It's been, like, a month since I last posted. Can you believe that? I can't. And neither can you, I can tell. It has been a hellishly busy month but I think that I can now revert to my former ways. In some circles this sort of reversion would be called 'falling off the wagon' or 'recidivism.' I like to think of it as 'I ain't no quittah.'

Please note that my ghetto-tastic spelling of 'quittah' necessitate the otherwise intolerable double-negative. I think it also entitles me to three split infinitives and a drink of my choice from the bar between 5 and 7 pm.

I'm gettin' a cosmo.

I've been spending the last two or three weeks (I am, quite honestly, uncertain which it is) writing up the entirety of my research thus far. I keep thinking of a few minor points which I have neglected, but at this point, thank God, I have emailed the 'papers' to my supervisor. 23,000 words. 23,000 beautiful words. Words like 'the' and 'martyriological.' It's like drowning in champagne.

Well, extremely cheap sparkling wine, at least. I'm thinking Cook's. Delicious.

I think I've made some good points but more generally I'm glad to be done with that phase of my research. I cannot tell you how sick I am of funeral services. Well, I can try: so sick, in fact, that drowning in Cook's sparkling white wine actually sounds like an improvement. But, I'm done with it and can move from that overly morbid subject to something lighter, more appropriate for spring.

Martyrs.

Oooh yeah.

Now, are you as excited as I am? I thought so. I mean, who can resist such a bouyant, piquant topic. The theological equivalent to huevos rancheros with extra green chiles. Poblanos. You know of what I speak. You know this to be true.

Actually, I think that martyrdom should be a fascinating topos to look at. The martyr's death is often conceived as an imitation of Christ's death as far as we are able. Interestingly, however, in Byzantine hymnography, martyrs' deaths are never referred to in the same terms as Christ's death. There is an exciting tension between imitation and participation that arises from this situation.

It is likewise the martyr who provides the example which urges the ascetic onward. The ascetic tradition consciously sees itself as the inheritor or the martyriological tradition. If I cannot die for Christ, I will die to myself and live for Christ. Life is turned into a sort of dying, and dying is understood as the only true way of living.

The hope of the martyr is precisely the same as that of the ascetic: a greater reward hereafter than could possibly be attained in this life. One chooses death over life, because this life is indelibly stained by sin and corruption. Death to that provides the only means of orienting oneself toward the life beyond death, untainted by the Fall.

There is something not merely interesting about the ascetic and the martyr. He is a provocative figure, deliberately and often self-consciously defying everything intuitive about this life. He chooses to die, but never to seek death. He is hardly suicidal. To be suicidal requires, paradoxically, a profound attachment to the things and relationships of this life. It is because those have failed that one becomes despondent, wishing to die not to leave the things of this world but in despair of attaining them. The ascetic is precisely the opposite. Antony the Great who lived 107 years detaching himself from the things of this life only to gain them back transfigured.

There is something of the Knight of Faith in the ascetic, something deliberately absurd. The ascetic is Socrates transfigured by faith, Cato if he could have seen the good of this world and still died. The ascetic is a martyr, and the martyr is the Christian ideal.

So, I think this will be somewhat more exciting than the Byzantine funerary services.