Glory to God For All Things

September 24, 2009

Grief Observed

As regular readers of this blog will know, I buried my mother last week. Her passing was a very godly event. I have no particular thoughts on my grief (that I care to share) – only the abiding comfort of the prayers of the Church and gratitude for the prayers of friends. I wrote the […]
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Orthodox Christianity
September 22, 2009

Drawn Ever Deeper

On translation and the iconicity of language – this comment posted earlier today is worth more attention: I’ve been enjoying thinking about your words on the subject of there being something revealing about the act and result of translation. It makes me think of weeping and other miraculous icons. The particular icon, written faithfully according […]
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Orthodox Christianity
September 21, 2009

Icons and Words

With this post I want to make a link between my last article, on how we “see” icons, and an earlier article, “Doctrine and Opinion,” in which I quoted the late Fr. Georges Florovsky who said, “Doctrine is a verbal icon of Christ.” I noted then that this presented a very different approach to doctrine […]
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Orthodox Christianity
September 20, 2009

Icons – Beauty and the Salvation of the World

“God will save the World Through Beauty.” This saying, often attributed to Fyodor Dostoevsky, never occurs in precisely this form in his novels – though the idea is present in such a strong sense that the phrase is correctly attributed to him. It is a phrase that is easily misunderstood. For Dostoevsky, in good Orthodox […]
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Orthodox Christianity
September 19, 2009

To See An Icon

My previous post spoke of the world existing “iconically” rather than “literally.” I do not mean that the world cannot be seen in a “literal” fashion – only that the world will not be truly seen if seen only in a literal fashion (there is probably a better word than “literal” to describe this secularized […]
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Orthodox Christianity
September 17, 2009

Is the World Literal or Iconic?

What do you see when you see the world and how do you see it? I have written much about the secular character of our culture and its “literal” view of the world. The world is what you see and nothing more. Significant events take their significance from their own relation to other literal events. […]
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Orthodox Christianity
September 15, 2009

Memory Eternal

A personal note: I received news this evening (September 14) of the falling asleep of my mother, Nancy Freeman, in her home in South Carolina. Her passing was peaceful and marked with words of love. My heart is very full. Earlier today I had given thanks for this 5th anniversary of my parents’ reception into […]
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Orthodox Christianity
September 13, 2009

The Precious and Life-Giving Cross of Christ

The Mystery of our Salvation is contained within the Cross of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. And it is correct to say the “mystery of our salvation,” for what is contained there is more than a cosmic transaction (Christ pays for our sins): it is also the whole of our way of life. It […]
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Orthodox Christianity
September 12, 2009

A Mother’s Word

Amma Syncletica said, “If you start a good work, do not let the enemy discourage you. Your endurance will defeat the enemy. When sailors encounter unfavorable winds they do not toss their cargo overboard or abandon ship. They struggle against the storm for a while and then reestablish their course. If you run into a […]
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Orthodox Christianity
September 11, 2009

The Religion of the Mind and the Religion of the Heart

I write frequently about what I term the Religion of the Heart. Archimandrite Meletios Webber has a short piece on what can be called the Religion of the Mind. The distinction between mind and heart is not a distinction between thought and feeling. Rather it is a distinction between the mind (seat of thoughts and […]
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Orthodox Christianity

Dee, every time you write about what you saw, you bring forward another facet – tantalizingly small in most cases…

Father, As far as I understand it, Descartes’ metaphysics was strongly dualistic, with a distinction between mind and matter. I…

Dee, This is intriguing! Can you point us to more information?

The three dimensional Cross existed well before Descartes’ ideation. It lies within all reality as a mystery we barely discern.

Indeed, we have a small sliver of the Cross in our Greek Orthodox parish, which we venerated. Father, I hope…