Posted in Books and Quotes on Monday, 20 August 2007 | 2 Comments »
Well, at long lost, I have begun (completed first five chapters of) the final installment of the Harry Potter series. I must say, the first 80-odd pages have not disappointed. I found myself waxing quite maudlin at Dumbledore’s death in book 6 again. And then I got mad as yet another character got killed off [...]
Posted in Books and Quotes on Monday, 22 August 2005 | 5 Comments »
In my previous blogging about sola scriptura, one of my fellow parishioners emailed me about David Trobisch’s The First Edition of the New Testament (Oxford: 2000). I was intrigued. He offered it to me as a gift. And I am extremely grateful. I present here something of a summary and review [...]
Posted in Books and Quotes on Sunday, 31 July 2005 | 8 Comments »
If you haven’t read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and/or you don’t want to know the really big plot spoiler I will reveal in my rant, do not click on the link to continue reading.
I’m serious: You will be reading about THE REALLY BIG THING THAT HAPPENS AT THE END OF THE BOOK if [...]
Posted in Books and Quotes on Tuesday, 7 June 2005 | 1 Comment »
John of the Cross’ Dark Night of the Soul, translated by E. Allison Peers, is available online. So, too is Ascent of Mt. Carmel and Spiritual Canticle.
From that other well-known Carmelite, Teresa of Avila, you can read the following online: Life of Teresa of Jesus, Interior Castle, and Way of Perfection
Those with Russian and/or [...]
Posted in Books and Quotes on Friday, 22 April 2005 | Comments Off
. . . [T]he theology of the Eastern Church distinguishes in God the three hypostases, the nature or essence, and the energies. The Son and the Holy Spirit are, so to say, personal processions, the energies natural processions. The energies are inseparable from the nature, and the nature is inseparable from the three [...]
Posted in Books and Quotes on Tuesday, 21 September 2004 | No Comments »
Annie Dillard ends her meditations with a prayer for Julie.
There is Julie Norwich. Julie Norwich is salted with fire. She is preserved like a salted fillet from all evil, baptized at birth into time and now into eternity, into the bladelike arms of God. For who will love her now, without a [...]
Posted in Books and Quotes on Monday, 20 September 2004 | No Comments »
Today is Friday, November 20. Julie Norwich is in the hospital, burned; we can get no word of her condition. People released from burn wards, I read once, have a very high suicide rate. They had not realized, before they were burned, that life could include such suffering, nor that they personally [...]
Posted in Books and Quotes on Sunday, 19 September 2004 | 1 Comment »
Facing squarely the rock mountain and the salt sea, the airplane fallen from the sky, and little Julie Norwich burned, Annie Dillard is ready. Am I?
I know only enough of God to worship him, by any means ready to hand. There is an anomalous specificity to all our experience in space, a scandal [...]
Posted in Books and Quotes on Saturday, 18 September 2004 | 2 Comments »
Julie Norwich lies burned in the hospital. Annie Dillard continues her meditation.
So I read. Angels, I read, belong to nine different orders. Seraphs are the highest; they are aflame with love for God, and stand closer to him than the others. Seraphs love God; cherubs, who are second, possess perfect knowledge [...]
Posted in Books and Quotes on Friday, 17 September 2004 | 1 Comment »
I continue to swallow the necessary medicine. Dillard continues:
Jesse her father had grabbed her clear of the plane this morning, and was hauling her off when the fuel blew. A gob of flung ignited vapor hit her face, or something flaming from the plane or fir tree hit her face. No one [...]
Posted in Books and Quotes on Thursday, 16 September 2004 | 2 Comments »
In 1975, Annie Dillard spent some time on the islands of Puget Sound. In the course of a Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in November, a plane crashed on the island. From the events of that week, she wrote a book, Holy the Firm. I am reading it now because I need to. [...]
Posted in Books and Quotes on Tuesday, 6 January 2004 | Comments Off
I read twenty-six fewer books in 2003 than in 2002. Guess that’s what a new baby will do to you.
Among the notable reads:
1. Hieromonk Damascene Christenson, Not of This World and Father Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works. I actually began reading the original version of St. Seraphim’s biography in the fall of [...]
Posted in Books and Quotes on Tuesday, 12 August 2003 | Comments Off
Yannaras’ The Freedom of Morality is not for the average reader. One needs a decent grounding in both philosophy and theology. But if one can patiently come to grips with the point of the first chapter (”The Masks of Morality and the Ethos of the Person”), and its reinforcements in the next two, [...]
Posted in Books and Quotes on Monday, 11 August 2003 | Comments Off
Published posthumously, Genesis, Creation and Early Man is a compendium of the writings of Blessed Seraphim of Platina dealing with the patristic interpretation of Genesis 1-11 and the wider topic of evolution.
Hieromonk Damascene Christenson, editor of Blessed Seraphim’s writings and author of his biography, provides a detailed preface describing the origin of these writings. [...]
Posted in Books and Quotes on Thursday, 10 July 2003 | Comments Off
In the life of the Church, God reveals Himself as the hypostasis of being, the personal hypostasis of eternal life. The personal existence of God is the comprehensive and exhaustive expression of the truth of being. It is not the essence or energy of God which constitutes being, but His personal mode of [...]
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