Category: Blog
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Updates
MEDITATING on the material in previous posts has moved some updates into my brain. I have tended to add “update: some stuff” to the posts, but I think that doesn’t get the updated material out to readers by email. Going forward I will do update posts like this one and add an update link to…
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Holy Week Again
YOUR HOST HAS Been volunteering in a Byzantine Catholic Parish that uses the Julian Paschalion and the Julian Calendar as well. Thus this week is Holy Week, with Pascha today, 16 April. In the US, for most Byzantine Catholics, last week was Holy Week so we’re really a Unicorn here. This has raised questions among…
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Acolyte
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Yes: Time. Again.
EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE my WordPress stats will indicate a very old post (today, from 2015) and I’ll discover that I’m not thinking anything new to me – but rather that I’ve been chewing on the same cud for most of the last 25 years. The whole recent string starting with mists and ending…
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To Be or Not to Be
METROPOLITAN JOHN ZIZIOULAS (Memory Eternal!) has this great line in Being as Communion, “to be and to be in communion are the same thing”. It’s not an exact quote. I pulled it out and wrapped it into my final presentation to be graduated from CIIS in 2002. The argument continues – as I understood it…
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The Weight of Mists
THIS POST STARTED with Across the Universe, the brilliant cinematic reworking of The Beatles’ ouvre into a story of love, rejection, and nirvanah interwoven with a full on history of the 60s in America. I first watched it when it came out and became obsessed with the Beatles as a result. I’d never really liked…
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Subtleties and Acquisitions
WHEN I FIRST Tested with Citizens Cafe Tel Aviv, they asked for my story with Hebrew and I noted that in college I had failed other languages, but passed all three semesters with an A/B average in Hebrew. The interviewer laughed and said it was usually the other way around. That said, I’m not exactly…
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Scott Hahn at my Church!
Join us for a morning of Scripture Study with Scott Hahn! Saturday 22 April 2023, from 9:00 AM – 12:45 PM. You can register here. This is our launch event for our 150th Anniversary celebration!
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Misty Morning Sunrise
THE BOOK OF Ecclesiastes, named Kohelet or Qohelet in the Hebrew text (קֹהֶלֶת), is one of the Wisdom Books in the Hebrew Scriptures which can be read as meditation texts rather than literal “rules”. In fact, if you read the Wisdom Books without context, there are some serious contradictions between Proverbs, Job, and Ecclesiastes in…
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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…
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A Song of Degrees
SOMETIMESYou are like a child holding me by the handDaddy Look! Daddy Look! Daddy Look!As if you’re as amazed as Iat Birdsor tiny purple flowers on rosemaryOf the swirls of oilOpalescent on puddles in sunlightSometimesYou’re like a docent Showing me from one spectacle to the nextand sharing all that is happeningWatch how this clock turnsor…
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The Difference
AS POSTED OVER ON My Hebrew language blog, I’ve been wondering about these two songs. My limited skill in that language did not prevent me from hearing the same words rolled around in two very different songs. Give a listen. Turning on the captions for the first one to see an English translation. I’m sorry…
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A Tale of Two Kisses
SOLOMON WRITES FOR the Bride these words, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth.” Certainly, that is the desire of our hearts, that the Lord should kiss us so. Yet, as in a dream where everything is one’s own mind speaking, so in scripture, everything is God’s own word. And how our…
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The BVM, Challah, and Celibacy
SO, AS WAS EARLIER mentioned I’ve been wrestling with an article from First Things, published in 2002, called Celibacy in Context. I don’t mean “wrestling” as in struggling with, but rather as in Jacob saying to God, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” Celibacy is not only hard for some folks…
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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…
Orthoparadoxy 