Category: Aesthetics

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.…

December 22, 2008
Traditional Byzantine Christmas Hymn in Arabic

December 17, 2008
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”…

December 11, 2008
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…

December 1, 2008
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…

November 23, 2008
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),…

October 26, 2008
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…

October 14, 2008
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…

September 15, 2008
Many Thanks for Prayers and a Request

I awoke feeling much better today and am deeply grateful for the many prayers. In my experience, rising from a bed of sickness is among the greatest joys we know in our earthly life. I think it is a foreshadowing of the resurrection when we shall all rise from our beds of sickness (and death)…

August 9, 2008
The God Who Is Beautiful

I suggested this as reading in a comment yesterday and decided to re-post it so that it would be more readily available. It belongs with the question of God and beauty that I started in yesterday’s post. Everything is beautiful in a person when he turns toward God, and everything is ugly when it is…

July 30, 2008

I meant to type, “do not completely base their faith upon it.” My apologies.

David, an aside. I’m not sure why you label experience as “untrustworthy” if people here do completely base their faith…

And mine has been the opposite Father. For awhile, even the phrase God loves me left me feeling defensive, and…

Helen, I think that the experience of being unconditionally loved by Christ has been a constant in my life. I…

David, Obviously experience plays a role. But I think it’s not so black-and-white. My journey with Christ, at the time…