Today he who hung the earth upon the waters is hung upon the tree. Christ is dead, and we have mourned him. This is the moment of suspension. It is what Balthasar calls the ‘hiatus,’ the pause, the moment where the ‘logic of theology’ is overturned and must be re-evaluated. It is hard for me to feel a hiatus. My professional world doesn’t stop, especially when it’s a secular discipline I’m in. I’m actually at a conference, out of town. A... Read more
One of the moments when I knew that I had to become Catholic was when I attended mass on the First Sunday of Advent in 2011. It just so happened to be the first day that the Latin Church had introduced the new mass translation, which tripped up all the faithful at the church I was attending in Hayward, California. However, the moment I knew that I had to come into communion with this Church had nothing to do with... Read more
It is now two days past Palm Sunday, making my reflections perhaps tardy. To be honest, I had not meant to write much for Palm Sunday, except perhaps to mention that I found myself very much at home singing along at a Bulgarian Orthodox temple’s Vigil service on Saturday night because I was in Boston for a geography conference. I had not felt like attending – I was so tired, but I had walked past it while in search of... Read more
I’ll be giving a talk tomorrow at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary titled Liberation theology in the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement?: assessing conscientization in an occupy movement. It will feature the book on which I served as lead editor, Theological Reflections on the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement (co-edited with Jonathan Tan, Palgrave, 2016). In this lecture, I’ll offer some of my assessments of the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement with a term drawn from the movement quoting Brazilian educator Paulo Freire – conscientization – and think about some ways forward for... Read more
As I relive my catechumenate during this Great Fast, there’s a piece that I want to share that I wrote as a catechumen for my catechumenate that was at the time only circulated within our temple. It can be said that participating in the Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete during my catechumenate made me take the seriousness of what I had gotten myself into a bit more seriously. Because of this, I write this essay that I wrote shortly... Read more
This is the third in a series of posts on the Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete, a penitential service in the Byzantine cycle for the Great Fast that quite literally changed my body to pray in a Byzantine way. The first post was about how I struggled to do prostrations because I was completely unprepared for the Great Canon, and the second was on my realization that the story of Abba Zosima in the Life of Holy Mary of... Read more
This is the second in a series of posts on the Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete, a penitential service in the Byzantine cycle for the Great Fast that quite literally changed my body to pray in a Byzantine way. The first post was about how I struggled to do prostrations because I was completely unprepared for the Great Canon. Perhaps it will also become clear through this series why I have a special love for the desert hermit,... Read more
The tradition of our church is to hold the Saturday of the Fifth Week of the Great Fast as Akathist Saturday, when the Akathist Hymn is chanted. I was unfortunately not able to make it to a service either last night (more typical) or this morning (less typical) that did the Akathist, so I sang it during Morning Prayers this morning at home. I realize that the more fastidious among my Byzantine sisters and brothers will take issue with this, but for what it’s... Read more
There has been a good deal of attention being paid to the Vice President of the United States, and not simply because of his tie-breaking vote in allowing the states to defund Planned Parenthood. Instead, much hay is being made of a line in a profile of Mike Pence about his refusal to eat alone with any woman who is not his wife. For some, this is a bit of joke news, a distraction from the real world of domestic policy... Read more
This is the first in a series of posts on the Great Canon of St Andrew of Crete, a penitential service in the Byzantine cycle for the Great Fast that quite literally changed my body to pray in a Byzantine way. Perhaps it will also become clear through this series why I have a special love for the desert hermit, our Venerable Mother Mary of Egypt, in whose life the Most Holy Theotokos also plays a special role. My Kyivan... Read more
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