more meat is shovelled into already overfed mouths. The fact that Orthodox parishioners don’t even know what the term Theosis means, how it is a corner stone of their own religion and how their cultural based lifestyles are the antithesis of Christ’s message of openness, temperance, balance and an ongoing focus on God – doesn’t seem to matter – but then again why should it, when vast numbers of Australia’s Orthodox Christians don’t even believe in God let alone the Trinity or the theology of the Faith.

Maybe I’m just being picky here, but I still think that when we remove the spiritual basis of a religion, it just becomes superstition. Albeit a complex form of superstition, but a superstition none the less. I’m just glad my grandmother isn’t alive to see what the descendants of the post war migrants in Australia have done to her beloved Faith. Rather than it being a means to an end i.e. the ongoing struggle to emulate Christ, it has become a non-sustainable end in itself.

Cheers – Vasilios Theodorakis – April 2009

The poem for this week is: Queensland Expo / Expo Queensland

This piece of verse belongs to the “Growing Up” anthology and was written in April 1988. It’s a minimalist piece that captured simple feelings I was experiencing when visiting Brisbane’s Expo 88.

The highlighted author for this week is another scientist – Steven Hawking , specifically his book “A Brief History Of Time“.

Cheers – Vasilios Theodorakis – April 2009

The poem for this week is: A Cup Of Tea Or A Beer?

This is another recent poem and falls into the ungrouped category. The piece is a tribute to Betty Cutlack, one of the few people in our neighbourhood that made us feel genuinely welcome when we bought our place. Betty’s passing deeply affected the feel of the street – it suddenly got a lot more impersonal – a sign of our non-communal times I suppose. Apparently, she lived in her house (which her husband built) for over 50 years. Her husband, who passed away back in 2004, also has a poem dedicated to him i.e. “A Neighbour Weeding”

Unfortunately I have no highlighted author for this week.

Readers might have noticed however, that I’ve fixed up the navigation and layout of the blog’s side bar. With a bit of luck, I’m hoping to improve more of the structure of the site in the near future. I’ll keep you abreast of any such developments.

Cheers – Vasilios Theodorakis – April 2009