Category: Knowledge of God
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Nostalgia for Paradise
This is an excerpt from the small book, Nostalgia for Paradise, by Dr. Alexander Kalomiros. It’s good for the soul. When the ascetical life of a Christian and the privations that he imposes upon himself are beyond the measure of grace that he has been given, a void is created in his soul. Either it…
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Contradiction and Paradox
The following quote is taken from a letter by Mother Thekla (sometime Abbess of the Monastery of the Assumption in Normanby, England) to a young man who was entering the Orthodox faith. Some of her comments drew my attention. I add this note: this article was written and published on the blog in January of…
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Worshipping a Weak and Foolish God
This is a reprint of an article that is deeply apropos of the present conversation on the blog. I offer it within that context. I cannot begin to measure the amount of time I have spent over the years in conversations about the “problem of evil.” That problem, in short, is the impossibility of reconciling…
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The Useless God
The statement, “God is useless,” is, undoubtedly, sure to strike someone as an insult, not a statement of a faithful believing Christian (much less, a priest). That reaction tells me much about how we feel about the word, “useless,” rather than how we feel about God. In current American parlance, “useless,” is mostly a term…
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The Bridegroom and Judgment
Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless. Beware, therefore, O my soul, do not be weighed down with sleep, lest you be given up to death and lest you be shut out of the Kingdom. But rouse…
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Following a Conversation with a Tree
“Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which…
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A Particular Brilliance
“When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained, What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him? For You have made him a little lower than the angels, And You have crowned him with glory…
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Wrestling with God
One of the most interesting stories in the Old Testament is found in Genesis 32. There we hear the story of Jacob wrestling with God. Or is it the story of Jacob wrestling with an angel? Jacob had to face his brother Esau the next day. His anxiety comes through even in that ancient account.…
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The Scriptures and the Church
The notion of the “Scriptures” has undergone radical changes across the centuries. Today, we picture them as a single book, the Bible. Indeed, we picture that book as private property, perhaps a personal guide for all things spiritual. Even when we hear its words being quoted in public or in Church gatherings, we imagine the…
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His Appearing in the Liturgy
Standing in the Church, listening to the choir or chanter sing while priest censes the icons, words swirl with the rising smoke and connections and associations multiply as words evoke images and images evoke thoughts: participation, coinherence, incarnation, mystery, timeless form and formless time, fullness and emptiness, fulfillment and… And then the thought comes, full-formed…
Yikes! I’ll relay that.