A journal of byzantine digressionS
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In Downers, Hope
BY WAY Of method: selected verses from Psalm 88 (BCP ’79 translation – a personal fave) interspersed with the refrain from Psalm 136. Language was ironed out to be in the third person to match the refrain. Not all the verses of Ps 88 are used, just the ones that match my current #mood. The
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Noms
Having a wee fry and a souffle. Cuz keto.
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Shelikee Bookey
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I Don’t Want To Think
AN EMERGING PATTERN seems to indicate that more-common sins are ways to cope or deal with situations: like alcohol is used to numb the brain, so are other things. If “I don’t want to think about this just now” there are distractions with which to numb the pain. Those brain-numbing pain solutions are sins. Yes,
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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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Ecclesiology Assignment #1
The assignment was to do a 25 min presentation on one chapter in The Church of God by Louis Bouyer. I took Part 1, Chapter 10 on the “Renaissance of Russian Ecclesiology. These are my notes. I added content based on other presentations as I synthesized the material. I had not read the entire book.
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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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Time. Eucharist. Love.
WHEN NEXT YOU approach Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist, drawing near to the chalice in faith and love, kneeling at the rail, or coming to the front of line; when you receive from the Priest, Deacon, or Eucharistic Minister the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the God-Man, Jesus, born of Mary and descended
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Don’t Look Back
YOUR HOST IS ATTEMPTING To navigate between two parishes, one Latin and one Byzantine, with the latter using the Julian Calendar no less. (Most Byzantine Catholic places, in the US at least, use the Gregorian Calendar.) This year’s Gregorian and Julian Easters are one week apart. Next year they are five weeks apart! This year
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Something Greater.
The Readings for the Sunday of St Mary of Egypt The Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast OUR HOLY MOTHER MARY OF Egypt, as she is called in the Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete, is perhaps my most-favorite of female saints. Her regular feast day is 1 April which is always in Lent
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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
Orthoparadoxy 