Journey Back to Eden.pdf - St Mark Coptic Orthodox Church Chicago

170 MAYthe commotion associated with the Islamic month of Ramadan.The festivities are loud and numerous in one apartment buildingafter the other across the city. In the streets, likewise, the noise isgreat with the din of nightly celebrations. What an interesting“fasting season” is Ramadan!A Foiled RatMAY 6, WEDNESDAYWhat with the heat becoming more oppressive, even at night,I’ve taken to spending longer and longer evenings in the churchwhich is a little bit less oppressive than our cells.During the summer nights, the church is lit by a number of oillamps hanging from a wire suspended from the ceiling. These oillamps are beautiful, rather antique. They burn their oil with a wick ina bottom pot. Between the pot of oil and the ceiling from which ithangs, suspended on that same wire, is an ostrich egg! I asked aboutthe significance of the ostrich egg, why the monks hang it between thelamps and the ceiling, and the answers I received were rather diverse.One monk told me that the ostrich is considered to be a fairlystupid bird and that if it did not continue to look at its eggs, itwould forget where it had laid them. “Likewise,” he said, “our soulis regarded in its fallen state of human sin to be somewhat dull andinsensitive. We must keep our spiritual eyes fixed on God. Wemust gaze with eyes fixed on the truths of faith, as it were, fixed onthe Cross. Otherwise, we shall forget from whom our life has comeand the work for which we were commissioned. For that reason,the ostrich egg is placed above the oil lamp so it can always beseen. The glow of the lamp below casts light upon it.” Thatsounded like a plausible symbolic account of the ostrich egg.Another monk told me yet another variation of the story. Hesaid that the ostrich has the capacity to warm the egg that it haslaid, not so much by sitting upon it, but by gazing at it! It’s one ofthose legends which have been preserved by ethnic folk for centuries.By gazing at the egg, the ostrich warms it until it comes tolife, that is, until the baby bird breaks through the shell. In a similarway, the monk went on to say, “God keeps his gaze always restinggently on us. He summons us to life till we are ready to ‘hatch,’as it were, to break through the limitations of this world into thekingdom of God in the world to come, to be born into eternity.”