Glory to God For All Things

Category: Aesthetics

  • Russian Art – Mikhail Nesterov (1862-1942)

    Nesterov is one of my favorite artists. His work has a marvelous Russian quality with an almost pre-raphaelite technique. His rendering of a couple of icon subjects are perhaps the only things that do not work for me. But you see some of his art posted here from time to time. This youtube is a…

  • Angels Sing

      A Serbian Christmas Song – lyrics by St. Nikolai Velimirovich Andjeli Pevaju Noć prekrasna i noć tija, nad pećinom zvezda sija, u pećini mati spi, nad Isusom andjel bdi. Andjeli pevaju, pastiri sviraju, andjeli pevaju mudraci javljaju: Što narodi čekaše, što proroci rekoše, evo sad se u svet javi, u svet javi i objavi:…

  • Prayers By the Lake – St. Nikolai of Zicha

    C Accept the sacrifice of my words, my Father — accept the babbling of a penitent child, my Father! Correct my words with Your truth, and accept them on the footstool of Your feet.  Cense my sacrifice with the fragrant incense of a saint’s prayer and do not reject it, O Triradiate Master of worlds.…

  • Traditional Byzantine Christmas Hymn in Arabic

  • Bad Icons

    And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into His likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:18).  It is a teaching of the Fathers concerning the holy icons that we do not truly “see”…

  • Beauty and God

    This is a reprint of an article from earlier this year. I found it worth re-reading. 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 I come to the end of a day that has been filled with other…

  • The Role of Icons

    Icons are not about art. Icons are not about left-overs of Byzantine style. Icons are not about the idolatrous impulse within fallen humanity. Icons are about the very nature of our salvation. The history of Western theology, particularly the opposition to icons within the Protestant movement, has removed one of the most traditional components of…

  • The Meaning of Scripture

    What is the meaning of Scripture? Where do we look for it and how is it found? It is interesting to listen to the disarray of voices on this subject. My early training, in college and later in a liberal protestant seminary, was to look, first, to “authorial intent” (to use a constitutional interpretive phrase),…

  • Cultures of Remembrance

    I grew up in a “culture of remembrance.” By that, I mean that the history of the place in which I lived was far more a matter of discussion and meaning than the present or the future. That culture was the American South. Much of the remembrance we discussed was not true – just a…

  • A Particular Pilgrimage

    One of the common aspects of my pilgrimage to the Holy Land – and this my wife and I have discussed and find we share in common – is the particularity of certain experiences. There are inherently overwhelming experiences, such as kneeling beside a priest in the actual sepulchre of Christ, and reading names aloud…

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Latest Comments

  1. Fr. Stephen, et al., Thank you all for engaging with me on this. Thanks especially for the kind-hearted critiques. I…

  3. And thus my preference for an experienial approach

  4. “… I think that the Platonism of the fathers is not the one that champions abstractions (the general).” Forgive me…

  5. Thank you, Father Stephen. This is a timely subject for me – two days ago a humbling personal struggle was…

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