Byzantine Chant is stark for a reason; it eliminates all the excess in the music and cuts to the core. Constantine Cavarnos has written of its “inner essence…its pureness…its mystical quality, its power of evoking contriction.” One may compare harmonizing chant to colorizing Ansel Adam’s photography. It may add visual richness, but there is a [...]
Archive for the ‘Orthodox Christianity’ Category
A New Link: Yudhie’s Heart-Beat
Posted in Orthodox Christianity, tagged Blogroll, Christian, Christian Life, Christians, Knowledge, Links, Postmodernism, Postmodernity, Yudhie Indonesia on May 21, 2009 | 3 Comments »
I’ve added a new link, Heart Beat, to my blogroll. Yudhie, a young Indonesian Orthodox Christian, has been inspiring many of us lately with his honest relations of the events of his own life, a truly Christian life. I don’t wish to endanger his peace with undue praise, but thanks be to God, through this [...]
Update
Posted in Orthodox Christianity, tagged Books, Christian Doctrine, Life, Music on May 19, 2009 | 6 Comments »
I finally finished The Monk of Mount Athos. It is not the sort of book that it’s wise to gobble up at a sitting, though I could have done so as it is rather short. It’s more like the Gospel, that you can slowly absorb a few paragraphs at a time.
Needless to say, and no [...]
Today I’m Full of Wonderings
Posted in Orthodox Christianity, tagged Life, Music, Questions, Religion, Wondering, Writing on May 16, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Today I wonder:
Why is my scanner not working?
Will I ever finish the plays and stories I’ve started? Do I really have it in me to be a writer or am I just a dilettante?
What is the next step to getting the mold smell out of that one area of my carpet?
Should I give up writing [...]
Reflection
Posted in Orthodox Christianity, tagged Bright Week, Change, Christianity, Church, Church Services, Divine Liturgy, Grace, Holy Week, Orthodox Church, Orthodoxy, Ponderings, Progress, Religion on April 22, 2009 | 5 Comments »
The more that happens and becomes clear to me, the less there is to say. It would be easy to speak of the unease I feel at certain trends in the Church; far more difficult to speak of the immeasurable river of grace I find there. Easy to criticize individual or parish or even jurisdictional [...]
A Quick Idea
Posted in Orthodox Christianity, tagged Abortion, Blessing, Children, Christianity, Church, Church Life, Events, Family, Ideas, Inner City, Kids, Original Solutions, Priest, Priesthood, Priests, Pro-Life on January 27, 2009 | 11 Comments »
I’m always trying to think of ways to contact and minister to the inner city folk, without hosting Operation This-Time-We’re-Hip-Enough or whatever. What are we, after all, if we can’t help the worst off ones?
It struck me that we might hold events in which Priests bless inner-city children. We could let mothers know that they [...]
Exhaustion, Grace, Sons, and Chanting…Not Necessarily In That Order
Posted in Music, Orthodox Christianity, Parenting, tagged Babies, Being, Blue Eyes, Chant, Chanting the Psalms, Children, Choir, Choir Director, Church, Churches, Directing Choir, Exhaustion, Existential Questions, Feeling, Grace, Leading Choir, Musical Theory, Orthodox Church, Portrait, Portraits, Psalm 23, Psalmnody, Psalms, Reading the Psalms, Singing the Psalms, Sons, Tired on January 18, 2009 | 10 Comments »
My dear readers,
Forgive the incoherence that follows; hopefully it explains itself.
We celebrated Epiphany a day early for various reasons. I botched the early part of the Liturgy; all the changeables threw me off and I grew more and more flustered and kicked a stack of offering plates accidentally and also knocked over a stool by [...]
Billboards and Footprints
Posted in Art, Language, Orthodox Christianity, tagged Christianity, Christians, Church, Church Life, Conventions, Eating, Fasting, Feasting, Language, Meaning, Photography, Religion, Signs, Symbols, Truth on January 17, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Dear Readers,
The arrival of Eastern Christmas and its aftermath blew apart my plans for daily correspondance with you all. Apparently there is no such thing as a smoking break in the Church year; rest up yonder, the calendar seems to say, but seek no leisure here.
I have a few random thoughts to plaster on this [...]
From Fr. Joseph Antypas
Posted in Christianity, Orthodox Christianity, tagged Church, Church Life, Preisthood, Sacraments on January 2, 2009 | 4 Comments »
One of our lovely Arab churches in this area, St. George’s by name, boasts a very learned presbyter, Fr. Joseph Antypas. Having attended there for a few months, we still get their newsletter, in which one of Fr. Joseph’s sermons is printed weekly.
Here’s an excerpt from this week.
It is the conviction of the Orthodox that Christ is the [...]
The Riots in Greece
Posted in Orthodox Christianity, Religion on December 8, 2008 | 4 Comments »
All Christians are gullible – it has to be striven against. This is something that I observered long ago.
I wonder if Orthodox societies are particularly vulnerable to the lie of Communism/Socialism. Or is it, rather, Societies that try to blend Orthodox and Western thought that are so at risk?
A few years ago I concluded that [...]
Blogs That Don’t Belong in my Blogroll, but to Which I Wish to Link, Nevertheless
Posted in Literature, Orthodox Christianity, Writing, tagged Blogroll, Blogs, Book Reviews, Books, Church of England, Eastern Orthodoxy, Links, Literature, Reading, Roman Catholicism, Writing on October 22, 2008 | 8 Comments »
As I mentioned before, the criteria for being on my blogroll is that I feel a certain blog has proved to be a noticeable influence on whatever I’m doing in my own blog. There are a long list of blogs, however, that I read just for enjoyment. Here are four of the best-written of that long [...]
A Very Poor Effort
Posted in Orthodox Christianity, Poems, tagged Beauty, Belief, Christianity, Church, Faith, God's Name, Hope, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Poetry, Prayer, Religion on October 18, 2008 | 7 Comments »
What song can I sing?
I have not a word to say;
Full of emptiness,
in wordless prayers I pray
toward formless forms and heatless burnings
toward Flyers In The Heaven without wing
and know – it is not You! You are not these!
O! (Whom shall I address?)
To what bright center shall I press,
and truly say: Ah, it is you! At last?
(When will I be [...]
Expensive Worship
Posted in Orthodox Christianity, tagged Beauty, Christian Worship, Christianity, Church, God's Glory, Gospel, Money, Payment, Place of Worship, Poor, Poverty, Price, Regulative Principle, Wealth, Worship on August 1, 2008 | 7 Comments »
Mark 14 (NASB)
3 While He was in Bethany at the home of Simon the leper, and reclining at the table, there came a woman with an alabaster vial of very costly perfume of pure nard; and she broke the vial and poured it over His head.
4 But some were indignantly remarking to one another, “Why [...]
Link to Monastery Website; Chant Information
Posted in Orthodox Christianity, tagged Byzantine Chant, Chant, Christian Websites, Christianity, Gospel, Links, Monasteries, Monastery, Russian Chant on August 1, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I found the English-translated website of a Russian women’s monastery. The website is such a treasure of blessing and piety that I can only imagine what the place itself must be like.
There are some recordings of chant, both Russian and Byzantine, which the sisters have made a serious study of. These recordings may be of [...]
A Conversation About Things That Bow Down
Posted in Literature, Orthodox Christianity, tagged Bow, Conversations, Courtesy, Creation, Form, God, Heaven, Humility, Meaning, Poetic, Shape, Sky on July 28, 2008 | 2 Comments »
A: If our world had been formed and filled by some lesser god, I think he would have made the vast mistake of laboring with too straight a back.
His steely arrowed finger would stab the depths, jolting them to fertility. Then he’d raise his dripping arm, and glaring across the sudden plains, he’d loose a lightning lash of life.
Oh, I have some idea in what anguished, [...]
A High View of the Inspiration of Scripture
Posted in Literature, Orthodox Christianity, tagged Athanasius, Bible, Chant, Chanting, Christian Music, Christianity, Church, Church Music, Inspiration, Music, Old Books, Orthodoxy, Poetry, Psalms, Scripture, Singing, Singing Psalms, Song, Theology, Theories of Inspiration, Verbal Plenary Inspiration on July 20, 2008 | 6 Comments »
“Deamons fear the words of holy men and cannot bear them; for the Lord Himself is in the Words of Scripture and him they cannot bear.”
(Words from Athanasius On the Interpretation of the Psalms.)
I think this is what you might call a sacramental view of scripture, and I do find it a “higher” view than [...]
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