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The Secret Place
Read more: The Secret PlaceOf 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 […]
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The Shape of Heaven
Read more: The Shape of HeavenThis 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, […]
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The Heavenly Spaces
Read more: 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 […]
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The Light of Beauty
Read more: The Light of BeautyEverything 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 […]
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Is This All There Is?
Read more: Is This All There Is?A comment deleted earlier today contained a short rant on the topic: “There is no such thing as sin.” I have no idea what the writer thought the word “sin” meant – and if I knew I might even agree. I certainly do not think of sin as a legal category. But when I think […]
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The Opacity of Sin
Read more: The Opacity of Sin“And this is the condemnation: that the light has come into the world and men preferred darkness to the light for their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). There is an opacity to sin: we do not see through it. Sin sheds light on nothing beyond itself. It refers only to itself and because of this […]
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Let No Anger Arise
Read more: Let No Anger AriseOne of the brothers asked Isidore, the priest of Scetis, “Why are the demons so afraid of you”? ” He said, “Ever since I became a monk, I have been trying not to let anger rise as far as my mouth.” +++ In a culture which speaks and only later repents (if at all) such […]
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There Be Dragons…
Read more: There Be Dragons…Today marks one of the greatest feasts of the Orthodox year (New Calendar), the Feast of Theophany, Christ’s Baptism in the Jordan river. Across the world Orthodox Christians will gather after the Liturgy to bless the waters: the ocean, a river, a spring, etc. Every feast day in Orthodoxy is connected to the Feast of […]
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Do Not Resent, Do Not React, Keep Inner Stillness
Read more: Do Not Resent, Do Not React, Keep Inner StillnessA very fine essay by Metropolitan Jonah of the OCA on essential practices of the spiritual life can be found among the abbatial essays on the website of the Monastery of St. John of Shanghai and San Francisco. It is worth the read – even worth printing out and saving… An excerpt… …One of the […]
I also have a wife whose faith is at least equal to mine.desotr the fact that my sicknessakee her life…