Introduction to the Orthodox world in the Netherlands
Before I start with my journal reflecting upon the Orthodox-trail, I want to share about my interview in the Netherlands with Father Stephan Bakker, and his wife Heleen. I had a meaningful evening with them both the week before I left on the trail. Father Stephan (62) is a Dutch Frisian by birth and leads the Orthodox Church in Amersfoort. He is ‘the first among equals’ in the Orthodox world in the Netherlands. When this couple joined the Greek-Orthodox church 45 years ago, there were 3 Orthodox churches in the Netherlands, now there are 40. The growth is due to migration, but also to ‘natural growth’, as Father Stephan expresses it. Before I met the Bakker couple, I didn’t think much about the interview; my expectations were low. I was getting stuck in my Orthodox reading, since it was getting hard for me to identify with the Orthodox world. I had attended a Eucharist service at the Russian Orthodox Church in Rotterdam, but it seemed a strange and incomprehensible world to me. I made the appointment with Stephan Bakker to prepare myself as a journalist for reporting on the trail for Nederlands Dagblad and Katholiek Weekblad.
The interview totally exceeded my expectations. I had an in depth encounter with two beautiful people, they made the Orthodox world attractive to me because of the sincerity, joy and strength I saw in both of their lives. This interview turned out to be an excellent preparation for the trial. It will take up too much space to go into the topics we discussed, but this encounter influenced my perception of the Orthodox world and will be reflected in this journal, the articles and the project.

Before starting the journal part, I wanted to take the time to introduce my Orthodox friends; they were key in my appreciation and respect for the Orthodox world. I’m learning from their worldview and theology, but I must admit that some of their traditions like icons and the Eucharist are still strange and foreign to me. It happened while reading ‘The Way of a Pilgrim’ their most precious book about spirituality, that I lost it. Was this all there was to it, as the book seemed describing, to just keep reciting: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me’?! I didn’t get it. Since I needed to get background information anyway on the Eastern-Orthodox churches in Holland, because of articles I had to write for Dutch newspapers, I decided to listen to a friend’s advise. I would try to find and talk to an Orthodox believer in Holland before going on the trail. I googled and found on the www.orthodoxekerk.nl site a name with an email address: Stephan Bakker, a spokesman for the Orthodox world in the Netherlands and leading a Dutch Orthodox Church in Amersfoort. A vague picture of a ‘Father’ in priestly robes appeared on my screen, a bearded figure surrounded by icons, with a woman standing at his side. A quick glance confirmed my thoughts: hierarchic, ancient, not of this world. What on earth could I learn from them?!

But, I was caught by surprise…
I drove on a rainy evening to the town of Nijkerk. I found this Orthodox couple living in a Dutch middle-class house. From the outside it seemed a house like so many others. Yet, when the door opened it felt as if I stepped into another world; a bit foreign, but foreign in an attractive way. This world, this couple, all of it instantly awakened my curiosity. The ‘woman standing at his side’ on the picture on the internet, appeared fully alive, fully there, a personality. Heleen was a professor at the School of Fine Arts, I soon found out. I suspected that her artistic talents created this ‘other worldliness’ an atmosphere that breathed a love for nature and for creation, instead of a desire for material things. Father Stephan was bearded, yes, but ‘hierarchic’, no. His eyes had too much depth for that; his manner too sensitive and sincere. I wanted to ask, to listen and to hear about their worldview. That’s what I did. They took the time, shared and explained. That evening my heart opened for the Orthodox world.

Father Stephan Bakker (62) is a first generation Dutch Orthodox priest. Next to leading a Dutch Orthodox Church, he taught theology and history. As a native Dutchman, Father Stephan joined the Orthodox Church in his mid-teens. At that time, over forty years ago, three churches were active in the Netherlands. Nowadays there are, also due to migration, over forty Orthodox churches.



Part II
Listening to the heartbeat of Orthodoxy

‘The union of the church is not made, but we discover it’
Karl Barth

1.
Space for mysticism;
Orthodox view of God and our relationship with Him

‘The truth is not something, it’s Someone’

This is the first time we see each other after our first acquaintance a month ago. Father Stephan is happy to be of assistance in my Orthodox-quest and offered to come my way for the interviews. And so it happens that we have our first talk in my house, which is located on the waterfront near the city centre of Rotterdam. My house has huge windows offering a view over the harbor in front of it. The harbor is part of the river Rhine and ships are sailing in the distance. By entering the house, I hear Father Stephan saying a short blessing. A moment later he stops in his tracks and takes his time to take in the view. It is quiet for a while. A CD is playing, the subdued voices in the background of an Orthodox choir add to the moment; one of these moments, where time seems to slow down. I wait and watch. Finally Father Stephan turns around, and asks with a smile: “How did you find such a house?”

Father Stephan seems right at ease. It’s mutual. We both enjoy pondering primary questions around the complexity of human existence. Neither of us are prone to small talk, and so it doesn’t take long before we’re right into the core of the interview: God, spiritual life, worldview…

‘It seems to me that your view of God is different than our Western Protestant/Evangelical one. There seems more space for mysticism. Can you explain how you view God and the relationship with Him?’

Father Stephan isn’t quick with words. He takes his time to think before he answers. “You know, Christianity is not a man-made religion, it’s a revelation,” another pause follows, than he continues with an example: “You could have said to my wife Heleen: ‘I can’t understand what you like about Stephan.’ But when she chose and married me, it was as if she had some intuitive knowledge. To her, there was something about me. She has made that ‘something’ come to life, but she had already some sense of this ‘something’ being there, before she experienced it.”

Father Stephan pauses while he is trying to find the right words. He faces the window and gazes into the far distance. Thoughtful he continues: “In a similar way God is hidden. He is very close; He is near us, in us, between us. Yet He is hidden, but He delights in it when we find pieces of Him. It is like He leaves a trail so we can find Him. But, this seeking, it is not an effortless and aimless seeking. No, when you’re aimless it’s like a dog wandering along a ditch. It does take an effort from our part. But, look around you! Look at nature and creation, everywhere you can find traces of Him. A true seeker knows what he seeks. People who seek God, will find Him.”

According to Father Stephan God loves to be found and sooner or later we will recognize ‘His traces’: “For example. Imagine I would meet your parents somewhere by change and I would tell them about this meeting with you. As I talk they’ll start thinking ‘that sounds like our Gea!’ It’s because they recognize something. That happens when you’re sincerely seeking. When you keep seeking, you start to recognize the traces.” Father Stephan straightens his back, while raising his finger and exclaims with a broad smile and a twinkle in his eye: “You’ll say: ‘Aha, this is You, God! I found you out. I recognize you!’”

The things I hear sound different, yet also familiar to me. But than Father Stephan says something that catches my attention: “We don’t serve God, God serves us.”
I haven’t heard this before. I interrupt him and ask:

‘What do you mean with “We don’t serve God. God serves us”? I’m more used to the idea that we serve God.

“Yes, God serves us. He seeks us. He calls us friends and heirs. It’s not some bargain-deal where I serve Him and He gives back to me, or something like that. It’s about giving, giving yourself for one hundred percent, without expecting something in return. Imagine that I would meet my wife again after this meeting with you, and when seeing her she would tell me: ‘Sorry, Stephan, I can’t live with you anymore.’ In that case I won’t go after her. I aim to serve her, but she is free to go, she is free to choose. In the same way God loves us and He gives Himself to us. In true love you don’t expect anything, yet you receive everything.”

“God caught me, He allured and enticed me. He serves us; it’s His initiative. He chooses all of us. With each of us He does it in a different way. I want to add, this kind of love is not about feelings. The type of feelings a music composer can arouse. God doesn’t need to play on our feelings, that would make us not free, that would be manipulative.
My wife Heleen is still a mystery to me. Sometimes I think I know her, but than she surprises me again. A relationship with God is similar. It’s not like mathematics. You might want to fill it in and think you know Him. There are these posters with all the names of God: faithful, righteous, and this and that. You have God described. You better be careful that you haven’t made that God into an idol, a boxed in God. A God you have figured out, because you like to have control over your religious life.”

I’m intrigued by this ‘mystery of God-thing’, I miss that within my Protestant way of thinking…

“Some people have a very closed belief system, with thorough and straight arguments based on men and their predominant ideas. There’s no argument, which can shake their ideas. I call it a wooden and an unbendable faith. You can compare such situations with living stones that you try to put into a system, but when you close in something that what is alive, it becomes deformed. Think of what happened to the feet of Chinese girls.
Don’t get me wrong. The Christian faith is serious. Not serious in the meaning of heaviness, but in the way you see children playing. When children play, they can be really serious because they play with concentration. So I mean serious in that sense. And yes, we also need rules. For example when you play a game, you need to know the rules. But when you always need to think about the rules, you are not able to play. The rules are there to make the game easy to play, because when you know the rules you can concentrate on the game and you can have fun playing it.
Christianity is a difficult religion…”

2.
Icon of God

‘God became human, so that we could become His icons once again’

It is as if the Orthodox begin the God-story with creation and incarnation, while I grew up with a God-story that started with salvation. The difference seems subtle, but where we put the magnifying glass makes a difference how we experience the God-story, and how we live it out in our lives. My belief system is about salvation; ‘I was rescued from sin because Jesus came to save me’. The Orthodox marvel at the incarnation; ‘God became human’ so that we could become His icons once again!

As I explain this the following week to Father Stephan, his response is rather straightforward: “Yes, the Protestant idea is: ‘We’re all bad and rotten, but God puts on His ‘Jesus glasses’ and therefore He doesn’t see any more how sinful we are.”

While I prepare a cappuccino, Father Stephan continues: “With that kind of thinking it is as if God can hate people, but God is love. We forget about Genesis 26, we are created as living resemblances of Him. We are made after God’s image; we are icons of God. It’s the kind of thing you say about a child: ‘Wow, he looks just like his father!’

Father Stephan sounds almost childish exited as he talks about the concept of ‘being made after God’s image’: “Think of a footprint in the sand. It’s a resemblance. Just imagine: we have seven billion people on the earth, seven billion resemblances and yet all of them are totally different beings. It’s like comparing a mandarin with the planet Mars, you wonder sometimes from what planet that other person comes from. Yet, it shows how multiple, how much greater, how diverse and how different God is.”

As we sit down to have our coffees, I think about the icons within the Orthodox Church. I’ve been around the Orthodox now for a while and am not as taken aback anymore by their habit to kiss icons (paintings of saints) during church services. I remember the first time I met Father Stephan and asked him about it. He responded at that time with a bit of surprise and asked me: ‘You kiss someone you know when you greet him or her, don’t you?’ Indeed, in my Dutch culture that’s what we do. It showed me that, while my only hero is Jesus and may-be some other Biblical figures, the Orthodox have many more examples of heroes of the faith. They live out more explicit what Paul exhorted: ‘remember those who have gone before you, and follow their example’.

As I sip my coffee, I ask Father Stephan: ‘Can you share a bit more about icons?’

“I’m a living icon of God, and would love others to recognize hat for themselves.You can’t force that, but I can live a contagious life. Tradition is a heartbeat within the Orthodox Church. With Tradition I mean passing on something precious from generation to generation, as if we say: ‘I have received something and I want to hand it to you. It has become very precious to me, so take care of it and further develop it.’ We venerate icons within the Orthodox Church, because these saints have gone before us and inspire us. Their exemplary life shows us that life in Christ is doable, desirable.
I also think it’s an honor to resemble God. I’m not just a genetic being, who happens to live by change. God wanted to express His love, that’s why I exist! I want to add that icons are not some sweet Madonna, it’s not about curly hair and that kind of thing, it’s a spiritual portrait. A good icon painter will catch the soul, the inward beauty of a person, which is Christ. The Apostle Luke was a physician, but few know that he was also a painter. He painted Jesus, we know how he looked like. He had reddish hair, like his forefather king David.”

I’m still not used to this kind of information. It’s interesting, it’s a bit intriguing, but it’s far off from what I’m used to within my own Protestant culture.
Meanwhile Father Stephan continues:

“God is into renovation. We are encouraged to do certain things like forgive, pray, celebrate, fast, but also make love, eat and shop. These kinds of activities all help towards the renovation process.”

‘Shopping?!’

“Yes, but when I shop I do it thoughtful. I read what’s on the package, what’s Fair Trade, that kind of thing. Christians have their identity also in their culture. And yes, when you look around you on a busy day in a shopping mall, it can be difficult to see the resemblance of God and to see the inward joy and beauty within people. But it’s easy to detect it in people, who truly experience and enjoy their humanity. I don’t mean in a hedonistic way, but people who could say, if they were believers: ‘Thank you, God, this is a wonderful day.’

When you take the time to let it sink in that you’re an icon after the image of God, it will change your life. It won’t make you pious or religious, but it will be life changing. God is into this process of transformation, you can see it over the ages. The apostle Peter was from a primitive part of society, as a fisherman he would work naked in the water, but when he followed Jesus he walked on the water and became the bishop of the Church. Paul could have been like a SS Colonel in the Second World War, but became the thirteenth Apostle. Emperor Constantine changed the law even before he became a Christian; when still a heathen he stopped torture. When you look over 2000 years Christianity, you can see everywhere evidence of the Christian influence, which has changed society. As Christians we have a task in society, on the place where we are. We are meant to do the good works, those works which God prepared and are waiting to be done by us.”

The conversation with Father Stephan raises many questions. His worldview differs much from what I’m used to. So much I’d like to know, but I have to choose. Mission, evangelism and our place as Christians within society has very much my interest. That will be the theme of our next talk.

Incarnation; God among us

A week later we sit again across each other with our cappuccinos and a platter of cookies on the round glass dinner table, both enjoying and valuing these conversations. This time the subject is mission. After living many years in the city of Rotterdam, I’ve come to see the limits and even downsides of ‘evangelism’ in the meaning of what some would call an ‘air bombing’: planning a big mission event, or coming in with a group of people with tracks to ‘save some’. Instead I have come to see the value of Christians moving to the city with a missional intention: to be present, to befriend and to share their lives in a much more natural way with their neighbors.

All over Eastern Europe small Orthodox churches can be found, in some regions on almost every corner of a block of houses or in the backyard of a farm. When I question Father Stephan how he sees mission, he starts with telling the story of Father Jean Baptiste Vianney: “This priest lived in a small French village during the industrial revolution around the 18th and 19th century. There was much depression and alcohol abuse, but every day the priest would ring the church bells. People laughed at first. But Jean Batiste stayed, he was there and lived among them. Several decades later the whole village had returned to Christianity. In the West it is often believed ‘the bigger, the better’. People marvel at large and well organized gatherings, but I wonder in what extend souls come indeed closer to God.” Father Stephan instead values small-scale gatherings: “It’s about intimacy. Generally speaking it is so that how bigger the party gets, the smaller the feast!”

“Besides that, growth is a slow process. The better the quality, the slower growth. My grandfather was a baker. During special occasions he would make bread for the family. With his big, large hands he would work the dough on a thick wooden worktable. He would throw the dough and beat it, after which he would leave the dough resting. That bread would stay fresh for a long time. That’s how God works with us, and when we change, others will notice it. Growth can’t be contained, but growth is not about the number of people attending a church or about self-made saints. The church has already enough of the latter.”

In Father Stephan’s opinion mission and Christianity is not about big events, or even about good morals, but about small acts. “Our Christian president Balkenende promotes ‘respect’ and ‘good citizenship’, but that’s not what Christianity is about. It’s about sacrificial love. How can mission be successful without denying ourselves and without sacrificial love? In that regard we as men can learn from women. The essence of God is mirrored in a good marriage where the partners say to each other: ‘No, please, you…’ or: ‘I will do that for you.’ Those small sentences seem nothing, but yet are everything.”

Father Stephan continues about the Trinity: God, Son and Spirit being equal, without hierarchy while enjoying communion with one another, which is a valued concept within Orthodoxy: “It’s the secret of God, like a cloud of persons who are around each other and involved in one another. Love, so true and intense, that the Lovers cannot be discerned, They are One. God, Jesus, the Spirit who point to one another. Like Jesus said: ‘Not me, but my father…’
Missions is not an export or import article, you can’t implant it. You can’t get it out of a book, or out of an article. It’s through influencing, it’s about being there and just doing it.”

The view that mankind and culture is not totally sinful and lost, but should be brought back – through Jesus - to how mankind was original intended, results also in another mission approach. The Orthodox’ tend to raise the question: ‘Where and how is the Spirit already at work in this place and within this culture?’

Father Stephan: “Carefully look and listen what already exists. There is already dough, and the Spirit already is at work and working the dough. You can for example rebuke the Native Indian: ‘You call Manitou the Great Spirit, but that’s not God’. You can also work with his knowledge and understanding of the existence of One God, which the Holy Spirit already has given him. Give attention to what is happening around you; when you don’t know what is going on, you don’t know what to do. Don’t make your own plans with the other and don’t force your own ideas upon the other. God’s plans are different and you can’t control the Holy Spirit.”

Father Stephan surprises me again with one of his analogies, this time regarding being in the world and participating in the Eucharist, the Orthodox church service: “I see myself as a volunteer of an organization that manages a playground. The goal is to let all the kids play. The playground is the world, the clubhouse on it is the church. I want people to leave this playground all sweaty and with red cheeks, while exclaiming: ‘Wow, that was great! Let’s go inside and thank Them (the Trinity) for the wonderful time we had.’