Lament -- Poetry by Eric H. Janzen

LAMENT

This shredded flag hangs low

like the burdened shoulders

of a visionary watching the

vision of his passion fade

'what is necessary is not necessarily

good' says the wind as it

moves the flag aside, passing

with the memory of resistance,

the recollection of the desire

to make something distinguished

and like George Grant

witnessing the dream so slowly

extinguished, a northern fire

smouldering like so much smoke and ashes

rising now falling free to mark

the mourning few and leave

the shredded flag to hang askew

over a hill pondering the loss of

the true north and its strength

given over for weakness.

George Grant and the Orthodox Tradition by Ron Dart

George Grant was Canada’s most significant public philosopher.                                 

Graeme Nicholson[1]

George Grant has been called one of the most important public intellectuals in Canada in the latter half of the 20^th century. He had a wide ranging mind and imagination that covered and touched most aspects of the Western and Eastern traditions. Grant was a Christian renaissance humanist in the best sense of that compelling term. The fact that Grant was drawn to the best of the Western theological, philosophical and political tradition meant that he encountered the riches of Orthodoxy in his many probes. This brief essay will touch on Grant’s encounter with Orthodoxy. I will ponder his encounter   and engagement with the Orthodox tradition in five unfolding phases.

First, Grant’s initial encounter with Orthodoxy was through the marriage of his sister, Alison Grant, to George Ignatieff. Grant had studied with George Ignatieff’s brother, Nicholas, who taught History at Upper Canada College in the 1930s. But the meeting of George Ignatieff and Alison Grant

and their marriage in November 1945 brought Grant into the centre of the Russian Orthodox way as it was embodied in England and Canada in the WWII period. George Ignaitieff had this to say about his Russian Orthodox heritage in his classic book, Memoirs of a Peacemonger:

The Orthodox church gave me a sense of belonging, of being in touch with my roots, of safety and stability in an otherwise confusing world. Even in early childhood I derived great comfort from prayer and from the familiar Orthodox liturgy, and I have remained a devoted member of the church ever since. p. 33.