Choir of the Eparchy of Tripoli

I’m experiencing a surge of Antiochian Orthodox Christian pride lately, with the election of our new archpastor Saba, and my lenten music listening heavily favors the glorious choir of the Eparchy of Tripoli (Lebanon).

Tomie dePaola

My favorite American illustrator passed away on Monday. Eternal be his memory.

Tomie dePaola speaks with America executive editor Kerry Weber about his latest book "Quiet" and what he hopes children will learn from his work. Read more a...

The Science Delusion

Remind me to show this to my children when they are in high school science. Rupert Sheldrake applying the scientific process to the modern religion of science itself, to demonstrate how many assumptions it’s based on that are beliefs, not facts. Well worth the listen to anyone who is alive in the 19th century or later. If you’re not alive during that time period this might not interest you.

Author of the best-selling Science Delusion; proponent of morphic resonance; banned by TED. Rupert Sheldrake has been dubbed the most controversial scientist on Earth. His best-selling book, The Science Delusion, tackles what he calls the dogmas within conventional science which can blind us to deeper discoveries about the way the world works.

Senator Stephanie Flowers

I don’t often mention it, but I am from Arkansas, and all my family are from Arkansas.

The Arkansas Senate Judiciary Committee voted down a bill that would have loosened regulations for the use of deadly force in self-defense. Video courtesy Arkansas Senate livestream
Both Sens. Stephanie Flowers and Bob Ballinger spoke after a video went viral where Flowers gave an emotional speech against a "Stand Your Ground" bill that failed in committee. Video courtesy Arkansas Senate

A Hymn in NYC

My manboy Suf closes out the program on National Public Radio's Live From Here in NYC with Chris Thile. When's the last time a public theater full of New Yorkers sang a sacred prayer to Jesus Christ in earnest solemnity? Magic. 

The moment was too holy, it seems the host forewent the usual end credits to lead all in singing the hymn's fifth verse. 

Who has the courage to sing of Jesus's rejection and passion in a mixed audience that would certainly include Jewish people? A prophet. A Christian trying to find his way to the Truth, and to stay in the Truth. For all of us.

OAJ Interview with Ioan Popa

Fr. Silouan Justiniano recently interviewed the extraordinary Romanian iconographer Ioan Popa for the Orthodox Arts Journal. Below is my favorite passage, from Mr. Popa. Here he is addressing the context and creative challenges facing contemporary church painters. He lays out an artistic credo: an evangelical foundation for the ministry of iconography as a pastoral work.

"You have to think deeply to whom you are addressing the painting: To you, to your fellows, or to God? If we apply love as an evangelical foundation, I think that we must carefully bend towards the way our fellows feel things. Even though most of the times they are not educated, the love of beauty is seeded in them. And as servants in color we can either alleviate or exhaust them through what we paint; we can send them a message or, worse, confuse them.

"So we can use all the tools allowed: concise and powerful visual shapes, a narrow but valuable chromatic palette, gold foil not in excess, dropping frames between scenes in order to let the viewer read them as sequences, a careful balance between full and empty, monumentality, texts developed to replace abusive ornaments, dropping landscape or architectural accessories in scenes, and emphasizing the conception in unity with the rest of the liturgical objects from the interior. I do not exaggerate if I compare the image of today’s icon with a qualitative advertising banner. Practically, both address the same contemporary person in everyday life."

Ioan Popa

Source: https://www.orthodoxartsjournal.org/toward...

The Ancestral Wound: The Home of Shame's Voice

Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Gen 3:1-5)

"The dark voice accuses God. Everything is colored by its resentment and mistrust. “God just doesn’t want you to be like Him…” Imagine that statement coming from a very lonely, very hurt, very suspicious child. And in this case, the voice is being planted and exploited by our true nemesis.

"The result is our shame. We hide ourselves. And now the hiding place is a dark wound within us, one that lives like a grumble. It is the shame-filled nemesis who now whispers a narrative for our day.

"This voice is stronger in some than others, depending on the depth and severity of the wound. It can also grow stronger, if it is allowed to become the dominant sound in our heads. As Christians, we resist it (sometimes). It puzzles us and shakes any confidence we might have in our own faith. “How can I think such things?” we wonder. You didn’t think them. The words are the voice of something very old (and young) and unattended.

"It is a place that, ironically, requires compassion. It is easy to identify such negative energy as an enemy, and nurture a kind of self-loathing. But self-loathing (of that sort), is easily nothing more than the sound of the voice you have come to loathe. It is a loathing that feeds on itself as a toxic rant rather than bringing about healing."

Fr. Stephen Freeman

Source: https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/glory2godfo...

The Greatest Gift

stop motion animation music video by Sufjan Stevens of a recently released short, using cut out Jehovah's Witness pamphlet illustrations. Ridiculous, tongue-in-cheek, exuberant, restrained, and also completely earnest.