One of the murmurings of discontent that has long followed me from critics of this blog is, I don’t know why his tagline is ‘a face faced by others.‘ My favourite dimension of this critique is that it usually comes from Orthodox converts, typically of the kind that comes from evangelicalism, which means that they seem to conceive of Christian education in their parishes as an extension of the Sunday school that they are used to and continue to use all the... Read more
On this Feast of the Holy Hierarchs Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria, I wanted to share a passage from Rowan Williams’s Arius: Heresy and Tradition that has stuck with me since I read it in the fall of 2008. At that time, I had just gone through a full-scale theological meltdown, having been confirmed as an Anglican on what I now know is the Feast of the Presentation earlier that February. Before the summer of 2008, I was a New Calvinist:... Read more
The email came in the middle of Reader’s Vigil, right before the Matins Canon. Classes having been canceled because of the deep freeze that is coming over the Midwest, I decided to take a few days at home to write, which means that I am also cooking and praying. The prayer, which has been surprisingly regular on the hours in the past few days (I am, like most Christians across all of the communions by which we are divided, terrible... Read more
There is a dimension to scholarship that is often left undiscussed in the present milieu of quit lit and the woes of academia, and that is pleasure. Certainly, the problem of overwork and the exploitation of labour is an ever-present reality in the academy, the most famous example being a tweet from a professor somewhere in New England saying that a 60-hour work week is short for an academic, and most are logging more. Even I have experienced it, along... Read more
About a month ago, I finally got around to watching the classic Hitchcock film North by Northwest. It was late one night after finishing some work here where I am employed at Northwestern University, where of course the daily news magazine is titled North by Northwestern. After seeing it, I suppose I understood why I always felt it was a film that I should see. It is in some quarters regarded informally as the first Bond film, just as From Russia... Read more
As this postfeast of Theophany this year continues apace, I recall my first Theophany celebration, which took place in Richmond on the evening of January 5, 2016. I still remember it. It was at the beginning of my catechumenate, which my records indicate began on December 5 the year before. The truth is that I don’t recall being very serious about the catechumenate at that point. It was more of a let’s see how this goes approach. I definitely didn’t want... Read more
I wore this shirt for this year’s secular Feast of our Brother among the Saints Martin Luther King, Jr. My father and I acquired this shirt while visiting the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis the summer before I started grad school. On the night he was assassinated, King was in Memphis organizing sanitation workers. His work had developed from his nonviolent work on desegregation in the South to a radical call for ‘revolution of values’ linking the Vietnam War... Read more
The Tomos of autocephaly for the Orthodox Church in Ukraine came out from the Ecumenical Patriarchate on the Feast of Theophany this year; on the Old Calendar celebration of that same feast yesterday, my brother Julian and I met one of its architects. It was, I suppose, a long time in coming. Julian tells me that he and Bishop Daniel of Chicago keep missing each other when their travels coincide throughout the world, say, in Kyiv, in Lviv, and in... Read more
My wife’s name day falls on the commemoration of the Venerable Genevieve of Paris. My spiritual father and I discovered this fact while researching patron saints for my chrismation. I was thrilled to learn that my wife continues to be cooler than me. I have Holy Justin the Philosopher and Martyr, which fits my academic persona, but she has Genevieve of Paris. I mean, the Parisian thing is cool enough — its status as the romantic city in the world... Read more
To me, the theology of the Latin Church is encapsulated by the dictum, Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est – where there is charity (agape) and desiring-love (eros), God is there. The rest of the song, usually sung by the Latins on Great and Holy Thursday, is, for lack of better words, about church politics – that is, about the church as a unique kind of polis, a civitas. Indeed, the next line gives it away – congregavit nos in unum Christi amor (gathered we in... Read more
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