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Music from Orthodox Georgia
Read more: Music from Orthodox GeorgiaAmong the older Orthodox nations in the world is the Republic of Georgia. Their local traditions include many saints, wonderful churches, and some of the most hauntingly beautiful music anywhere in the Orthodox world. This is a small clip from a Georgian monastery. Enjoy.
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Christian Atheism
Read more: Christian AtheismThe title for this post sounds like an oxymoron, and, of course, it is. How can one be both an atheist and a Christian? Again, I am wanting to push the understanding of the one-versus-two-storey universe. In the history of religious thought, one of the closest versions to what I am describing as a “two-storey” […]
atheism, Conversion, Culture, Knowledge of God, Liturgy, Orthodox Christianity, Scripture, The Sacraments
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Living a One Storey Life
Read more: Living a One Storey LifeI have chosen to use language of the “first and second storey” to describe the kind of bifurcation that the modern world has experienced over the past several centuries. Its results have been to smash the religious world into “sacred” and “secular” and to make believing both harder and disbelief more natural. Thus, to many […]
atheism, Conversion, Culture, Knowledge of God, Orthodox Christianity, The Journey of Faith, Union with God
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The Blessed Virgin Mary Compared to the Air We Breathe – Gerard Manley Hopkins
Read more: The Blessed Virgin Mary Compared to the Air We Breathe – Gerard Manley HopkinsGerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) was a Jesuit priest (a convert from Anglicanism) and perhaps the greatest modern (?) poet of the English Language (ok, he’s my favorite). My second daughter, Khouria Kathryn, made me aware of this poem. Hopkins is wonderfully sacramental in his poetry – God permeates his words and the world his words come […]
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Speaking of Christianity – Part 4 of the Meaning of Words
Read more: Speaking of Christianity – Part 4 of the Meaning of WordsSome years back, the Evangelical-convert-to-Rome, Thomas Howard, wrote a book, Splendor in the Ordinary. In it he argued for a sacramental world view and spoke of how that might effect the local home. I recall the book because it came out while I was in seminary and caused a minor stir. Some of us were […]
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The Meaning of Language – Part 3
Read more: The Meaning of Language – Part 3Having pointed out that much of popular Christian language (and some images in sacred texts) lend themselves to the notion of a “two-storey” universe – and having noted that the second storey as the dwelling place of all things spiritual has almost insurmountable problems – how should we speak about such things? First, it seems […]
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The Dormition of the Mother of God
Read more: The Dormition of the Mother of GodIn giving birth you preserved your virginity, In falling asleep you did not forsake the world, O Theotokos. You were translated to life, O Mother of Life, And by your prayers, you deliver our souls from death. Troparion of the Feast – Tone 1 It is easy to be put off by Orthodox devotion to […]
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The Meaning of Words – Part 2
Read more: The Meaning of Words – Part 2I have taken this discussion of life in a “one-storey” universe to that of language, precisely because I think that much of our language (as we presently define it) presumes “two-storey” meanings. One of the places I will press language is our speaking of God’s Providence. In the “Morning Prayer of the Last Elders of […]
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Worth Taking Time to Read
Read more: Worth Taking Time to ReadI confess I do not read near as much as I once did. Writing takes time – and is a way of slowly digesting a lot of years of reading – and, I hope, to some benefit. Today, however, I came across an article of Frederica Mathewes-Green, written last June, that was deeply moving. I […]
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What Do Words Mean in a One-Storey Universe?
Read more: What Do Words Mean in a One-Storey Universe?It seems to me that much of our religious vocabulary, defined many times within the past 500 years, is enculturated to speak a two-storey world (see the previous post for an explanation of two-storey world). Words such as “faith,” “believe,” and their relatives belong somehow to a portion of the world that is not first-storey. […]
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Thanks so much for your parent´s story Fr. Stephen. It was so good to read your words about them. Really.…
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Matthew, I am not troubled by this phenomenon. “Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God…” according to…