Category: Aesthetics

  • Looking Like Christmas

    One of the most striking features of the Gospels is the frequent response of the Disciples after the resurrection of Christ: doubt. I have always been sympathetic to the doubts and hesitations that accompanied the Disciples experience during the ministry of Christ. They are almost endearing in their inability to grasp what Christ is all…

  • Building God’s Temple

    I stumbled into a conversation recently in which I heard, “Well, they say that the people are the Church, while the building is just a building.” I hesitated and mumbled something that indicated some level of disagreement. I could have said (should have said), “The building is a sacrament – it matters.” In a neighboring…

  • An Artist’s Eye and the Kingdom of God

    Eyes they have but do not see. I have a daughter who is an artist. Her art is a gift that eludes me. The wonder is not so much in the skill of her hands but in her eyes. For having watched this phenomenon grow up and mature, I am certain of one thing: she sees…

  • The Tears of Our Fathers

    The first time I saw my father cry was a day of deep tragedy. An aunt, my mother’s oldest sister, had been brutally murdered by a stranger who came into her office off the street. It made no sense. I was nine years old. I opened the door to my father’s bedroom and saw him…

  • To See Him Face to Face

        “The self resides in the face.” – Psychological Theorist, Sylvan Tompkins +++ There is a thread running throughout the Scriptures that can be described as a “theology of the face.” In the Old Testament we hear a frequent refrain of “before Thy face,” and similar expressions. There are prayers beseeching God not to…

  • The Difficult Task of True Theology

    Nothing is as difficult as true theology. Simply saying something correct is beside the point. Correctness does not rise to the level of theology. Theology, rightly done, is a path towards union with God. It is absolutely more than an academic exercise. Theology is not the recitation of correct facts, it is the apprehension and…

  • Love Has No History

    St. Nikolai Velimirovich’s Prayers by the Lake are a theological feast. St. Gregory the Theologian wrote wonderful theological poems – it is a form deeply suited to theology but too little used. I first heard this poem on a broadcast from Ancient Faith Radio – it came at a very timely moment and allowed me…

  • On Earth As It Is In Heaven – And Deeper Still

    We live and move in a sea of others. Our first breath (having emerged from a womb of maternal otherness) is drawn from air that has been breathed through timeless years by trees, animals, whales; whistled by birds, and passed through last words of dying lips; life-giving breathed by God in the First Man. The…

  • The Texture of Life and the Kingdom

    There is a “texture of life” that cannot be reduced. It has a richness that rational descriptions cannot capture. Though we battle with powerful forces that draw us towards the destructiveness of sin – there is written deep within us a hunger for wholeness and the capacity for God. In the words of St. John,…

  • A Single Moment

    Grushenka, a character in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, relates a now-famous fable about an old woman: Once upon a time there was a woman, and she was wicked as wicked could be, and she died. And not one good deed was left behind her. The devils took her and threw her into the lake of…


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Latest Comments

  1. @Matthew: Almost anywhere in Western Europe, in whatever city and part of town you live, you will likely hear Church…

  2. That is very rich, indeed, Dino. The reality of Pascha is hard – maybe impossible – to put into words,…

  3. Fr. Freeman, I hope I have not done something wrong. I was ill and did not see this blog until…

  4. It would be good if we could construct a new word in English, as we’ve had (an adjective) in Greek…


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