The particular spirituality of the Appalachian Riders For Our Lady is based on our three foundational principles of commitment, continuity and conversation in addition to the general Catholic evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, obedience and stability adapted to a lay context. The Riders strive to promote a conversational culture, proclaiming Christ crucified, authentically Christian and Catholic, in the midst of a world largely lacking culture of any sort.  Our vows of commitment, continuity, and conversation do not necessarily mean that we have any natural inclination or talent in these areas. I’m a member of St George Melkite Greek Catholic parish in Sacramento. My booklist, which is in a way deep in history (each Rider, during their novitiate, settles on 24 books of primary importance), is:

• Bible, unabridged Revised Standard Version
• Horologion; Melkite Greek Catholic liturgy
• Vergil’s Aeneid; Sarah Ruden translation
• Songs for Pascha; St Ephrem the Syrian
• The Confessions; Saint Augustine
• Dante’s Divine Comedy; Anthony Esolen
• Comedies and Tragedies; Shakespeare
• Complete English Poems; John Donne
• Complete Poetry & Prose; Robert Frost
• The Translations of Seamus Heaney
• Mansfield Park & Emma; Jane Austen
• The Brothers Karamazov; Dostoevsky
• Novels 1926-1954; William Faulkner
• History and Eschatology; N.T. Wright
• Secondhand Time; Svetlana Alexievich
• Hannah’s Children; Catherine Ruth Pakaluk
• Gospel According to John; St. Theophylact
• Catechism of the Ukrainian Catholic Church
• Colossians, Ephesians, Hebrews; FF Bruce
• Catholic Theology; Thomas Joseph White
• Orthodox Christianity, v4; Hilarion Alfeyev 
• In the Beginning (John 1:1-18); A. Esolen
• For the Life of the World; A. Schmemann
• The Liturgy of the Hours; unabridged

The Appalachian Riders For Our Lady have a particular interest in the season of Ascensiontide, which we consider nearly as important as Advent and Lent.  My particular interest is: That ecclesial bodies with very different Ecclesiology seem to have very similar Christology. 

Christian Perspectives

The foundation of everything is Christ Jesus, and him crucified. However, beyond the personal aspects of that (reading, listening, prayer), what are the implications for our social relationships?

I want to commend the Catholic perspective to you. Of course, that raises several questions:

• Is it reasonable to speak of THE Catholic perspective?
• Is my characterization of this perspective warranted?
• Can one also speak of THE Protestant perspective, especially given the range of protestant ecclesial bodies?

I propose that the protestant perspective is that the Christian life is best lived and considered from the primary viewpoint of the individual or, at most, the congregation. On the other hand, I commend the Catholic perspective: the Christian life is best lived and considered from the primary viewpoint of the universal Church, the Bride of Christ, extended in spacetime and militantly subsisting in the Catholic Church whose chief steward is the bishop of Rome (for better or worse). Besides addressing those preliminary questions, I intend to commend the Catholic perspective in three aspects:

• better able to cope with adversity
• more resources for spiritual formation
• closer alignment with the scriptural canon

All these points are controversial; however, I intend not to argue for them but rather to chew on them.  The difference between a primarily individual perspective and a primarily ecclesial perspective also has a significant political component since the State desires no competitor to its hegemony (see, for example, Alan Jacobs biography of The Book of Common Prayer which documents how this worked out in England) and hence is inclined to favor an individual perspective which it can divide and conquer.

I’m also assuming that the more alive an entity, the more applicable the principle that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. In addition, whenever possible I’d like to phrase matters sociologically. A major advantage of a perspective more social than individual is that one can “check one’s answers”– the boredom of, for example, discussion about end-time scenarios or sectarian doctrine being that one can not check one’s theory in one’s day to day life and interactions with others as one can, on the other hand, regarding ethics and how to live in community. Somewhat related to this, I prefer to get my history indirectly, via literature.

On a personal level, I think the core of the Protestant error centers on the attempt to place faith above love (see Luther’s commentary on Galatians) contra Saint Paul and the Catholic tradition.

The noted Evangelical scholar Mark Noll, in the book ‘Is the Reformation Over’, argues that Catholic and Protestant disagreements really come down to different understandings of the nature of the Church.  I don’t disagree; however, I very much disagree with the view that “well, maybe so but that’s not important to me..it’s my personal relationship with God that is important.”  The nature of the Church is essentially intertwined with the work of the Holy Spirit, as is reflected in the Nicene creed.  God is able to sustain what was initially established (..I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it) and it is wrong-headed to try to start over on one’s own.

Technology is very important and clearly the most important technology is language. The people who know the most about language are not the philosophers but the poets, broadly defined.

“Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” (Richard Feynman)

“The Catholic Church is the Church we mean when we say The church.” (Lenny Bruce)

“If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.” (John von Neumann)

“Don’t get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one.” (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” (William Faulkner)

“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)

The Strategy of Teaching

I aim to convey by my Little Library that I’m an orthodox Catholic of the Byzantine Thomist persuasion, who works as an English teacher and who likes to travel. As Northrop Frye says in the section on The Rhetoric of Non-Literary Prose in his book Anatomy of Criticism:

“…A good deal of the strategy of teaching is rhetorical strategy, choosing words and images with great care in order to evoke the response: ‘I never thought of it that way before,’ or ‘Now that you put it that way, I can see it.’ What distinguishes, not simply the epigram, but profundity itself from platitude is very frequently rhetorical wit. In fact it may be doubted whether we ever really call an idea profound unless we are pleased with the wit of its expression. Teaching, like persuasion, employs a dissociative rhetoric aimed at breaking down habitual response: the maddening prolixity of Oriental sutras results from this, and there are passages in the New Testament almost as dissociative as Gertrude Stein:

 ’That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life, (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us). That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you.’

“Without trying to suggest that only good writers can be good philosophers, we may still observe that much of the difficulty in a philosophical style is rhetorical in origin, resulting from a feeling that it is necessary to detach and isolate the intellect from the emotions.”

Speaking of being a schoolteacher, here are another twenty four books: a second shelf to my little library, so to speak, with a focus on comparative literature.

• Bible: unabridged English Standard Version
• Don Quixote; Miguel de Cervantes
• Ivanhoe & other stories; Walter Scott
• The Age of Innocence; Edith Wharton
• Lord Jim & Nostromo; Joseph Conrad
• Collected Plays 1944-1961; Arthur Miller
• Various Novels 1881-1901; Henry James
• Later Novels 1923-1940; Willa Cather
• Collected Novels; Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Moby Dick, or The Whale; Herman Melville
• A Portrait of the Artist; James Joyce
• Help My Unbelief; Geert Lernout
• Mimesis: Literature; Erich Auerbach
• Theory of Literature; Rene Wellek
• The Normal Christian Life; Watchmen Nee
• Dostoevsky: Critical Essays; Rene Wellek
• What’s Wrong with the World; Chesterton
• Benjamin Harrison; two biographies
• Ancient Roman History; Tacitus & Livy
• Eastern Theology; Solovyov & Palamas
• Solzhenitsyn Reader: Writings 1947-2005
• Mathematical Methods of Mechanics; Arnold
• Relativity & Cosmology; Christian Böhmer 
• Summa Theologica; St Thomas Aquinas

In my opinion, the best writers have the sort of objectivity which Edmund Wilson attributed to Shakespeare and Henry James:

“One would be in a position to appreciate James better if one compared him with the dramatists of the seventeenth century—Racine and Molière, whom he resembles in form as well as in point of view, and even Shakespeare, when allowances are made for the most extreme differences in subject and form. These poets are not, like Dickens and Hardy, writers of melodrama—either humorous or pessimistic, nor secretaries of society like Balzac, nor prophets like Tolstoy: they are occupied simply with the presentation of conflicts of moral character, which they do not concern themselves about softening or averting. They do not indict society for these situations: they regard them as universal and inevitable. They do not even blame God for allowing them: they accept them as the conditions of life.”

Seven Favorite Books

“I want to learn more about Christianity, what seven books would you recommend?”

• Exodus
• Psalms
• Wisdom
• Luke
• John
• Corinthians
• Hebrews

Combined Booklist

• Sacred Scripture
  Bible, unabridged Revised Standard Version
  Horologion; Melkite Greek Catholic liturgy
  Liturgy of the Hours; unabridged
  Bible, unabridged English Standard Version
• Poetry and Plays
  Vergil’s Aeneid; Sarah Ruden translation
  Songs for Pascha; St Ephrem the Syrian
  Dante’s Divine Comedy; Anthony Esolen
  Plays and Poetry; William Shakespeare
  Complete English Poems; John Donne
  Collected Poetry & Prose; Robert Frost
  Collected Plays 1944-1961; Arthur Miller
  Collected Translations of Seamus Heaney
• Method
  Relativity & Cosmology; Christian Böhmer 
  Mathematical Methods of Mechanics; Arnold
  Ancient Roman History; Tacitus & Livy
  Benjamin Harrison; two biographies
  History & Eschatology; N. T. Wright
  Hundred Years War; Jonathan Sumption
  For the Life of the World; A. Schmemann
  Orthodox Christianity, v4; Hilarion Alfeyev
  Help My Unbelief; Geert Lernout
  Mimesis: Literature; Erich Auerbach
  Theory of Literature; Rene Wellek
  Dostoevsky: Critical Essays; Rene Wellek
• Exegesis
  Gospel According to John; St Theophylact
  Colossians, Ephesians, Hebrews; FF Bruce
  The Normal Christian Life; Watchman Nee
  In the Beginning (John 1:1-18); A. Esolen
• Doctrine
  Catechism of the Ukrainian Catholic Church
  Summa Theologica; St Thomas Aquinas
  Catholic Theology; Thomas Joseph White
  Eastern Theology; Solovyov and Palamas
• Prose
  The Confessions; Saint Augustine
  Don Quixote; Miguel de Cervantes
  Ivanhoe & other stories; Walter Scott
  Mansfield Park & Emma; Jane Austen
  Collected Novels; Nathaniel Hawthorne
  The Brothers Karamazov; Dostoevsky
  Moby Dick, or The Whale; H. Melville
  Various Novels 1881-1901; Henry James
  Lord Jim & Nostromo; Joseph Conrad
  The Age of Innocence; Edith Wharton
  Later Novels 1923-1940; Willa Cather
  A Portrait of the Artist; James Joyce
  Novels 1926-1954; William Faulkner
  Secondhand Time; Svetlana Alexievich
  What’s Wrong with the World; Chesterton
  Solzhenitsyn Reader: Writings 1947-2005

The reading program of the Appalachian Riders for Our Lady is based on three fundamental principles:

• I’m ignorant and have much to learn.
• Reading one book helps in reading and enjoying another book.
• The cross-fertilization will occur naturally, no need to push it.

We all have Bibles and the Liturgy of the Hours in our individual booklists. Other than that, there is a good bit of variety but also a fair amount of overlap. I myself find it useful to group my books into six categories.

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”