From Live Aid in the mid-1980s to today, Western attempts to help famine-plagued Ethiopia have had little effect. Author Peter Gill explains why in his recently published book, “Famine and Foreigners.” William Easterly reviews the book for the Wall Street Journal:
If it were possible to sum up in one sentence Ethiopia’s struggles with famine over the past quarter-century, I’d suggest this: It’s not the rains, it’s the rulers. As Peter Gill makes clear in “Famines and Foreigners,” his well-turned account of the country’s miseries since the 1984-85 famine and the Live Aid concert meant to relieve it, drought has not been as devastating to Ethiopians as their own autocratic governments.
Ethiopia is a classic example of Amartya Sen’s dictum that famines don’t occur in democracies, only under tyrannies. The “foreigners” in Mr. Gill’s story either didn’t know about this sad fact of life or chose to ignore it. In any case, the celebrities and humanitarians who rushed to the aid of starving Ethiopians in the mid-1980s unwittingly supported the very people most responsible for those grim days… continue reading
8 thoughts on “It’s not the rains, it’s the rulers”
for Elias not to be posted:
Hi elias, i read the above review.It was is good.
I also found this link and if you want to put it on your page here it is.It looks inquisitive enough.
http://debrebirhan.blogspot.com/2010/09/form-africa-to-caribbeans-hunger-caused.html#links
‘The White Man’s Burden,’ by William Easterly
The Poverty Puzzle
Review by VIRGINIA POSTREL, The New York Times
MALARIA infects 300 million to 500 million people a year, causing severe pain and debilitation. A million of those taken ill die, mostly infants and young children. Of the deaths, which amount to a child every 30 seconds, more than 80 percent occur in the poor countries of Africa. Insecticide-treated mosquito nets, which cost $5 or less, could prevent most infections. A mere $2.50 in medicine can treat the deadliest form of the disease, the World Health Organization reports.
So why don’t we just buy the nets and medicines? If we cared as much about the poor as Bono does, couldn’t the rich countries wipe out malaria and also eliminate the world’s worst poverty?
It’s not that simple, William Easterly argues in “The White Man’s Burden.” Take those mosquito nets. When aid agencies hand them out in poor countries, he writes, “nets are often diverted to the black market . . . or wind up being used as fishing nets or wedding veils.” Free nets don’t get to the people who need them.
But in rural Malawi, clinics serving new mothers sell insecticide-treated bed nets for 50 cents each. The nets come from a program developed by local Malawians working for Population Services International, a Washington-based nonprofit organization. In Malawi’s cities, the group sells nets for $5 each, using the profits to subsidize sales in the countryside.
The program, Easterly reports, has “increased the nationwide average of children under 5 sleeping under nets from 8 percent in 2000 to 55 percent in 2004. . . . A follow-up survey found nearly universal use of the nets by those who paid for them.” By contrast, when a Zambian program handed out free nets, “70 percent of the recipients didn’t use” them. Charging for nets may sound hardhearted, but prices provide vital information about commitment.
The world’s poor need more focused, trial-and-error programs like the Malawian net distribution and fewer ambitious plans to cure poverty, Easterly argues. There are two tragedies of the world’s poor. The first is the one we hear about: that so many people suffer so much for lack of inexpensive remedies.
The second, he says, “is the tragedy in which the West spent $2.3 trillion on foreign aid over the last five decades and still had not managed to get 12-cent medicines to children to prevent half of all malaria deaths. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get $4 bed nets to poor families. The West spent $2.3 trillion and still had not managed to get $3 to each new mother to prevent five million child deaths.” The West is not stingy. It is ineffective.
A professor at New York University and a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, Easterly spent most of his career as an economist at the World Bank. He had to leave that job after publishing his iconoclastic 2001 book, “The Elusive Quest for Growth,” which skillfully combined a history of economists’ growth theories with a devastating empirical analysis of the failure of international efforts to spur third world development. The book’s theme was “incentives matter.”
In “The White Man’s Burden,” Easterly turns from incentives to the subtler problems of knowledge. If we truly want to help the poor, rather than just congratulate ourselves for generosity, he argues, we rich Westerners have to give up our grand ambitions. Piecemeal problem-solving has the best chance of success.
He contrasts the traditional “Planner” approach of most aid projects with the “Searcher” approach that works so well in the markets and democracies of the West. Searchers treat problem-solving as an incremental discovery process, relying on competition and feedback to figure out what works.
“A Planner thinks he already knows the answers,” Easterly writes. “A Searcher admits he doesn’t know the answers in advance; he believes that poverty is a complicated tangle of political, social, historical, institutional and technological factors.” Planners trust outside experts. Searchers emphasize homegrown solutions.
Local details matter, Easterly argues again and again. Consider a project to teach farmers in Lesotho agricultural techniques. Sponsored by the Canadian International Development Agency and the World Bank, it was a complete flop. The range-management techniques conflicted with local law, which guaranteed open grazing, and the farming plans were doomed by the region’s bad weather.
In fact, the locals already knew the area wasn’t good for farming. “The project managers complained that the local people were ‘defeatist’ and didn’t ‘think of themselves as farmers,’ ” Easterly reports. “Perhaps the locals didn’t consider themselves farmers because they were not farmers — they were migrant workers in South African mines.”
Failure is, of course, part of trial-and-error learning. The problem is that aid programs rarely get enough feedback, whether from competition or complaint. Instead, Easterly notes, advocates measure success by how much money rich countries spend. Praising the G-8 industrialized nations for doubling aid to Africa, he says, is like reviewing Hollywood films based on their budgets.
Easterly acknowledges that not all foreign aid has failed. In public health and school attendance, where results are relatively easy to measure, focused efforts have made a huge difference. The easier it is to see whether aid is working, he argues, the more likely it is to succeed.
“The White Man’s Burden” does not match “The Elusive Quest for Growth” as a tour de force. Easterly is doing something harder here: not merely cataloging past failures but trying to suggest a more promising approach. Unfortunately, his alternative is still underdeveloped, devolving at times into slogans.
After all, Searchers plan, too. The question is not whether to plan, but who makes the plans, how they are changed and where feedback comes from. “The White Man’s Burden” underplays the essential role of competition, not only in markets but between political jurisdictions.
Easterly is better at documenting the failures of planning than analyzing the successes of searching. He examines the problems of post-Soviet Russia but offers nothing about why countries like Poland, the Czech Republic and Estonia have successfully made the transition to capitalism and democracy. Nowhere does he discuss whether the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, whose funding comes from one of the world’s most effective Searchers, is any more effective than traditional agencies.
Easterly is understandably skittish about generalizations, but extracting lessons from experience is quite compatible with decentralized searching. Businesses in radically different industries learn from one another. Searching includes discovering the day’s best practices. Not every situation is unique.
Still, “The White Man’s Burden,” like “The Elusive Quest for Growth,” is an important book. Easterly asks the right questions, combining compassion with clear-eyed empiricism. Bono and his devotees should heed what he has to say.
Virginia Postrel is the author of “The Future and Its Enemies” and “The Substance of Style.”
Confessing to the Converted
By LANDON THOMAS Jr., A book Review – NYT
Chicago
IT is standing room only in Transitions, a New Age bookstore in Chicago, and John M. Perkins, the author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” is describing to his audience the quandary that faces Evo Morales, the recently elected president of Bolivia.
Leaning low into the microphone, Mr. Perkins affects a deep conspiratorial whisper as he sets the scene for the imagined encounter between the new president and the representative of the multinational corporate interests Mr. Morales had vilified during his campaign.
“Congratulations Mr. President,” Mr. Perkins says, assuming the role of the businessman, or economic hit man, as he likes to call his previous profession. “I just want you to know that in this hand I have a couple of hundred million dollars for you and your family if you play the game our way.” With the practiced timing of an expert storyteller, Mr. Perkins pauses. “And in this hand I have a gun with a bullet in case you decide to keep your campaign promises.”
As the rapt crowd clucks and murmurs as if let in on an unspeakable confidence, Mr. Perkins cautions that he is speaking metaphorically. But for an audience already punch drunk on Mr. Perkins’s very own tales of corporate skullduggery, his allegory — overripe though it may be — carries not only a ring of truth but also clues to a long history of unexplained endings.
“And what about those crashes of J.F.K. Jr. and Paul Wellstone?” a woman in the audience asks. “They were awfully suspicious.”
Yes, Mr. Perkins says with a nod, and reels off the deaths of others in airplane crashes: Gen. Omar Torrijos, the former president of Panama, in 1981; Jaime Roldos Aguilera, the president of Ecuador, also in 1981; and even Senator John G. Tower, the Republican from Texas, who perished with 22 others on a commercial flight in 1991. “We have had a lot of plane crashes,” Mr. Perkins says ominously.
Mr. Perkins’s core message is that American corporations and government agencies employ two types of operatives: “economic hit men,” who bribe emerging economies, and “jackals,” who may be used to overthrow or even murder heads of state in Latin America and the Middle East to serve the greater cause of American empire. During an earlier time, that message might have been mere fodder for conspiracy theorists and fringe publishers. But now, for all of Mr. Perkins’s talk of fiery plane crashes and corporate intrigue, his book seems to have tapped into a larger vein of discontent and mistrust that Americans feel toward the ties that bind together corporations, large lending institutions and the government — a nexus that Mr. Perkins and others call the “corporatocracy.”
THE idea that corporate interests have undue influence over White House administrations has long been a staple of anti-establishment politics. But during the Bush administration, some recent events have dragged this notion further into the mainstream. United States soldiers and businesses are firmly entrenched in Iraq and now the federal government plans to give $7 billion in royalty concessions to an oil industry already enjoying record profits. According to a recent Gallup poll, 70 percent of those questioned said they believed that big business had too much influence over Bush administration decisions.
And in Houston, the squalid drama of Enron, the politically connected energy trading company that crashed and burned, continues to play to a packed house.
For Mr. Perkins and a small group of similarly inclined authors, all of this has proved to be rich creative terrain. Since Penguin published it in paperback this January, “Confessions” has been on the New York Times best-seller list, rising to a high of fifth place on the nonfiction list last week. On Amazon.com, it has risen as high as No. 23 over all. The book is also being taught in classrooms at DePaul University here in Chicago and at Wheaton College in Norton, Mass. Hollywood has also shown an interest: Beacon Pictures bought an option to make a movie from the book as a prospective vehicle for Harrison Ford.
While the larger issue of America’s role in emerging economies is debated by many people, the book’s popularity seems driven more by the mix of cloak-and-dagger atmospherics and Mr. Perkins’s Damascene conversion from tool of American corporate interests to champion of the world’s poor.
“My sin was ripping off people around the world,” said Mr. Perkins, speaking of his job as a consultant who, he said, pushed countries like Panama, Ecuador and Iran to take on burdensome loans that they would have trouble repaying. “I feel terrible about the things that I did as an economic hit man.”
There is a rich literary tradition, spanning more than 80 years, of corporate insiders writing books in a confessional vein that puncture the secretive, less seemly aspects of their professions. In 1923, the stock speculator Jesse Livermore revealed to the author Edwin Lefèvre the many underhanded secrets to his success as a trader. The book, “Reminiscences of a Stock Operator,” a tart, revealing roman à clef that is still read by traders, became the model for the tell-alls that followed, with varying degrees of success.
In 1985, S. C. Gwynne wrote “Selling Money,” the story of his experiences as a naïve 20-something banker lending millions to third-world countries during the international debt crisis. Five years later, Michael Lewis published “Liar’s Poker,” his benchmark account of greed and power at Salomon Brothers, and in 2002, James J. Cramer took an unsuccessful stab at capturing some of Mr. Livermore’s magic in his book, “Confessions of a Street Addict.”
Now, after Mr. Perkins’s story, there has been a small flurry of like-minded revelations. This month, for example, Dan Reingold’s “Confessions of a Wall Street Analyst” hit bookstores. Mr. Reingold, a former telecommunications analyst at Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch, describes his experiences navigating the conflicts between research and investment banking. And the genre shows no sign of flagging. Scheduled for next year is “Dark Fiber,” a tell-all by David Chacon, a broker at Smith Barney who has already talked about his role in providing hot stock offerings to prized clients of the bank.
As with many public unburdenings, Mr. Reingold’s and Mr. Chacon’s stories are largely self-serving. In essence, they concede that while they may have crossed a line or two, their transgressions did not approach those of Jack B. Grubman, the former Smith Barney analyst who has been banned from the securities industry for life.
To varying degrees, the recent crop of books paints a picture of business and finance that is darkly cynical, rigged to enrich insiders at the expense of those on the outside. This theme is explored in depth by Paul Stiles, a former Merrill Lynch bond trader who last year offered a little-noticed book called “Is the American Dream Killing You?”
Published by Harper Collins, the book is a passionate outcry against the ravages that the pace and pressure of the market can wreak upon life and society. In particular, he cites urban sprawl, obesity, depression and even waning sex drives as the collateral damage of the American addiction to the helter-skelter rhythms of the stock market.
It is an odd book, one that publishers probably would not have considered during the boom years. As for Mr. Stiles, who likened living in America to beating one’s head repeatedly against the wall, he has packed up his family of four and abandoned the country for a new life in the Canary Islands. “It’s so painful to see. The sprawl, the greed,” he said in a telephone interview, speaking of the United States. “It’s like an inward collapse of what we once were. I can’t take it anymore. You see McDonald’s and it’s like you are getting shot.”
For Mr. Perkins, a fundamentally optimistic man who has written self-help books about using shamanic techniques to get ahead in life, there has been no such renunciation. On the contrary, he has been traveling the country over the last 18 months, preaching his message to packed audiences at bookstores, universities and foreign-policy groups. With his innocent smile and a message of personal renewal, Mr. Perkins, who is 61, comes across more as a wizened yoga teacher than as a hit man. Dressed in jeans and a shabby sweater, he will urge members of his audience to close their eyes, breathe deeply and picture the world as a great octopus spraying a salubrious ink of natural resources and compassion to all on the planet.
And while he will wrap up the occasional stranger in a back-cracking embrace, and inquire about a reporter’s cough, he has a distant, awkward air amid the frenzy of adulation — as if he would almost prefer to be somewhere else.
Mr. Perkins’s coup has been to overlay a dry, mainstream notion — that American companies and multinational institutions were less than discriminate in lending to third-world nations — with sex, confession and fiery plane crashes. In his dramatic telling, he interviewed with the National Security Agency, joined the Peace Corps in Equador and then became an economic forecaster with a consulting company called Chas. T. Main, based in Boston. (Main was bought by the Parsons Corporation, the giant engineering company, in the 1980’s.)
In an early scene that sets the tone for the book, he describes being seduced by a mysterious Catherine Zeta-Jones look-alike who called herself Claudine Martin and supposedly worked at Main. In an interview, he said she plied him with cocaine, red wine and ultimately herself. “We are a small exclusive club,” she says in the book. “Your job is to encourage world leaders to become part of a vast network that promotes U.S. commercial interests. In the end, those leaders become ensnared in a web of debt that ensures their loyalty.”
In the book, Mr. Perkins recounts the nine years in which he worked for Main in the 1970’s. From Ecuador to Panama, Iran to Saudi Arabia, the mission was the same: working in league with government agencies, Mr. Perkins claimed that he inflated the economic growth forecasts of these countries and smoothed the way for the billions in loans that they took on. Ultimately, he said, the funds were recycled to the United States as these countries became clients of big American engineering, construction and manufacturing companies, including Bechtel, Halliburton, Boeing and others.
BUT in his telling, Mr. Perkins was constantly haunted by the feeling that he was in effect a hit man — paid officially by his employer, Main Inc., but under the more oblique sway of the government and intelligence agencies. The son of a conservative New England family, he whips himself for having succumbed to pleasures of the flesh as well as the lure of money, influence and power.
In 1980, Mr. Perkins quit his job at Main. For much of the next two decades, he worked as a consultant, entrepreneur and specialist on the culture and practices of indigenous people of Latin America. After the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he said, he felt that it was time to tell his story. After being turned down by bigger publishers, Berrett-Koehler took a chance and published the book in 2004. A best seller in hardcover, despite few mainstream book reviews, the book has sold as many as 5,500 copies a week in paperback.
Mr. Perkins invests much of the story with earnest, pulpy touches. He writes of himself drinking beers and listening to Jimmy Buffett under magenta skies with beautiful women, meeting with disfigured dissidents in shantytowns outside of Tehran and absorbing the whispered warnings about the United States’ imperial designs from Latin American leaders.
Michael M. Thomas, a former investment banker and novelist of Wall Street manners, says a book’s success will often be determined more by its voice than its subject. And for now, Mr. Perkins’s message of conspiracy carries the perfect pitch for many readers — no matter how fantastic his conclusions may be.
“The odd side of our character is that we believe that dark powers are arranged against us — call it the Da Vinci codes of finance,” Mr. Thomas said. “But really, I never heard of anybody being assassinated for lack of taking a loan.”
Indeed, for all the book’s success, Mr. Perkins has faced numerous questions about the veracity of some of his dreamier contentions. Earlier this month, for example, the State Department released a brief report called “Confessions — or Fantasies — of an Economic Hit Man” that took issue with one of Mr. Perkins’ primary assertions: that the National Security Agency, with a wink and a nod, was aware of and may even have approved Mr. Perkins’s hiring at Main.
“Perkins is apparently not aware that the National Security Agency is a cryptological (code-making and code-breaking) organization, not an economic organization,” read the statement, which was released by the Bureau of International Information Programs. “Neither of these missions involves anything remotely resembling placing economists at private companies in order to increase the debt of foreign countries.”
WHILE Mr. Perkins and his publisher have provided documentation attesting to Mr. Perkins’s employment at Main during the 1970’s, a period in which the company indeed worked on many large infrastructure projects in Ecuador and the Middle East, it is hard to prove some of his fancier claims. These include, for example, that he arranged for a female friend of his to become a concubine for a Saudi prince and expensed the entire affair, that General Torrijos of Panama confided in him about his fear of being assassinated, or that private American corporations employ undercover operatives he calls “jackals,” whose tasks may include assassinating foreign leaders who don’t do America’s bidding.
Moreover, Mr. Perkins has said that his first boss at Main, Einar Greve, was a liaison for the N.S.A. Mr. Greve, however, was quoted in a skeptical profile of Mr. Perkins in Boston Magazine last year as saying that he knew no one at the N.S.A. and that Mr. Perkins “has convinced himself that a lot of this stuff is true.” Mr. Greve did not respond to a message at his home seeking comment.
The arc of Mr. Perkins’s career seems to be described accurately. A check confirms that Mr. Perkins attended Middlebury College in the mid-1960’s. And there is a record of the Iranian student, called Farhad by Mr. Perkins, who befriended the author before both men left Middlebury after a fight at a bar — an incident described in the book.
But in the wake of the controversy over James Frey, who embellished aspects of his own best-selling tale of personal redemption, “A Million Little Pieces,” one feels obliged to ask: Is it all true?
Sitting in a hotel room in Chicago, Mr. Perkins is not offended by the question. Mr. Frey has “fried us all,” he said with a patient air and a soft laugh. But he says he has been wholly truthful: “I’m not lying. Why would I lie? The incidents are out there.
“Our own government is lying to us,” he added. “Enron lied to us. Andersen lied to us,” he said, referring to the accounting firm that audited Enron’s financial books and shredded many documents related to those audits.
And what about those jackals?
“I just talked to one this afternoon,” Mr. Perkins said. “He is on his way to Iraq on Monday.”
And what exactly do they do?
“Well, when the economic hit men fail, the second step is the jackals,” he said. “They try to overthrow governments, just like Kermit Roosevelt did.” Kermit Roosevelt Jr., the grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, led a Central Intelligence Agency campaign that overthrew Mohammed Mossadegh, the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, in 1953.
Unlike Mr. Roosevelt, today’s operatives work for corporations, Mr. Perkins said. “I suspect these were the guys that tried to overthrow Chávez in 2002,” he added, referring to a failed coup against President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.
To his broader point about the jackals, there is a blend of fact and speculation. Books have been written about Mr. Roosevelt’s covert work in Iran; but what about corporate spooks in Iraq and Venezuela? So far, that seems largely to be Mr. Perkins’s own particular notion — one, albeit, that has fired the imagination of many of his readers.
Instead of running from such questions, Mr. Perkins has faced them head-on, wearing them as a merit badge of sorts that gives weight to his crusade against the corporatocracy.
At the Chicago bookstore, Mr. Perkins wrapped up his speech by connecting the work he did modernizing Saudi Arabia in the 1970’s to the rage of Osama bin Laden, the Sept. 11 attacks and the turmoil in Iraq. He mentioned the growing crowds of admirers that have met him at his stops, adding that now, as opposed to last year, few are questioning the truthfulness of his account — “except, that is, a few journalists,” he said, with an arch of his eyebrows, as he looked at a reporter in the crowd taking notes.
The 200 or so fans erupted in sympathetic laughter. The joke was on the skeptic; having read the book, they, like Mr. Perkins, were insiders now, and all the smarter for it.
Pagumen ጳጉሚን 03 (September 08)
IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER AND THE SON AND THE HOLY SPIRIT,
ONE GOD. AMEN.
On this day are commemorated the glorious angel Rufa’el (Raphael) the archangel, the third of the vigilant, holy and heavenly archangels; and the dedication of his church, which was built to him on an island outside the city of Alexandria in the days of Saint Theophilus the Archbishop; and the miracle which was made manifest therein, and took place thus. A certain rich woman from the city of Rome came to Saint Theophilus the Archbishop, and
with her were her son and a picture of the glorious Archangel Rufa’el Raphael), and much money, which she had inherited from her parents. And she cleared away the heap of rubbish, which was in front of the archbishop’s house, and there appeared from beneath it a treasure of gold, even as we have written [in the section for] the eighteenth day of Tekemt. And Saint Abba Theophilus built many churches, and among them was the church, which was on the island outside the city of Alexandria, and was dedicated in the name of the glorious Archangel Rufa’el (Raphael); and Abba Theophilus the Archbishop finished the building thereof and consecrated it as it were this day. And whilst the believers were praying in the church, behold the church trembled, and was rent asunder, and it moved about. And they found that the church had been built upon the back of a whale of the whales of the sea, on which a very large mass of sand had heaped itself. Now the whale lay firmly fixed in its place, and the treading of the feet of the people upon it cut it off from the mainland; and it was Satan who moved the whale so that he might throw down the church. And the believers and the archbishop cried out together, and made supplication to the Lord Christ, and they asked for the intercession of the glorious Archangel Rufa’el (Raphael). And God, the Most High, sent the glorious angel Rufa’el (Raphael), and he had mercy on the children of men, and he drove his spear into the while, saying unto him, “By
the commandment of God stand still, and move not thyself from thy place”; and the whale stood in his place and moved not. And many signs and wonders were made manifest, and great healings of sick folk took place in that church. And this church continued to exist until the time when the Muslims reigned, and then it was destroyed, and the whale moved, and the sea flowed back again and drowned many people who dwelt in that place. This story was told by John, Archbishop of the city of constantinople, to Honorius, the righteous emperor. And he said unto him, “Know, O emperor, that we were sailing in a ship to come to thee, and as we were going along we saw a church, on the island, on the day preceding the Sabbath, and we came into port, so that we might received the Holy Mysteries on the First Day of the week. And we found a little monastery by the side of the church, with brethren and monks therein. And, by the commandment of God, we went to them, and we said unto them, ‘O brethren, if ye have with you an old manuscript treating of the days of the ancients, give it to us so that we may comfort ourselves therewith.’ And they answered and said unto me, ‘Behold, we have many manuscripts in the sanctuary, but we do not know how to translate them.’ And I said unto them, ‘Bring them here that I may see them.’ And when they brought them to me, I searched through them, and I found that they treated of the mighty deeds and miracles which our Lord Jesus Christ had performed before His disciples, and also of the beginning of the heavens and the earth, and [they went on] to the end of this world. And as I was examining these manuscripts, I found a manuscript which was written by our fathers, the holy Apostles, and which treated of the appointment of the Seven Archangels, and it said: ‘When our Lord Jesus Christ was on the Mount of Olives with His disciples, He revealed to them the mystery of the Godhead.’ And the Apostles asked Him, saying, ‘O our Lord and God, we beseech and entreat Thee to tell us about the glory of the honorable angel Rufa’el (Raphael), and what day Thou didst appoint him, and in what month, and whether he is the equal of his fellow archangels, so that we may preach him in the world, and that men may celebrate a festival in his honor as they celebrate festivals in honor of his fellow archangels, and that men may pray to him in the time of their sorrow and tribulation, so that they may find grace and compassion with Thee, and his intercession.’ And straightway our Lord Jesus Christ commanded, and the seven, and the three archangels, came from the third heaven, Michael, and Gabriel and Rufa’el (Raphael) with great joy, and they bowed down before our Lord Christ: and our Lord said unto the angel Rufa’el (Raphael), ‘Tell the Apostles thy name so that they may know thy great honor.’ Now the Archangel Rufa’el (Raphael), a sincere (?) angel, is the third of the archangels, and Michael the archangel is the first of all the angels; and his name [meaneth] the ‘compassionate.’ And Gabriel is the second archangel, and his name [meaneth] ‘God and man,’ and it was he who was sent to our holy Lady, the Virgin Mary, to announce the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ from her.” And Rufa’el (Raphael) said, “I make hearts to rejoice, and I am sincere, and good, and merciful to sinners, against whom I never lay information concerning their sins before God; I speak only of my power to save, and my sincerity, and my love for men. I send angels with the souls of sinners, and I treat them with long-suffering until at length they repent of their sins, and forsake their transgressions, I am Rufa’el (Raphael) whom God set over the twenty-three hosts of angels, [and] we praise God the Father, and His compassionate Son, and the Holy Spirit the Comforter. I am Rufa’el (Raphael) whom God commanded to give good things to the saints at the Marriage of One Thousand Years in Mount Zion, when our Lord Jesus Christ made them to drink out of the cup, which is filled with honor indeed, as they reclined with Him when He sat on the holy throne. I am Rufa’el (Raphael) whom God commanded to take up branches of the Tree of Life in my hand, and to give them to Christians on that day [of] life and joy. I am Rufa’el (Raphael) under whose hands are kept the treasure houses of the heavens, and I open them and shut them according as God commandeth me. And if any man shall do a good deed to another man, who is in tribulation upon earth, for my name’s sake, or shall write a book about my office, or shall remember any of the poor in my name, or shall offer up an offering or incense on the day of my commemoration, which is the third day of Paguemen, whereon God appointed me, and crowned me with the office of the angels, I will bear them and transport them on the chariot of light, until they enter the heavenly Jerusalem. And I will place in their souls scented branches with an
exceedingly sweet odor, the like of which shall never be found upon the earth. Ask of me, O chosen Apostles, at all times so that I may protect you until ye stand before God. And preach ye unto all men in all the world that they must celebrate my commemoration, and I will make intercession with God on their behalf, and I will deliver them from their tribulation, and they shall never see punishment.” And having said these words Rufa’el (Raphael) bowed low to the Lord. And this glorious angel Rufa’el (Raphael), the archangel, hath performed many miracles, and it is meet that we should celebrate his commemoration at all times, for he maketh intercession with God on our behalf. Salutation to Rufa’el (Raphael).
“On Protecting the Mind From Too Much Useless Knowledge and Idle Curiosity” — St. Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain
In this issue, we will continue our study from another book by St. Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain, his most famous work which was translated and published widely in old Russia by St. Theophan the Recluse. Entitled, “Unseen Warfare,” this fantastic volume is basically a handbook of spiritual development. In today’s reading, we’ll examine the issue of “On Protecting the Mind from too Much Useless Knowledge and Idle Curiosity” BEGIN: Just as it is necessary to guard the mind from ignorance, so is it equally necessary to protect it from the opposite, namely from too much knowledge and curiosity. For if we fill it with a quantity of information, ideas and thoughts, not excluding such as are vain, unsuitable and harmful, we deprive it of force, so that it is no longer able to understand clearly what is useful for our true selfcorrection and perfection. Therefore, in relation to the knowledge of earthly things, which is not indispensable, even if it is permissible, your attitude should be as of one already dead. Always collect your mind within yourself, with all the concentration you can, and keep it free of thoughts about all worldly things. Let tales of the past and news of the present pass you by, and let all the changes in the world and its kingdoms be for you as though they did not exist at all. If anyone brings you such news, disregard it and turn it away from your heart and imagination. Listen to what St. Basil says: “Let listening to worldly news be bitter food for you, and let the words of saintly men be as combs filled with honey.” Listen also to the words of David: “The proud have digged pits for me, which are not after thy law” (Psalms 109:85). Love to hear only of spiritual and heavenly things and to study them, and wish to know nothing in the world save our Lord “Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (I Corinthians 2:2), save His life and death and what He demands of you. Acting thus, you will act in a way pleasing to God, Who has for His chosen and beloved those who love Him and try to do His will. All other inquiry and investigation is the offspring and food of self-love and pride. They are the nets and shackles of the devil; he sees the strength and firmness of will of those who pay attention to spiritual life, and strives to conquer their minds by means of such curiosity, in order to gain possession of their mind and will. For this purpose, he is wont to suggest to them thoughts that are lofty, subtle and wondrous, especially to those who are sharp-witted and quick to make lofty speculations. Attracted by the pleasure of possessing and examining such lofty thoughts, they forget to watch over their purity of heart and to pay attention to a humble opinion of themselves and to true self-mortification; and so they are enmeshed in the bonds of pride and conceit; they make an idol of their own mind and thus, little by little, without realizing it, they fall into the thought that they no longer need any advice or admonition from others, since they are accustomed in all cases to hasten to the idol of their own understanding and judgment. This is a very dangerous thing and not easily cured; pride of mind is much worse than pride of will. For pride of will, being visible to the mind, can sometimes be easily cured by forcing it to submit to the yoke of what is good. But when the mind is firmly grounded in the self-relying thought that its own judgments are better than all others, who can cure it in the end? Can it ever obey anyone, if it feels certain that the judgments of others are not as good as its own? When this eye of the soul — mind — with whose help man could see and correct pride of will, is itself blinded by pride and remains uncured, who will cure the will? Then every thing within is so disorganized that there is neither place nor person for applying a healing poultice. This is why you must hasten to oppose this pernicious pride of mind, before it penetrates into the marrow of your bones. Resist it, curb the quickness of your mind and humbly subject your opinion to the opinions of others. Be a fool for the love of God, if you wish to be wiser than Solomon. “If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.” (I Corinthians 3:18) END
from “Unseen Warfare,” by St. Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain, revised by St. Theophan the Recluse, (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1978), pp. 92 – 94
“The Virtues and the Passions” — St. Peter of Damaskos
We will continue today with our readings from the writings of St. Peter of Damaskos. After St. Maximos the Confessor, St. Peter has more writings in the five-volume “Philokalia” than any other writer. However, very little is known about his biography other than textual indications that he lived in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. He was apparently a monk, living in a “skete,” and wrote his texts mainly for the edification of other monks. St. Peter wrote a long and exhaustive list of the virtues and the passions which encompasses not only everyday passions and virtues, but the more specialized ones relating to ascetic practices and the monastic life. These two lists will apply to all of us, whether monk or layperson. When I first read these two lists, I was frankly stunned to find that so many of my own personal traits are “passions” that need to be worked on and surprised to see that a few others are “virtues” which I should work to strengthen and develop. Many of the items listed are so “minor” that I never thought about them being spiritual issues for the individual. For me, these two lists were real “eye openers!” As discouraging as it can be to do this self-evaluation as you read these two lists, it is also very encouraging to have this information laid out so explicitly for our edification. Study them carefully, read them again and again, and turn to the Word of God and His Desert Saints for the guidance and instruction needed to advance on the Ladder of Divine Ascent. BEGIN:
***** A LIST OF THE VIRTUES *****
The virtues are: moral judgment, self-restraint, courage, justice, faith, hope, love, fear, religious devotion, spiritual knowledge, resolution, strength, understanding, wisdom, contrition, grief, gentleness, searching the Scriptures, acts of charity, purity of heart, peace, patient endurance, self- control, perseverance, probity of intention, purposiveness, sensitivity, heedfulness, godlike stability, warmth, alertness, the fervor of the Spirit, meditation, diligence, watchfulness, mindfulness, reflection, reverence, shame, respect, penitence, refraining from evil, repentance, return to God, allegiance to Christ, rejection of the devil, keeping of the commandments, guarding of the soul, purity of conscience, remembrance of death, tribulation of soul, the doing of good actions, effort, toil, an austere life, fasting, vigils, hunger, thirst, frugality, self-sufficiency, orderliness, gracefulness, modesty, reserve, disdain of money, unacquisitiveness, renunciation of worldly things, submissiveness, obedience, compliance, poverty, possessionlessness, withdrawal from the world, eradication of self-will, denial of self, counsel, magnanimity, devotion to God, stillness, discipline, sleeping on a hard bed, abstinence from washing oneself, service, struggle, attentiveness, the eating of uncooked food, nakedness, the wasting of one’s body, solitude, quietude, calmness, cheerfulness, fortitude, boldness, godlike zeal, fervency, progress, folly for Christ, watchfulness over the intellect, moral integrity, holiness, virginity, sanctification, purity of body, chasteness of soul, reading for Christ’s sake, concern for God, comprehension, friendliness, truthfulness, uninquisitiveness, uncensoriousness, forgiveness of debts, good management, skillfulness, acuity, fairness, the right use of things, cognitive insight, good-naturedness, experience, psalmody, prayer, thanksgiving, acknowledgment, entreaty, kneeling, supplication, intercession, petition, appeal, hymnody, doxology, confession, solicitude, mourning, affliction, pain, distress, lamentation, sighs of sorrow, weeping, heart-rending tears, compunction, silence, the search for God, cries of anguish, lack of anxiety about all things, forbearance, lack of self-esteem, disinterest in glory, simplicity of soul, sympathy, self-retirement, goodness of disposition, activities that accord with nature, activities exceeding one’s natural capacity, brotherly love, concord, communion in God, sweetness, a spiritual disposition, mildness, rectitude, innocence, kindliness, guilelessness, simplicity, good repute, speaking well of others, good works, preference of one’s neighbor, godlike tenderness, a virtuous character, consistency, nobility, gratitude, humility, detachment, dignity, forbearance, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, discrimination, accessibility, courtesy, tranquility, contemplation, guidance, reliability, clearsightedness, dispassion, spiritual joy, sureness, tears of understanding, tears of soul, a loving desire for God, pity, mercy, compassion, purity of soul, purity of intellect, prescience, pure prayer, passion-free thoughts, steadfastness, fitness of soul and body, illumination, the recovery of one’s soul, hatred of life, proper teaching, a healthy longing for death, childlikeness in Christ, rootedness, admonition and encouragement, both moderate and forcible, a praiseworthy ability to change, ecstasy towards God, perfection in Christ, true enlightenment, an intense longing for God, rapture of intellect, the indwelling of God, love of God, love of inner wisdom, theology, a true confession of faith, disdain of death, saintliness, successful accomplishment, perfect health of soul, virtue, praise from God, grace, kingship, adoption to sonship — altogether 228 virtues. To acquire all of them is possible only through the grace of Him who grants us victory over the passions.
***** A LIST OF THE PASSIONS *****
The passions are harshness, trickery, malice, perversity, mindlessness, licentiousness, enticement, dullness, lack of understanding, idleness, sluggishness, stupidity, flattery, silliness, idiocy, madness, derangement, coarseness, rashness, cowardice, lethargy, dearth of good actions, moral errors, greed, over-frugality, ignorance, folly, spurious knowledge, forgetfulness, lack of discrimination, obduracy, injustice, evil intention, a conscienceless soul, slothfulness, idle chatter, breaking of faith, wrongdoing, sinfulness, lawlessness, criminality, passion, seduction, assent to evil, mindless coupling, demonic provocation, dallying, bodily comfort beyond what is required, vice, stumbling, sickness of soul, enervation, weakness of intellect, negligence, laziness, a reprehensible despondency, disdain of God, aberration, transgression, unbelief, lack of faith, wrong belief, poverty of faith, heresy, fellowship in heresy, polytheism, idolatry, ignorance of God, impiety, magic, astrology, divination, sorcery, denial of God, the love of idols, dissipation, profligacy, loquacity, indolence, self-love, inattentiveness, lack of progress, deceit, delusion, audacity, witchcraft, defilement, the eating of unclean food, soft living, dissoluteness, voracity, unchastity, avarice, anger, dejection, listlessness, self-esteem, pride, presumption, self-elation, boastfulness, infatuation, foulness, satiety, doltishness, torpor, sensuality, over-eating, gluttony, insatiability, secret eating, hoggishness, solitary eating, indifference, fickleness, self-will, thoughtlessness, self- satisfaction, love of popularity, ignorance of beauty, uncouthness, gaucherie, lightmindedness, boorishness, rudeness, contentiousness, quarrelsomeness, abusiveness, shouting, brawling, fighting, rage, mindless desire, gall, exasperation, giving offence, enmity, meddlesomeness, chicanery, asperity, slander, censure, calumny, condemnation, accusation, hatred, railing, insolence, dishonor, ferocity, frenzy, severity, aggressiveness, forswearing oneself, oathtaking, lack of compassion, hatred of one’s brothers, partiality, patricide, matricide, breaking fasts, laxity, acceptance of bribes, theft, rapine, jealousy, strife, envy, indecency, jesting, vilification, mockery, derision, exploitation, oppression, disdain of one’s neighbor, flogging, making sport of others, hanging, throttling, heartlessness, implacability, covenant- breaking, bewitchment, harshness, shamelessness, impudence, obfuscation of thoughts, obtuseness, mental blindness, attraction to what is fleeting, impassionedness, frivolity, disobedience, dullwittedness, drowsiness of soul, excessive sleep, fantasy, heavy drinking, drunkenness, uselessness, slackness, mindless enjoyment, self-indulgence, venery, using foul language, effeminacy, unbridled desire, burning lust, masturbation, pimping, adultery, sodomy, bestiality, defilement, wantonness, a stained soul, incest, uncleanliness, pollution, sordidness, feigned affection, laughter, jokes, immodest dancing, clapping, improper songs, revelry, fluteplaying, licence of tongue, excessive love of order, insubordination, disorderliness, reprehensible collusion, conspiracy, warfare, killing, brigandry, sacrilege, illicit gains, usury, wiliness, grave-robbing, hardness of heart, obloguy, complaining, blasphemy, fault-finding, ingratitude, malevolence, contemptuousness, pettiness, confusion, lying, verbosity, empty words, mindless joy, day-dreaming, mindless friendship, bad habits, nonsensicality, silly talk, garrulity, niggardliness, depravity, intolerance, irritability, affluence, rancour, misuse, ill-temper, clinging to life, ostentation, affectation, love of power, dissimulation, irony, treachery, frivolous talk, pusillanimity, satanic love, curiosity, contumely, lack of the fear of God, unteachability, senselessness, haughtiness, self- vaunting, self-inflation, scorn for one’s neighbor, mercilessness, insensitivity, hopelessness, spiritual paralysis, hatred of God, despair, suicide, a falling away from God in all things, utter destruction — altogether 298 passions. These, then, are the passions which I have found named in the Holy Scriptures. I have set them down in a single list, as I did at the beginning of my discourse with the various books I have used. I have not tried, nor would I have been able, to arrange them all in order; this would have been beyond my powers, for the reason given by St. John Climacus: “If you seek understanding in wicked men, you will not find it.” For all that the demons produce is disorderly. In common with the godless and the unjust, the demons have but one purpose: to destroy the souls of those who accept their evil counsel. Yet sometimes they actually help men to attain holiness. In such instances they are conquered by the patience and faith of those who put their trust in the Lord, and who through their good actions and resistance to evil thoughts counteract the demons and bring down curses upon them. END
from G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Bishop Kallistos Ware, “The Philokalia: vol. III,” (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), pp. 202 – 206
THE FIRST MONTH Meskerem መስከረም 01 (September 11)
IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER AND THE SON AND THE HOLY SPIRIT, ONE GOD. AMEN.
This blessed month of Maskaram መስከረም is the first of the circle of the years of Egypt and Ethiopia. The [first] day and the night of this month are equal–twelve hours. Then the day during this month Maskaram diminisheth because this month is the first of the circle of the years of Egypt and Ethiopia. Now it is meet that we should make therein a great feast in all purity, because this day is holy and blessed, and we should remove ourselves from evil works. And we should begin [to do] good works and new, whereby God is pleased, even as Paul the apostle saith: “Behold, every work is made new in Christ. Behold old works have passed away, and behold new works are known, and every work is from God” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Thus hath God had pleasure over us in Christ, and He hath given us the ministration of His mercy and compassion. And Isaiah the prophet saith: “The Spirit of God is upon me; therefore hath He appointed me and sent me to preach to those who are in captivity, and to those who are in prison, and to set them free, and to the blind that they may see the light, and to those who are bound that they be set free, and to preach the year of the mercy of God” (Isaiah 61:1-2). And David saith: “Thou hast blessed the crown of the year [with] mercy, and the desert is satisfied with dew by Thy blessing” (Psalm 65:11). On this day also Job the righteous man washed in the water of the Tekaze ተከዚ and was healed of all his sickness. And the people were in the habit, when the river Tekaze was full of water, of dipping themselves in the new water, whereby they were blessed for all the rest of the year.
We shall rise to still higher regions of knowledge; we shall grow strong in the faith of Jesus. Our country shall grow wiser and purer, because it shall come to feel, through all its organs of influence and social life, the vital force of divine truth. We shall become, in all things true and manly, the glory of nations; and from us shall go forth the light of civil and religious liberty at once with the light of revelation. We shall carry back the law to the land where first the temple of God was reared; we shall bear the torch of truth into the darkness that enshrouds Hindoostan and China; the sons of Ethiopia in this land, led out of the house of bondage by an arm mightier than that of man, educated for God, shall consecrate many of their most gifted eloquent ones to the evangelization of their fatherland; we shall give a noble civilization to the myriads of the great hemisphere on which we dwell; millions in every land shall hear the voice of our Christian teachers, and feel the force of our example; and then, then at length we shall join our triumphant voices in that grand chorus, which, from mountain-top and valley, from island and ocean, shall swell up to Him who bought us with His blood, and opened the portals of heaven to our sinful and suffering world. And now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible; the only wise God; and unto the Lamb who sitteth in the midst of the throne, be honor and glory, dominion and power, for ever and ever. Amen.
Wisdom the strength of true manhood.: A discourse delivered at Salem, Mass., Nov. 13, 1866, in behalf of the Society for the promotion of collegiate and theological education at the West./ By Samuel W. Fisher