The Story of a Soul is St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s spiritual autobiography. It tells the story of how, at a very young age, she conceived a passionate desire to become a Carmelite nun. She fought hard to be admitted early entry, and took the veil at the young age of 15.
Read MoreOnce upon a time there were no stories. Nearly 14 billion years worth of tales untold until suddenly, Man, sitting around a fire telling stories. Some were true, some were lies, and some were fictional but somehow still true. But what is a story? When someone asks for “your story”, when my mom used to make sure she was home at noon every day to watch her “stories”, or when a reporter “smells a story”, is the same word being used for the same thing or is there a core thing we call a story? How can a painting tell a story, or a piece of music? How can a shoe on the side of the road have a story behind it?
Read MoreWe have faced the blank page. We have attended to silence. And we have accomplished an incredibly brave thing: we have gotten something on the page. It is not blank anymore—we are free to keep working toward a finished piece, whatever that might be, however many drafts it may take us to get there. We have committed to the creative act, and to whatever it may show us as we follow it through.
Read MoreWe have practiced silence. We have listened for the voice of the Spirit. We have put pen to paper, brush to canvas, spade to soil, knitting needles to yarn. Now what?
Read MoreIn the next three blog posts, we will consider what I call “the creative act.” Before we dive in, let’s ask a question that may seem obvious: What is the creative act?
Read MoreDespite the undivided church coming together at the Council of Nicaea to lay out the basics of its understanding of the Trinity in the year AD325, the heresy of Arianism continued to flourish. If you’ll recall, Arianism posits that Jesus was not eternally present with God the Father but was rather a created being. That is why the Nicaean Creed states of Jesus;
Read MoreSt. Edward was born around the year 1003 and died in 1066. He reigned as King of England from 1042 until his death. It was a time of extended peace. Edward was the last undisputed English king before the Norman Conquest. The militant nature of that conquest resulted, at least in part it seems, from the fact that Edward promised succession to both a Norman and an Englishmen and left them to fight it out at the Battle of Hastings.
Read MoreCultures of optimization have been prevalent since the industrial revolution, but what distinguishes this current one is that it demands women to not just appear more perfect but actually to change themselves mentally and physically to meet an unattainable standard. I remember a mentor pointing out to me that the ‘it girl’ ideal shifted like a pendulum every decade from at least the 1890s onward in order to maximize consumer energy and disincentivize wardrobes that could be retained and bestowed between generations. This meant that each new decade one might find themselves more or less within reach of the cultural norm. By the 2000s, though, the use of digital and surgical technology enabled the creation of an appearance that no one could actually possess, and which made everyone inadequate.
Read MoreIn our last post, we concluded that acedia or sloth is much more than the stereotype of the lazybones. Evagrius notes that “acedia is a simultaneous, long-lasting movement of anger and desire, whereby the former is angry with what is at hand, while the latter yearns for what is not present.” As the modern monastic writer Gabriel Bunge elaborates: “Everything available to it is hateful. Everything unavailable is desirable.” Where there is anger that things are the way they are and there is an indefinite desire for something else, whatever that may be. Acedia is a restlessness that manifests in a refusal to commit to one place or purpose. In the meantime, acedia makes us lose our taste for what is significant and what is insignificant as we fail again and again to discern between demands for our attention.
Read MoreThe collect for the 10th Sunday after Trinity makes a curious request. After asking God to keep His ears open to our prayers, it asks Him to exercise His power over those very prayers: “. . . and, that [thy humble servants] may obtain their petitions, make them to ask such things as shall please thee.”
Read MoreWhenever I hear ‘Montanism’ all I can think of is poor Vasily Borodin in ‘The Hunt for Red October’ uttering with his dying breath, ‘I would have liked to have seen Montana.’ Poor Vasily, who only wanted to live in Montana, marry a round American woman and drive a pickup truck... or maybe even a ‘recreational vehicle’. Sadly, it was not to be for Vasily, shot by the cook (who we all knew was up to something, the way the camera lingered on him in that one scene).
Read MoreLove obliges us to know our beloved. For Christians who worship God in the manner He gave us in the institution of Holy Communion, love obliges us to seek our Beloved in the sacramental place in which He has promised to meet us. To seek Him in this way will reveal, over time, the heart of our Eucharistic liturgy.
Read MoreTomorrow is Trinity Sunday, and I can’t help but hear in my head the rock n’ roll classic hit, “Here I Go Again” by Whitesnake. Don’t mock me–it will forever and always be a rock and roll classic that will survive the ages and instantly bring me joy when I hear it. Just in case you’re not a regular listener of the “80’s on 8” Sirius XMU channel, to refresh your memory, the song opens with these lyrics:
Read MoreTomorrow is the Feast of Pentecost. In the week and a half since Ascension we have been waiting for the One Christ called the Holy Spirit to descend and meet us here. We have been opening our hearts and asking the Holy Spirit to come.
Read More“So like, hear me out. What if, like, Jesus, right? He was God, okay? Like, seriously, he’s God and all but how can he be a dude, too? God is huge and people are small, so like, He can’t be human and God at the same time. What if, no listen, like, his “body” isn’t really “his” body, it’s just like a video game avatar or a skin he wears? It’s like, an illusion, man! Blows your mind, right? Like, He’s God! He can do anything! He can make us see whatever He wants! He can appear like a human to us, so why wouldn’t he?”
Why indeed.
Read MoreWe are free.
The season of Eastertide begins on the night of the Easter Vigil, with a liturgy that poetically links the story of the Exodus with the story of salvation. Just as God delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt through the waters of the Red Sea, He delivers us from slavery to sin through the water of baptism. This parallel is brought out beautifully by the hymn we sing as we pass out of the sadness of Lent and into the joy of Easter:
Read MoreI’ll never forget the first time I received an icon. During the pandemic, a friend of my mom’s who is Coptic Orthodox let me pick any icon I wanted from her icon corner and keep it. I ended up choosing a very small two-panel icon, one side had St. Mary tenderly holding the Christ Child while the other had Christ holding scripture and giving a blessing. All of her icons were so beautiful; I didn’t understand how she was ready to part with any of them. But because of her generosity, I was able to experience the blessing of receiving an icon.
Read MoreDerived from the word ‘pelagic,’ from the Greek πέλαγος (pélagos) 'open sea,' Pelagic fish are those who do not live near the bottom or shore but out in the water… Oh, wait… I meant to google Pelagianism, not Pelagic fish. My apologies. We continue our survey of heresies with a look at Pelagianism.
Read MoreIn Lent, our fast cleared out new space in our lives and helped us re-examine our relationship with enjoyments and dependencies we tend to take for granted. Now, it is Easter, and we can go back to enjoying those things we left behind—we must celebrate, after all!—but in some cases, we find ourselves facing a conundrum when the TV habits, or social media scrolling, or regularity of chocolate-eating, or whatever-it-might-be, are again fair game. Namely: do we want to go back to those things? Do we still enjoy them? And if so, in what way do we want to go back to them?
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