Greetings in that Divine and Most Precious Name of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!
Synergy is to manifest God's Grace into our material, social, and political realities day by day, moment by moment, situation by situation. We are not guided by Church principles in our interactions with society and politics, we must be guided by the Holy Spirit directly in prayer. Canons are there to assist us in prayer, not guide us as an intellectual template.
I am deeply interesting in this book. I came into the Church from an extremely radicalized background, and I am a political nihilist. Politics is a scam, plain and simple. Dealing with political realities is our adult life, but to
believe in them is self-defeating. I came into Rastafari because those brothers and sisters were the first to help teach me pragmatic spiritual practices to overcome political radicalization and also to deal with issues of street violence. Politics and violence tend to provoke political and violent responses contrary to the Spirit of the Gospel of Matthew chapter 25. When we have one political idea or another, we are essentially negating the reality of those who may disagree with us. The fundamental premise of democracy is to in some way respect the beliefs, opinions, and feelings of each other mutually. That is where the impossibility of harmony finds its manifestation. In our broken world of self-service too many folks assert democracy to mean, "Everything I want for myself." I prefer the manifesto of the EZLN in southern Mexico which says, "Everything for everyone, nothing for ourselves."
This is the most Christian of political philosophies I've seen, which in practice has become quite an example of Acts 5/Matthew 25 in practice in the rural communities of southern Mexico. But I digress into political idealism, mods please forgive me.
I am intrigued by this book because in particular, I evolved from Rastafari to Orthodox Church still in this search for balance, for harmony, for the strength to live to my convictions. I believe in true spiritual democracy, it is not my right to force or coerce my beliefs on anyone.
God does not Himself do this to us, how can we do it to each other pretending to be following His authority when He Himself exercises restraint in this regard? Theosis was the answer. Salvation through the Mysteries is the way to find Grace to live the Gospels, to live the Apostles' creeds, to live the EZLN aspirations of a true community. We learn to love and tolerate each other by God's help, when we submit to Him, when we submit to each other, when we reject and abandon ourselves to community. Grace helps us. When we are weak, we are made strong. When we try to make ourselves strong, we hurt other people and therefore are truly weak. Strength is to stand in prayer, not to necessarily stand up. Sometimes God does indeed empower folks to make moves for the greater good of the community. Slaver was evil. Racism is a curse. The Church took thousands of years to deal with this reality, but that is because the Church operates at an individual level. The Church seeks to convert the hearts of individuals towards sincere repentance, towards building a truer community on substantive love by God's Grace. In our rush for political idealism, we hurt those we disagree with. We need Grace to push us in the right direction.
It is not the strength of arguments nor the historicity of our facts which convinces people to harmonize or agree on anything in this life, it is the Holy Spirit, it is God alone who can sincerely pursuade the human heart towards mutuality, towards agreement. Theosis doesn't push us away from politics, but rather closer towards our fellow human brothers and sisters. God tolerates evil in our lives out of His compassion for the evildoer, that they might in time come to repentance, we need Grace to assist us in this same direction. We use prayer and not just Canons to guide our daily political lives. We have to have discernment to know which battle to fight, and which battle to flee for cover and regroup. God fights the War, we are just part of the scenery.
That being said, I very much want this book

stay blessed,
habte selassie