I read an article that made me think today. I am fortunate to not have seen the performance at the VMA awards that involved Robin Thicke and Miley Cyrus. But, the father who wrote the article watched the awards on TV with his 17 year old son. It was meant to be a togetherness time. […]
Archives for August 2013
Syria, intervention, the world, and polls
Right now the USA is about to decide whether to intervene in Syria or not. As an Antiochian priest, what happens in Syria concerns me. It concerns me because our Patriarch is headquartered in Damascus, Syria. Thus, both the incredible slaughter and the possible intervention concerns me. Today, the government of President Obama received an […]
Video games and theology????
The quote below comes from the manual of a video game: Accidie: rejecting life… is a Middle English word, retrieved because the usual word, “sloth,” now only expresses a trivial laziness. Accidie is a form of spiritual despair, a refusal of grace, a bargain with nothingness that shuts out God’s gift of the new possibility. […]
First sleep, second sleep, monastic hours
From an NPR program: One particularly fascinating sleep fact that Randall reports is that the sleep rhythms of the human brain have fundamentally changed over the centuries. Medieval literary texts, medical manuscripts and tales make reference to a mysterious "first sleep" and "second sleep." The "first sleep" began shortly after sundown and lasted until after […]
When not to show a show
Above is a Walt Disney short that never gets shown on TV today. You can only find it on the Internet, not even in any cartoon collections from Walt Disney. The cartoon is no longer shown because there is frequent use of characters in “blackface.” As this is not considered acceptable today, that is but […]
A Tuff approach to violent school invaders
This morning I watched an interview on cable TV of Antionette Tuff, the woman who talked an armed Georgia young man to give himself up to the police. Up above is a tape of many parts of the conversation she had with the gunman. While parts have been cut out, all the essentials are caught. […]
Joke left me pi-eyed
“I love math jokes. They’re so calculated.” The drawing comes from the Facebook site of George Takei. The quote comes from a comment made on the picture. The name of the author of the quote was withheld for privacy purposes. OK, why does the drawing above spell out pizza?
Orthodoxy and correct wear
I like this picture of soldiers attending Orthodox worship or perhaps attending confession. (The royal doors appear to be closed.) It is unclear whether this is in the USA or another country, though I am betting on another country. The camo gear does not appear to be of USA BDU patterns. As well, what appears […]
The Akathist of Thanksgiving and PTSD
That which is broken cannot be restored, but You can set aright those whose conscience has become decayed; You restore the soul to its former beauty in those who have lost it beyond all hope. With You there is nothing that cannot be put aright. You are all love. You are the Creator and the […]
Beautiful NASA photograph– o_O oh OH
You can find the original of the article here. It is your typical science article about a photograph taken by the Cassini spacecraft as it orbits Saturn. The article is actually about the tiny moon, the rings, how Saturn’s moons pass by each other, etc. The point that is being made by the article are […]
