In the Orthodox Church, Great Lent is enriched by the memory of the most celebrated monastics of Christian memory–St. Andrew of Crete (who got his start as a hierarch and hymnographer in a monastery near Jerusalem), St. John of the Ladder, and St. Mary of Egypt, to name a few. Surrounded by these virtuous souls, it’s easy…
This past Tuesday afternoon, I had the delightful opportunity to give a guest talk at the Met. Andrey Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies at St. Michael’s College (University of Toronto). In it, I re-examined the central claim of Time and Despondency, namely the idea that despondency is somehow inextricably tied to a broken relationship to time, in…
Here’s a surprising bit of advice from a desert theologian I came to appreciate in writing Time and Despondency: When you are tempted, do not fall immediately to prayer. First utter some angry words against the [demon] who afflicts you. Evagrius, The Praktikos 42 The quotation is found nestled into the middle pages of his treatise called The Praktikos, a…
In Germany, where I’ve lived several times, there is a well-known proverb that translates: “Five minutes ahead of time is exactly the right time.” One of my supervisors there once threatened to dock pay when I showed up on time for work one morning. For her, if I wasn’t ahead of time, I wasn’t on time. And I was setting myself on…