Category: diary

  • Judicial Reform

    I’m not a huge fan of Americans telling other countries how to run their politics. (We tend to call that cultural colonialism if we don’t agree with the interference, liberation if we do agree.) Understanding those other places is a different thing from trying to fix them. I’ve been trying to understand what’s going on…

  • Language

    Language

    I’VE JUST FINISHED Another 40 hours of Hebrew with the wonderful folks at Citizen’s Cafe Tel Aviv. Their class schedule just does not fit with my life this semester though, so I’ve taken on three hours of class time a week working with two tutors at iTalki: Shmuel and Gil. While both are helping me…

  • What remains

    What remains

    LAST WEEKEND as I passed this spot I saw a homeless guy drawing circles while his gf sat nearby shooting up. Today I found the circles. Obsession becomes art. We leave the beautiful.

  • What is a Week End? # 2

    What is a Week End? # 2

    SORRY TO BE LIGHT in posts recently. I’ve three weeks of Deacon classes in a row, along with all the reading that would normally come over 6 weeks of classes. It’s sacramental theology which is, really, the most un-Orthodox of Western theology. So I’m having to lean in here. That’s just made the weeks really…

  • Weekend Update

    Weekend Update

    AN EMAIL Arrives reminding me that today, the First Saturday of November, is the Antiochian feast for my Patron Saint, Raphael of Brooklyn. His feast is in February in the Russian use, I usually miss this one. Raphael is considered the patron of all the Lost Sheep of North America. I figure I still fit…

  • What is a Week End?

    What is a Week End?

    THE DOWAGER COUNTESS of Downton Abbey rather famously asked, “What is a Week End?” Ascending high enough up the ladder of nobility, at a certain point the difference between work and life no longer matters: one is always The Dowager Countess of Downton even when other folks have “down time”. Vocation is like that: one…

  • A Child’s Autumn in Wurtsboro

    A Child’s Autumn in Wurtsboro

    Two essays from September of 2000. They are nearly as old now as I was removed from my childhood when I wrote them. The “45” in the first graph has been changed to reflect today rather than the original Y2K date. I was already living in SF at that time, before 9/11 changed the world.…

  • By Way of Update

    LAST WEEK WAS filled with what could be called “emotional labor”. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, and my pastor has called out “maintaining particular relationships” as a hallmark. On top of that, my own devotional life is swirling around seeing Christ in each and every person. Pope St John Paul II wrote, “Jesus…

  • Pulled the Trigger

    Pulled the Trigger

    YER HOST WOKE UP THIS AM KNOWING today Facebook would end. It’s not clear why this was the case but a book we are currently reading (see blow) indicated one should spend ten hours in homily prep. The question of where those hours would come from answered itself upon waking this AM. Facebook was gone…