Living Simply to Simply Live
I attended a clergy retreat this week led by Archimandrite Meletios Webber, Abbot of the Monastery St. John of San Francisco in Manton, California. His first talk of the retreat was on the subject of monasticism in the contemporary Church. It was a very thoughtful meditation. I was struck particularly by his description of a monastery as a “space” built on … Continue reading
Keeping It Simple
A comment yesterday asked for greater simplicity. I am entirely sympathetic to the concern expressed and offer here an earlier posting which draws our focus to simple things. I have written and posted numerous times that “I am an ignorant man,” which is to say that I do not consider myself a great source of wisdom and insight and that … Continue reading
Mystical Theology
A question was posted recently about “mystical theology.” I offer a few thoughts (written in my hotel room) that might be of some use. My first exposure to Orthodox thought was reading Vladimir Lossky’s Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church when I was a college student. A friend gave me the book and urged me to read it. Lossky’s work … Continue reading
A Nature That Is Less Than Obvious
In modern usage, the word “nature” generally refers to growing things – “the great outdoors.” Having been born in the ’50′s, I have been the veteran of several “back to nature” campaigns. There is a sense, at least as old as the Enlightenment, that if we could only get ourselves “back to nature,” things would be alright. Some of the … Continue reading
The Existence of God and the “God Who Does Not Exist”
There is a current “pop-sensation” in the writings of a number of “atheists” whose pronouncements are always sure to garner media attention. Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and others are current “go-to” sources for the media’s search for usable quotes from atheists. In many ways, the current popularity of such figures is fueled by “pop” Christianity. One mirrors the other. In matters … Continue reading
The Secret Place
Of all the places and spaces to which we should attend – this article names the most important. I suspect that our failure to recognize holy space in the physical surroundings of our lives contributes to our inability to find the holy place within our own heart. I am not sure which must come first – but I think we … Continue reading
The Shape of Heaven
This post from 2007 continues thoughts on Holy Space and its place in our lives. I am feeling my way forward with this post – that is to say – I have some thoughts that are probably still in formation – so bear with me. That human beings have a particular relationship with icons is, to me, part of the … Continue reading
The Heavenly Spaces
“The Church is the earthly heaven; in these heavenly spaces, God lives and walks about.” In these words of Patriarch Germanus, we get a glimpse of the dizzying heights of the church building’s significance. The Byzantines treated space as God’s dwelling place. Their architectural problem was to create harmony between the natural scale of the human and the transcendent scale … Continue reading
The Light of Beauty
Everything is beautiful in a person when he turns toward God, and everything is ugly when it is turned away from God. Fr. Pavel Florensky +++ In thinking about darkness and light – and their role in our apprehension of the truth – I cannot but think about Beauty, which is a primary place in which the light of God … Continue reading
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Have you ever referred to God as “the Man upstairs”? Most Christians living in a secular society have unwittingly relegated God and all things spiritual to the “second storey” of the universe: Read More...
Christianity in a One-Storey Universe
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