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Crushed Into Recognition
Read more: Crushed Into RecognitionThis is a reprint from 2019. I was looking for something where I quoted George Herbert’s “The Agony,” my favorite poem. So, here’s one of several such posts. This morning I was crushed beneath a flood of memories – not the memories of good things, but of sad and shameful things, petty things, wasted lives […]
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To Know What We Don’t Know
Read more: To Know What We Don’t KnowTwo corollaries: We will not know God until we know ourselves; we will not know ourselves until we know God. I believe that both of these are true, even though, taken together, they seem to preclude knowledge altogether. In truth, what they preclude is doing one without the other. We can only do both, and […]
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Candlewax and Hedgehogs – Groundhog Day
Read more: Candlewax and Hedgehogs – Groundhog DayCandlewax and Hedgehogs—a peculiar way to entitle an article, I’ll admit. But both have their associations with the second day of February. The first is more important so we’ll begin there. The second day of February is one of the 12 great feasts, and is also celebrated by Christians in the West. The feast is […]
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Why How You Feel Is Not All That Valuable
Read more: Why How You Feel Is Not All That ValuableWe live in a culture of strong feelings. How we “feel” about something is generally taken to mean “what I believe.” This is not at all the case. Most people have a set of feelings or sentiments that largely serve the purpose of supporting the story they tell themselves about who they are. “I am […]
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Living In the Silence
Read more: Living In the SilenceThe word is usually translated “silence.” It also carries the meaning of “stillness.” It is a quiet, not just of the mind but of the body as well, the silencing of the noise within us. It is Hesychia. The practice and understanding of hesychia is termed Hesychasm. Alexandre Kalormiros wrote: Hesychasm is the deepest characteristic […]
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An Unrepentant Secularism
Read more: An Unrepentant SecularismPerhaps the greatest tragedy of life in a secularized world is the freedom from failure. The mantra of progress ignores every secular failure as an abiding ill of an earlier age yet to be vanquished. Thus, its every failure is an excuse to double-down on the same insanity that failed the first time. The secular […]
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An Unnecessary Existence
Read more: An Unnecessary ExistenceIn Dostoevsky’s The Demons, the character, Kirillov, is insanely fascinated with freedom. He cannot bear the fact that he did not choose his own existence. Life is a “given.” In what must be seen as a parable of the radical thought of the 19th century, Kirillov determines to kill himself, the only act of true […]
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Theophany – Showing the World to be the World
Read more: Theophany – Showing the World to be the WorldI was standing beside the Jordan River, somewhere along its trek through Israel. I was with a group of pilgrims led by Met. Kallistos Ware gathered for the Great Blessing of the Waters. Somehow, it seemed that I was the only priest who had brought an epitrachelion (stole), so I loaned it to the Metropolitan […]
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Fixing Jesus
Read more: Fixing JesusIn C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, a ghostly theologian has found himself at the very edge of heaven, having taken a bus from hell. He is invited to remain, though doing so will require that he leave behind the imaginary world of the unreal (hell), and take on the difficult task of being truly what […]
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Owen, Jonathan is a dear friend. Some years back (maybe 2015-2016 or so) we did some speaking engagements together -…
The Canadian iconographer, Jonathan Pageau, specializes in icon carving. I think it’s an interesting middle ground between paint-on-board iconography and…
Michael, I’m glad to hear you were recently released from the hospital. May Christ be with you and strengthen you.
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Fr. Stephen, You both have been an inspiration to me. Two bright lights of faithful creativity in American Orthodoxy. For…