Category: Aesthetics

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
Prayers By the Lake – I

Saint Nicholai Velimirovich, of whom I have written before, is the author of the wonderful, Prayers By the Lake, which he composed on the shores of Lake Ochrid. They are a treasure of modern Orthodox verse. His first poem in the cycle reflects a sense of the creation as God’s own, rather than an inert…

June 18, 2008
He Ascended on High

There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each of us according to the…

June 4, 2008
Orthodox Serbian Monasteries in Kosovo

This is a beautiful sharing from the heart of the earliest Serbian Orthodox homeland.

May 31, 2008
Images in the Modern World

What do you do in a world that is awash with images and yet denies the very power of those images in our lives? It is possible to live in a make-believe world in which all Christians have to do is react to negative and improper images, leaving the Church with a “Church-lady” image that…

May 14, 2008
Christos Voskrese! (Christ is Risen)

This delightful youtube video was shared in comments yesterday. I thought it worth posting up front. Our reader Dejan has offered a translation in the comments. The words are from a poem by St. Nikolai Velimirovich who served for a time as the Rector of St. Tikhon’s Seminary – truly one of the great Serbian…

April 27, 2008
Is Hell Real?

On one of the roads leading into my small city a billboard has recently appeared. It is part of a larger campaign by a nationally known evangelist who is to have a revival in Knoxville. The sign is simple. In very large bright yellow letters (all caps), the sign says: HELL IS REAL. In small…

April 17, 2008
Scripture, Icons, and the World We Know

I ask for grace in writing this, lest I go beyond my ability. It seems to me well worth saying as discussions of the relationship between Scripture, dogma and science have surfaced. I offer this as food for thought as well as a ground of discussion. First, I will note an American Protestant tradition (somewhat…

April 6, 2008

Bless, Father. How do we suffer well? How do we suffer without de-moralization? Without de-moralizing our children? What do we…

Peace, Robert. It might not be helpful but I imagine just acknowledging the trauma is the first step.

Father Stephen wrote: I do not pray for collapse (though I suspect that such a time will come). I pray…

Robert, you in particular will be in my prayers tonight.

Janine, Our whole culture suffers from deep wounds – particularly if you think of them under the heading of “de-moralization.”…