User:	orthodoxifying (posted by nero_wolfe)
	Date:	2008-07-06 14:49
	Subject:
	Security:	Public

The first time I saw Joel Osteen on tv, I thought I had flipped the channel to an infomercial for some business scam. The man has no cross in his church and barely mentions God the Father or Jesus. It looks like an AMWAY meeting with all the semi-casually dressed people in the crowd.

It's funny there is a huge evangelical protestant, back to the roots of Christianity movement, especially among hispanics. There are two non-denominational churches inside a strip mall on the corner, by my apartment. I walk past them on my way to a mini-grocery store often. Knowing some Spanish, I understand the preachers state they are doing it the Biblical way and some of the rituals look Eastern Orthodox. Of course my thinking is why not be Orthodox then.


It could be my ideas of what a "church" are were formed as a child in Latin Rite Catholic church.

It seems though, if you go to a hospital you see medical equipment, biohazard signs and medical symbols. You know you are in a hospital and that you should let the medical team lead the show.

You go into a non-denom church and you wonder if it's a city council meeting, with citizen members in the crowd.

	User:	orthodoxy (posted by nero_wolfe)
	Date:	2008-07-06 14:49
	Subject:
	Security:	Public

The first time I saw Joel Osteen on tv, I thought I had flipped the channel to an infomercial for some business scam. The man has no cross in his church and barely mentions God the Father or Jesus. It looks like an AMWAY meeting with all the semi-casually dressed people in the crowd.

It's funny there is a huge evangelical protestant, back to the roots of Christianity movement, especially among hispanics. There are two non-denominational churches inside a strip mall on the corner, by my apartment. I walk past them on my way to a mini-grocery store often. Knowing some Spanish, I understand the preachers state they are doing it the Biblical way and some of the rituals look Eastern Orthodox. Of course my thinking is why not be Orthodox then.


It could be my ideas of what a "church" are were formed as a child in Latin Rite Catholic church.

It seems though, if you go to a hospital you see medical equipment, biohazard signs and medical symbols. You know you are in a hospital and that you should let the medical team lead the show.

You go into a non-denom church and you wonder if it's a city council meeting, with citizen members in the crowd.

	User:	orthodoxy (posted by methodius)
	Date:	2008-07-06 18:51
	Subject:	Post-Atheism: from Apophatic Theology to "Minimal Religion"
	Security:	Public

Matt Stone in his blog pointed me to this article on Post-Atheism: from Apophatic Theology to "Minimal Religion".

There is quite a lot to digest in it, and I must read it more thoroughly first, but I would also value the views of Orthodox Christians who are willing to undertake the intellectual labour or reading it. It does not make for easy reading. I'd be especially interested in the views of those who live in Russia, or who are at least familiar with the Church in Russia.

Here are the main headings:

1. From Apophatic Theology to Atheism

2. Secularization and the "New Middle Ages"

3. Theomorphism: the "Other" in Culture

4. Angelism as a Postmodern Religion

5. Post-Atheist Spirituality in Russia: Minimal Religion

The article may be found in Russian Postmodernism: New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture (with Alexander Genis and Slobodanka Vladiv-Glover, in the series Studies in Slavic Literature, Culture, and Society, vol. 3). New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1999, 528 pp.345-393.

Perhaps I'll try to find it in the university library, as I find it difficult to read such things online while sitting at the computer.

	User:	douloijohanna
	Date:	2008-07-05 21:16
	Subject:	In Praise of The Four Seasons
	Security:	Public

I came in here to watch a movie.  I find myself unable to turn off Vivaldi's The Four Seasons to turn on the movie.  I've known this music since my childhood, when as a precocious 8 year old I bought a cassette recording of Vivaldi's music to listen to on car rides. 

My parents had an extensive record collection.  We listened to selections at full-volume on Saturday mornings on my father's Technic stereo while we cleaned our house from top to bottom.  He had strategically placed speakers throughout the house, so you could enjoy the music from just about anywhere. My father inevitably chose Jethro Tull, or The Beatles, or The Rolling Stones, or some other classic rock for us to labor to.  My mother enjoyed working to Bach, Beethoven, and Vivaldi.  She had recordings of the Philadelphia Philharmonic playing their symphonies, and we would scrub toilets, wipe down baseboards, shine mirrors, clean windows, dust, and even vacuum to the blaring music.  We had a clean house.  On Saturday mornings, we ate good, homemade breakfasts of eggs and pancakes or biscuits and gravy, then set to work for two or three hours until the 2400 square foot house had been cleansed of almost every particle of dirt and dust.

I can't listen to The Four Seasons without smelling clorox and envisioning the countryside rolling past outside the car window.

	User:	noetic_toe
	Date:	2008-07-05 18:58
	Subject:	Happy Dance
	Security:	Public

This is totally awesome.

mommydama

	User:	methodius
	Date:	2008-07-05 16:00
	Subject:	Recent reading
	Security:	Public

Mostly crime novels.

24-Apr-2008
Follett, Ken. 2007 [1989] The pillars of the earth.
London: Pan.
The building of a cathedral in 12th-century England, in
a troubled time of famine and civil war.

28-Apr-2008
White, Edmund. 2004. Genet. London: Vintage.
Biography of the French poet, novelist and playwright
Jean Genet (1907-1986): liar, thief, pervert, saint and
martyr.

1-May-2008
Fox, Robin Lane. 2007. The classical world. London:
Penguin.
A general history of ancient Greece and Rome up to the
reign of the Emperor Hadrian.

9-May-2008
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. 2007. One hundred years of
solitude. London: Penguin.
A novel about a dysfunctional family in Columbia,
following their fortunes and misfortunes over a century.

13-May-2008
Indridason, Arnaldur. 2007. The draining lake.
London: Harville Secker.
A lake in Iceland begins to drain, revealing the
skeleton of a man who has apparently been murdered. The
police make enquiries about missing persons from the
1960s, but none seem to fit, except possibly a salesman
who drove a Ford Falcon.

17-May-2008
Larsson, Asa. 2007. The savage altar. London:
Viking.
Murder mystery set in a town in northern Sweden. The
victim is a prominent member of a local Pentecostal
church.

4-Jun-2008
Flynn, Michael. 2003. In the country of the blind.
New York: Tom Doherty Associates.
A small group of American idealists builds Charles
Babbage's Analytical Engine and tries to use it to
change history. As a conspiracy novel it is much better
than "The da Vinci code"

13-Jun-2008
George, Elizabeth. 2008. Careless in red. London:
Hodder & Stoughton.
Three months since the murder of his wife Thomas Lynley
goes walking on the South-West coast path in Cornwall to
distract himself from his loss, when he sees a climber
fallen to his death from a cliff. He breaks in to a
nearby cottage to find a phone to report the death, and
the owner of the cottage, Daidre Trahair, helps him to
buy clothes when the local police ask him not to move
away, and on establishing his identity, ask him to help
with a potential murder investigation.

14-Jun-2008
Weisman, Francesca. 2006. The shape of a stranger.
London: Penguin.
A lawyer, Callum Scott, is attacked one day when he is
going for a walk, and, according to the police, the
attacker has killed someone else. At about the same time
an old childhood friend, Rosie, comes back into his
life.

18-Jun-2008
La Plante, Lynda. 1997. Trial and retribution.
London: Macmillan.
Five-year-old Julie Harris goes missing, and her
mother's lover is one of the suspects, but most in the
neighbourhood suspect Michael Dunn, a dirty semi-vagrant
who frequently has children watching videos in his flat.
The police battle to find evidence to link him to the
crime.

5-Jul-2008
Zola, Emile. 2007 [1890] The beast within. London:
Penguin.
S‚verine Roubaud reveals to her husband the fact that
she had been sexually abused in her youth by someone who
was apparently her guardian and benefactor, and her
husband, enraged, plots revenge, but this sours their
relations. The action takes place along the Paris-Le
Havre railway, where many of the main characters are
employed.

	User:	noetic_toe
	Date:	2008-07-04 10:41
	Subject:	Blueberry Pancakes and Canon Law
	Security:	Public

I was up early this morning, making blueberry pancakes for the early risers in the family. I'm in a cooking mood—we have a small get-together with friends this evening at which I will be grilling my award-winning parboiled barbecued chicken. It is actually my aunt Christine's recipe that I have swiped and standardized. We visited with Joe and Christine and their clan on Sunday evening and she made it for me because she knows it is my favorite. It was so good that I determined to roll it out for the holiday.

While visiting with the family, I discovered that the chicken recipe has been officially dubbed Munden Point Chicken. Munden Point is a spot in Virginia Beach where my family used to gather to swim, grill, eat, and relax in earlier times. To be honest, I can't recall ever having this chicken at Munden Point but obviously someone somewhere did.

Last night I was up late last night reading A Quest for Reform of the Orthodox Church: The 1923 Pan-Orthodox Congress by Priest Patrick Viscuso. Fr. Patrick provides a great overview and analysis of the 1923 Congress' deliberations and then provides his own, new translation of the minutes and acts of the Congress. Having heard so much about the Congress from a distance, so to speak, it was very enlightening to read the actual debates and discussion.

The Congress' most celebrated act was the recommendation of the Revised Julian Calendar to the Local Orthodox Churches. But this was only one of several important questions the Congress considered. Remarriage of widowed clergy, clergy dress, fasting rules, etc., were also on the agenda. Very interesting stuff.

Fr. Patrick also has another book out that I picked up recently: Orthodox Canon Law: A Casebook for Study. This one plainly appeals to the lawyer in me. Fr. Patrick expounds his view of canon law in a clear, concise, and compelling way. Case studies are provided, together with quotes from primary sources and commentators, followed by discussion questions. The three main areas covered are a general introduction to canon law, marriage and gender issues, and the structure of the Church. I like this book and recommend it, but I do wish it were published in a more standard format (it is a large-ish, square book).

Happy Fourth!

	User:	orthodoxy (posted by ann_d)
	Date:	2008-07-04 05:10
	Subject:
	Security:	Public

Dear everyone, we need you help!

Our Russian Orthodox Church site "Orthodoxy and the World" contains plenty of information about Orthodox Christianity and we try to do our best to give people a chance to know more about it. Since very few good things are translated into English, and those that are are under strict copyright, we're doing that ourselves.

We need proofreaders, there isn't a single native speaker in our team and we're afraid that non-native accent in our texts can hamper general understanding so that people wouldn't like to read the texts up. Impeccable language can have the opposite effect :)

Please, help us.

We're all volunteers and have no financial support, thus there probably won't be more than 1 text in a couple of weeks.

If anybody could possibly help with the translation - would be absolutely fantastic!!

	User:	noetic_toe
	Date:	2008-07-03 15:55
	Subject:	Funeral Podcast
	Security:	Public

The memorial service for my Uncle Al can be heard right here. Of particular note is my cousin Melody's moving eulogy—really, a biographical sketch—that starts right at 11:00 minutes in. Melody has inherited her dad's storytelling talent.

	User:	orthodoxy (posted by jdillingham)
	Date:	2008-07-02 18:56
	Subject:
	Security:	Public

 Does anyone know what "Jacob of Serugh" is going to be in Russian?  Thank you!

	User:	douloijohanna
	Date:	2008-07-02 17:39
	Subject:	Torture Updates
	Security:	Public

Two bits of news about the American government-sanctioned torture scene:

First, reporter and Iraq War hawk Christopher Hutchins endures waterboarding and concludes, "Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture." 

Second, the NYTimes breaks the story that the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used at our gulag in Guantanamo were "copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners. 'What makes this document doubly stunning is that these were techniques to get false confessions,' Mr. Levin said. 'People say we need intelligence, and we do. But we don’t need false intelligence.'"

	User:	noetic_toe
	Date:	2008-07-01 22:45
	Subject:	Uncle Al's Obit
	Security:	Public

Here is a very nice statement by Eastern Mennonite University on the passing of my uncle Albert Keim.

	User:	orthodoxy (posted by methodius)
	Date:	2008-07-02 04:29
	Subject:	Atonement theology
	Security:	Public

There seems to be quite a lot of discussion among Evangelical Protestants these days about the Calvinist penal substitution theory of the atonement. I've tried to give an Orthodox take on it in an article on Salvation and atonement on my Khanya blog, as it seems that it might be closer to what those who are unhappy with the penal substitution theory are looking for.

Comments and criticisms welcome, of course, but also it might be something that Orthodox Christians could discuss with their Evangelical Protestant friends.

I've also posted this in my personal LJ -- hope too many people don't get duplicates.

	User:	methodius
	Date:	2008-07-02 04:22
	Subject:	Atonement theology
	Security:	Public

There seems to be quite a lot of discussion among Evangelical Protestants these days about the Calvinist penal substitution theory of the atonement. I've tried to give an Orthodox take on it in an article on Salvation and atonement on my Khanya blog, as it seems that it might be closer to what those who are unhappy with the penal substitution theory are looking for.

Comments and criticisms welcome, of course, but also it might be something that Orthodox Christians could discuss with their Evangelical Protestant friends.

	User:	douloijohanna
	Date:	2008-07-01 20:30
	Subject:	What a weekend...
	Security:	Public

I drove down to Sugar Land to spend the weekend with my brother and his family while killing time waiting for Steve to show up with Keith's moving truck.  This'll be the third weekend in a row we've helped someone move -- first Joe, then Steve's parents, then Keith.  Steve flew out to Colorado, helped load the truck, and drove it back here.  He got absolutely no sleep the night before he flew out, so he started off tired.  Then he pulled another all-nighter to drive the truck to Texas. 

I didn't pull any all-nighters, but I did drive down to Houston and back with the kids in tow and manage them alone for about a week.  That's enough to tire out any body!

I still feel like I'm recuperating.  I have a lot of work lined up for tomorrow, and I'm not very confident that I'll get it all done.  Let's hope I do.

	User:	greek_lessons (posted by ssurprize)
	Date:	2008-07-01 18:13
	Subject:	Lesson #4 from Zafiria Kostopoulou
	Security:	Public

Revision - Practice on the genders

	User:	noetic_toe
	Date:	2008-06-28 21:37
	Subject:	Strange Things
	Security:	Public

I filled up the Suburban today. The pump maxed out at $100. For one tank of gas. I can remember when I maxed out at $50 and thought that was something.

We took the kids to see WALL*E this afternoon. The movie opens with a panoramic view of space over a trash-filled Earth. The song Put on Your Sunday Clothes from Hello, Dolly! plays in the background. Is it odd that my kids could sing along from the very first note?

	User:	noetic_toe
	Date:	2008-06-27 18:19
	Subject:	Weekend Update -- Uncle Al
	Security:	Public

My dad's eldest brother Albert passed away last evening. Sadly, this is the second of the nine siblings to pass in less than a year. I'm hoping this isn't an annual trend.

We will be traveling to Harrisonburg, VA, next week for the visitation and funeral after a brief foray into South Carolina on Sunday to drop Noah at summer camp.

	User:	noetic_toe
	Date:	2008-06-27 17:54
	Subject:	Micah Update -- Scary Morning
	Security:	Public

This morning provided a little excitement: Micah woke up in good spirits and bounded to the counter where we keep his battery rechargers and the dehumidifier that cleans and dries his speech processors each night.

He got out the first processor, put the battery in, and slapped it on.

"Oops," he said. "Wrong ear!" He had put the old processor on the new ear. We thought nothing of it.

He swapped ears and then fixed the new processor and put it on. But something was wrong.

"Ouch!" he said. "My head hurts inside. That processor hurts me!"

We went into troubleshooting mode. Everything appeared to be in fine working order. There was nothing visible on his skull that could be wrong—no swelling or redness. But every instance of sound that moved through the new processor's coil seemed to be hurting him internally, like a shock or a burn. It got progressively worse.

"Call Holly!" he wailed. "Why is it broken?!?" (Holly is our audiologist, without whom we would be lost.)

After many steps and missteps, switching of components, and phone calls with Holly and others at CASTLE, we finally were able to figure out that lowering the volume helped make the pain at least tolerable.

By the afternoon, however, things were back to normal. Shell moved him to the standard sensitivity and volume settings without complaint.

We think what happened is that his left ear processor overloaded his right ear internals. The left ear, having built up 5 years worth of resistance to the electrical stimulus, takes a whole lot more juice to run. The right ear, with only a week's worth of experience, is just not able to take that kind of jolt. It's sort of like burning one's fingertips on the stove—it takes time for the sensation to pass and if you keep rubbing the fingertips it's gonna hurt.

All's well that ends well, I suppose. He is having no pain now. We have a sticker on the old processor, which tells us which is which, but I think he'll be more careful about getting it on the correct side from here on out.

	User:	orthodoxy (posted by zaika_krasivaia)
	Date:	2008-06-27 11:07
	Subject:	Wildfires threaten monasteries in California.
	Security:	Public

In case you haven't heard...

Prayer Request

His Grace Bishop Maxim of the Western American Diocese urges all of our Orthodox faithful to offer prayers for the protection of the St. Herman of Alaska Serbian Orthodox Monastery in Platina, California and the St. Xenia Skete in Wildwood. Wild fires are quickly approaching the Monastery grounds and the Monastery is in great danger of being burned down. The Monastic Community has been evacuated and are seeking refuge in the neighboring parish of Redding, California. 

Please visit this link for updates.