Here are few excerpts from Catherine Ruth Pakaluk’s book, Hannah’s Children. Dr Pakaluk is an economist and professor at the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. The book includes many interviews with women who have chosen to have large families.

From page 303 where she quotes Lisa:

One of my twins, the boy, had a really bad bout with depression and anxiety when he was about eight or nine. And it was this sixth baby that turned him around-just having this little person that loved him unconditionally and that he could love unconditionally. And it ws, the baby was the turning point.

It was a scary, dark, dark place. And we’d be working with counselors and trying to get his meds right and trying to figure things out and he’d really not made much progress for months and months and months.

And when we broght this baby [home], I mean, I just, I can see clearly just him even coming to the hospital and cradling that baby in his arms and just feeling that peace right for the first time-just for me as a mom, watching this boy, with my own anxiety about how are we going to help him get through this, to just see that peace come over him, and holding the baby.

And they’ve been really close, really sweet buddies from the very beginning. The baby he, I mean, he loves [my elder son]. They have a special bond and just to have someone that [my elder son] could love and that would love him back with no judgment at all, and not care what his behavior had been.

It just didn’t matter. He could love on that baby. It was healing for him.

. . . . {more to be added}

I rarely post on politics anymore, being more interested in religion. Nevertheless, here’s a link to a post by Sasha Stone:
https://sashastone.substack.com/p/why-trump-is-polling-ahead-of-biden

From Thomas Joseph White’s The Principles of Catholic Theology, Book 2, page 44:

Where ought one to begin when making discernments about ultimate truth, or what ought we to presuppose as we start out? Arguably we should not leap immediately to the question of ultimate reality, but we should start instead with the topic of ordinary reality as we perceive it all the time. What is indisputably real? Interestingly, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim philosophers in the high Middle Ages who were inspired by Aristotle started their philosophical investigations typically not with reflections on God but with reflections on what they called “common being,” the kinds of things we experience all around us, and moved from these to the consideration of God. How then can we think non-controversially about the multiplicity of realities that we typically experience? What properties do they all have in common? To address thes question, medieval philosophers developed the concept of the transcendentals: being, unity, truth, goodness, and beauty. These are basic notions of reality that we inevitably make use of when we think about ordinary reality as we encounter it every day. They emerge in us naturally and inevitably as we begin to think about realities around us, in their natures and properties. Since these notions are very basic, they are something all persons inevitably employ, including those who hold to any of the distinctive worldviews we noted above (and any others for that matter). Such notions stem from considerations in ordinary experience of what exists and does not exist, the multiplicity and unity of beings, their truth and falsehood, their goodness and the reality of evil, and the beauty in things and their potential ugliness. Everyone inevitably thinks about these things, no matter how basic their reflections may be. Transcendental notions are so general that everyone makes use of them in some way, even if they never reflect on this usage self-consciously. We should consider each of them briefly, then, as it concerns our investigations. Why? If we can identify a general form of metaphysical realism that is natural to all human beings in virtue of their intellectual activity, we can in turn identify the foundations in reality from which these notions derive. Subsequently we can consider how those foundations (structures of being themselves) provide an indication to us of what is ultimately real. This will allow us progressively to think in a constructive and focused way about the controverted question of the truth of Christianity.

The below is from pp 42-44 in Thomas Joseph White’s 2024 book, The Principles of Catholic Theology Book 2: On the Rational Credibility of Christianity (in Chapter 1 Why Not Be an Atheist? The Enigma of Human Existence and the Question of Reasonable Religious Belief)

Of course, other traditions are purely monotheistic. One may naturally think of Judaism and Christianity, as well as their famous rival Islam. But there are less widespread monotheistic tradions, which are also quite significant, such as Hindu Vaishnavism, Sikhism, and Persian Zoroastrianism. These traditions and their diversity raise several significant questions. Should any one religious tradition really be allowed to tell us something final and conclusive about God, or should we rely uniquely or primarily upon philosophy in order to think about such questions? Perhaps philosophical reason can be used to protect us from the “myths of the poets” and the religious delusions of men, even while steering us toward God. This was the claim of several prominent modern Enlightenment philosophers (Locke and Kant).

At the same time, we should ask whether philosophy alone suffices to give us conclusive knowledge of who God is and, if not, whether we should trust appeals to revelation? If we do open ourselves up rationally to the possibility of divine revelation, under what circumstances or conditions should we do so? Likewise, if we do appeal to divine revelation to think about God, must we then abandon the philosoiphical attempt to attain knowledge of God? De we have to choose between divine revelation and human philosophy? And should we be forced into a situation where we are obliged to choose “the one true religion” against all other forms of religiosity distinct from it? Can one believe in an absolute revelation and still learn from other religious traditions? In other words, how should we navigate claims of the different religious traditions, their truth foundations and absence thereof, and the questions of their compatibility with one another and with philosophical reason?

These topics can seem vast and even overwhelming or at least seriously challenging. Presumably, if there is a true “revealed religion,” the we need that religious tradition itself to help us resolve these thorny issues. If we were to find such intellectual competence in Christianity, for example, that would be precisely one sign of its unique truthfulness, and it could in turn help us come to term with these legitimate questions. Furthermore, on this view, shouldn’t the revealed religion in question also provide us with a living tradition of philosophical resources by which we can think through these complicated issues? For if a “revealed religion” presents us with a theological form of thinking about God we are meant to take seriously, it must also make competent use of natural human reason in the service of and in harmon with its religious teachings. This is an issue we will return to below.

[That last paragraph really grabbed my attention and prompted my posting this excerpt since I appreciate both Byzantine liturgy and Thomist philosophy.]

Bible Study resources from my little library:

A) Preliminary
1) From the Ukrainian Catholic Catechism: Revelation of the Most Holy Trinity (pp 15-32)
2) Providentissimus Deus (On the study of Holy Scripture), encyclical of Pope Leo XIII

B) Commentaries and Meditations
1) On Genesis 1: Books 11-13 of Saint Augustine’s Confessions
2) On John 1:1-18: In the Beginning was the Word by Anthony Esolen
3) On Colossians, Philemon, Ephesians: by FF Bruce
4) On the Gospel According to John; Saint Theophylact

For thousands of years performance art has revolved around a two hour performance criteria, plus or minus some time. Movies have not really changed that; however, long form tv drama is doing new things.

The long form tv dramas of east Asia have no real equivalent in the west.

A coherent story, with beginning middle and end like western movies; however lasting from 15 hours to over 30 hours. In episodes of course, all done within one year. A modern, creative use of tv technology and it is interesting how the various technical aesthetic problems of this extended format are dealt with. I mainly watch romantic comedy/slice of life/historical drama, maybe better labeled comedy of manners, taking Henry James and Jane Austen novels (Novel in the sense defined in Northrop Frye’s Anatomy of Criticism) as my literary benchmark. I will be interested how this particular form of performance art develops, it’s still very new.

     In Korea, protagonists tend to be in early 30s, in China early 20s. I’ve come to prefer the 16 session, 1 hour format favored in Korea: more aesthetic coherence there. Also, South Korea being smaller, the dramas can be more culturally comprehensive and not as urban focused as the Chinese dramas (However, see the Chinese series ‘Meet Yourself’ and Chinese historical dramas). On the other hand, the Chinese dramas have broader cultural interest even with the explicit governmental oversight. In both cases, I’m very interested in the virtue ethics influence going back to ancient Confucian culture (see, for example “Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy by Byran W. Van Norden).

Korea 

See the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_drama for the following three quotes

“A single director usually leads Korean dramas, which are often written by a single screenwriter. This often leads to each drama having distinct directing and dialogue styles.”

“The main themes of Korean television dramas are friendship, family values, and love, blending traditional Confucian with Western materialism and individualism.”

“In contrast to practices elsewhere, the first four episodes of Korean series are usually shot in advance, but the rest are shot continuously as the series is being aired. Scripts are not finished in advance, and may change according to viewer feedback and viewership ratings, where popular characters receive increased screen time and plotlines are changed to match audience expectations.^[9] These changes may occur a few hours before daily shooting, and the crew might receive only a few ready pages. The production usually works with three camera crews, who work in a rotating manner to speed up filming. Because of unregulated script changes and tight shooting schedules, actors are almost continuously on standby, and have no time to leave the set or sleep properly. The Korean media have a separate word to describe irregular, short sleeps that actors resort to, in often uncomfortable positions, or within the set: jjok-jam (쪽잠), or “side-sleeping”. Dramas usually air on two days every week, with following episodes having to be shot within the intervening five days. Some Korean actors have admitted to receiving IV therapy during filming, due to extreme schedules and exhaustion. Nonetheless, the live-shoot model remains widely used since the production team can react to real time audience feedback.”

I started watching Kdrama on Netflix; however, now I mainly use the Viki streaming service. Viki.com is also interesting due to their creative crowdsourcing of subtitling. From Wikipedia: Rakuten Viki is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. It streams videos similar to other services, but also allows users to subtitle content available in 200 languages as well as providing original programming. Headquartered in San Mateo, California, it has offices in Singapore, Tokyo, Japan, and Seoul, South Korea. The Viki subtitling also subtitles song lyrics!

My Sweet Mobster 2024 (Viki)
That Winter, The Wind Blows 2013 (Viki)
Descendants of the Sun 2016 (Viki)
Now, We Are Breaking Up 2021 (Viki)
Encounter 2018 (Viki)
What’s Wrong With Secretary Kim 2018 (Viki)
Midnight Romance in Hagwon 2024 (Viki)
Do You Like Brahms 2020 (Viki)
Something in the Rain 2018 (Viki)
Backstreet Rookie 2020 (Viki)
Oh, My Baby 2020 (Viki)
One Spring Rain 2019 (Netflix)
Business Proposal 2022 (Netflix)
Crash Landing on You 2020 (Netflix)
Extraordinary Attorney Woo 2022 (Netflix)
Hometown Cha-Cha-Cha 2021 (Netflix)
Welcome to Samdal-Ri 2023 (Netflix)

China

And here are some Chinese tv dramas. In the past, I think Korea has had a better understanding of the artform in general. However, interesting stuff coming from China nowadays and lately I’m mainly watching Chinese historical romances.

Are You the One 2024 (Viki) this is my favorite
Melody of Golden Age 2024 (Viki)
Cupid’s Kitchen 2022 (Viki)
Here We Meet Again 2023 (Viki)
Will Love in Spring 2024 (Viki)
The Princess Royal 2024 (Viki)
Fireworks of My Love 2023 (Viki)
As Beautiful as You 2024 (Viki)
Meet Yourself 2023 (Viki)
Amidst a Snowstorm of Love 2024 (Viki)
Falling Into Your Smile 2021 (Viki)
When I Fly Toward You 2023 (Viki)

_____________________________________________________

In contrast, in the USA, collegiate hookup ‘culture’ (see, e.g., Tom Wolfe’s novel I Am Charlotte Simmons) is drifting down to the high school level. For example, see the recent Netflix series My Life with the Walter Boys. 

The main Christian Sunday service has two predominant styles, albeit with various mixtures, the Rhetorical and the Liturgical.

The rhetorical style is dominant among protestants and is characterized by the congregation sitting and listening to a learned sermon lasting about an hour. A significant advantage of this style is its low performance/startup costs: all that is needed is one skilled public speaker with political savvy. The congregation, ideally literate, is also accustomed to this style from school and college. This style has its origins with Luther, Wesley, and other college professors.

I will represent the liturgical style, being less familiar to most, by the Byzantine rite of many Eastern Orthodox and Easter Catholics. This style goes back to the 5th century liturgy of Saints Chrysostom and Basil, which itself has roots all the way back to second temple Judaism. A significant advantage of this style is that the congregation need not be literate. However more theatrical skill is required of the leadership. If you are unfamiliar with this style here’s a link to such in the Portland Oregon area: https://www.stgeorgepdx.org/

     The modern Roman Catholic and Anglican services attempt to use a combination of these two styles. Both rather unsatisfactorily in my opinion (with the  older Latin rite Roman Catholic Mass, now deprecated by the Vatican, being more liturgical than the modern novus ordu), and of very little interest to me. 

     Of course all of these styles have auxiliary support needs; however, I’m just focusing on the essentials (“Don’t get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein).

The rhetorical style focuses on truth, the liturgical style focuses on beauty, while both are essentially supported by goodness, which is largely expressed outside the regular church services of the sanctuary.

While I take the three transcendentals to be equally important, the Internet can better support resources related to Truth than to Beauty, in my opinion (see, for example, https://instituteofcatholicculture.org/events ). Therefore, nowadays the main church service should give particular attention to Beauty. This has lots of consequences.

The below is from Thomas Hopko’s 40 day devotional book ‘The Winter Pascha’, from the second meditation, on ‘come and see’:

The story (John 1:43-51) is typical of St John’s gospel. The people first encounter the man “Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” The meet Him as a man, the one “of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote.” then they go further. What they come to see is that this man is not merely the promised prophet and teacher; He is the Anointed, the Christ, the Messiah, the King of Israel. He is the Son of God. Indeed He is God Himself in human form.

The pattern in St John’s gospel is always the same. We see it in the narratives of the paralytic at the pool, the Samaritan woman at the well, the boy born blind, the encounter of Martha and Mary with Jesus at the tomb of Lazarus. The sequence of events is identical. It is a necessary sequence, not only historically, but spiritually and mystically.

We must first come to see Jesus the man. We must come to know Him as a concrete human being, a Jew, as rabbi, a prophet. We must meet Him as Mary’s child, the carpenter’s son, the Nazarene. Then, in this encounter, when our eyes are open and our hearts are pure, we can come to see “greater things.” We can come to know Him not simply as a teacher, but the Teacher, not simply as a prophet, but the Prophet. We can come to know Him not merely as a son of man, but as the Son of man foretold by the prophet Daniel (Dan. 7:13-14). We can come to see Him not simply as a son of God, but as the Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages. We can come to recognize Him as God’s Word in human flesh as God’s Image in human form (Heb. 1; Jn 1:17-18). And finally, we can come to see Him as God Himself, not the Father, but the Father’s Son, divine with the Father’s own divinity, sent into the world for its salvation.

The first step on the way of the Winter Pascha is the encounter with the man Jesus. We are invited with Philip and the disciples to “come and see.” . . .

My little library has one line:
Eastern Orthodoxy; Alexander Schmemann

For me, that consists of three books:

• The Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy; Alexander Schmemann
• For the Life of the World; Alexander Schmemann
• The Winter Pasha; Thomas Hopko

In the Byzantine rite for Orthros (morning prayer/Matins) on Sunday, after the reading of the Resurrection gospel (see below), we say:

Now that we have seen the resurrection of Christ, let us adore the all-holy Lord Jesus, the only Sinless One. We bow in worship before Your Cross, O Christ, and we praise and glorify Your Resurrection, for you are our God, and we have no other, and we magnify Your name. All you faithful, come: let us adore the holy Resurrection of Christ; for behold, through the Cross joy has come to the world. Let us always bless the Lord, let us sing His Resurrection, for by enduring for us the pain of the Cross, He has crushed death by His death.

Psalm 50

O God, have mercy on me
in the greatness of Your love;
-In the abundance of Your tender mercies,
wipe out my offense.

-Wash me thoroughly from malice
and cleanse me from sin,
-For I am well aware of my malice
and my sin is before me always.

-It is You alone I have offended,
I have done what is evil in Your sight,
-Wherefore You are just in Your deeds
and triumphant in Your judgment.

-Behold I was born in iniquities
and in sins my mother conceived me.
-But You are the lover of truth:
You have shown me the depths and secrets of Your wisdom.

-Wash me with hyssop and I shall be pure,
cleanse me and I shall be whiter than snow.
-Let me hear sounds of joy and feasting;
the bones that were afflicted shall rejoice.

-Turn Your face away from my offenses
and wipe off all my sins.
-A spotless heart create in me, O god;
renew a steadfast spirit in my breast.
-Cast me not afar from Your face,
take not Your blessed Spirit out of me.
-Restore to me the joy of Your salvation
and let Your guiding Spirit dwell in me.

-I will teach Your ways to the sinners
and the wicked shall return to You.
-Deliver me from blood-guilt, O God, my saving God,
and my tongue will joyfully sing Your justice.

-O Lord, Your shall open my lips,
and my mouth will declare Your praise.
-Had You desired sacrifice, I would have offered it,
but You will not be satisfied with whole-burnt
offerings.

-Sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit:
a crushed and humbled heart God will not spurn.
-In Your kindness, O Lord, be bountiful to Sion;
may the walls of Jerusalem be restored.

-Then will You delight in just oblation,
in sacrifice and whole-burnt offerings.
-Then shall they offer calves upon Your altar.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to
the Holy Spirit.

Orthros Gospel Readings

1. MT 28:16-20
2. MK 16:1-8
3. MK 16:9-20
4. LK 24:1-12
5. LK 24:12-35
6. LK 12:36-53
7. JN 20:1-10
8. JN 20:11-18
9. JN 20:19-31
10. JN 21:1-14
11. JN 21:14-25

Palm Sunday: MT 21:1-11; 15-17
Pentecost: JN 20:19-23
Transfiguration: LK 9:28-36

Before addressing solidarity, I want to categorize social structures in general as:

• Family structures - structures where the bond is blood. This includes both extended families, clans, and Judeo-Christian religious structures.
• Civic structures - structures with voluntary membership or, in some sense, friendship or shared interest.
• State structures - structures that are held together by coercion, either actual or potential.

Any actual social structure will, of course, have some overlap. I’m primarily interested in Family and Civic structures; furthermore, I consider large businesses to be best considered as State structures. Cohesion within any type of social structure is not automatic and the development of solidarity and long term health tends to have different styles depending on the structural type.

Long term growth in solidarity depends on various factors; however, having time together and overcoming obstacles to doing that is essential.

In the first few verses of Exodus there is a shift in perspective, from the tribal (the 71 offspring of Jacob, v 1.5) to the people, the Israelites (v 1.7 and cf Genesis 32.29) filling the land of Egypt. This is a massive shift. Stop and think about it. [1 Peter 2:10 Once you were no people but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy.]

Egypt was the most advanced civilization in the world at that time (roughly 1500-1200BC). Nevertheless, the Israelites became so numerous that Egypt oppressed them more and more, enslaving them and imposing genocidal policies to kill the male Israelite infants. An Israelite, of the tribe of Levi, bore a son Moses and tricked Pharoah’s daughter into adopting him. This historical event, in its various aspects, has been the basis of much reflection over the years. Let’s talk about that and also consider that Moses grew up with access to all the knowledge of the Egyptians while retaining some connection to his people, Israel. [side note: Egypt not ‘all bad’, after all the Holy Family went there to get away from Herod’s tyranny in Israel]

The account of Moses’ killing an Egyptian, being mocked by Israelites and then fleeing to Midian (v 2.11-23) is referenced in the New Testament in Acts 7.23-29,35 and Hebrews 11.24-28.

Exodus chapter three, with its account of the burning bush and the revealing of the divine name, bears reading, and rereading, aloud.

___________________

4th/5th grade Sunday School, fall semester focus: getting out of Egypt

First 20 minutes:
Sunday’s Gospel for Children: https://antiochian.org/regulararticle/809
music: https://stgeorgemelkite.org/resources/our-music/
Last 10 minutes:
Exodus (see above)/bible study

Oct 1st, 2023

Gospel section:
Hebrews 9:1-7
Luke 6:21-36
October 1, 2023: Second Sunday of Luke
Luke 6:31-36: handouts (PDF) | audio younger (MP3) | audio older (MP3)

Exodus section:
chapter 1 (esp 1:1-7) and background
homework: chapter 2

Music: Troparian & first part of OT books song

October 8, 2023: Third Sunday of Luke
Luke 7:11-16: handouts (PDF) | audio younger (MP3) | audio older (MP3)

9 But you are ^za chosen race, ^aa royal ^bpriesthood, ^ca holy nation, ^da people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you ^eout of darkness into ^fhis marvelous light. 10 ^gOnce you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (ESV 1 Peter 2:9-10)

Resurrectional Troparia

• Tone 1 “After The Stone”
• Tone 2 “When You Descended”
• Tone 3 “Let All In Heaven”
• Tone 4 “The Women Disciples”
• Tone 5 “Let Us, O Faithful”
• Tone 6 “The Angelic Powers”
• Tone 7 “You Destroyed Death”
• Tone 8 “You Descended From On High”

• God making an extended family into a people, a nation
• Getting the people out of Egypt
• Getting Egypt out of the people

This is mainly for background for me to use when teaching, as appropriate for various age levels from 4th grade to adults. It is also a place for me to store reference materials for my 9-10 year old Sunday School class.

Besides the Bible (Revised Standard Version), I will be referring to a few books:

• Bible, unabridged Revised Standard Version
• Exodus; Thomas Joseph White, OP
• Commentary on Exodus; U. Cassuto
• Commentary on Exodus; Brevard Childs
• The Life of Moses; St Gregory of Nyssa
• Origin of the Hebrews; Douglas Petrovich
• Horologion; Melkite Greek Catholic liturgy
• Collected Poetry and Prose; Robert Frost
• Classical English Metaphor; Ward Farnsworth

And some articles and link:

• https://www.patheos.com/blogs/leithart/2004/04/exodus-in-romans/
• https://maudestavern.com/2023/06/23/exodus-wisdom-john/
• Psalms 78, 105-106, 135-136

For Sunday School, 9-10 year olds. 30 minute class

First 20 minutes:
Sunday’s Gospel and Troparian
Last 10 minutes:
Exodus or Psalms bible study

A placeholder for notes on my six favorite composers

1. Bach
2. Mozart
3. Beethoven
4. Handel
5. Hayden
6. Chopin

Related books:

• Johann Sebastian Bach; Christopher Wolff
• The Classical Style; Charles Rosen
• The Romantic Generation; Charles Rosen
• Bach, Handel, Scarlatti; ed Peter Williams
• Bach; John Eliot Gardiner

I’m not a musician; however, I grew up listening mostly to classical music from the romantic period. In the Navy, I discovered Mozart and Hayden and then, in the 80s, Bach and Handel. This range of music is what I most enjoy.

Having been amongst a ‘trainload of fools trapped in a magnetic field’, Bob Dylan had, so to speak, a changing of the guards when he stripped and kneeled and said ‘Lord, Lord, you know their hearts are as cold as leather’. The period that followed is often called his ‘gospel period’, referring to Dylans tours and the albums: Slow Train Coming, Saved, and Shot of Love.

However, those albums seem to me more like covers compared to the mature Christian reflection in Dylan’s 1997 album Time Out of Mind. This article will be looking at the songs of that album via the more extensive January 2023 five CD release: FRAGMENTS – TIME OUT OF MIND SESSIONS (1996-1997): THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL. 17.

In an interview with Jeff Slate published in The Wall Street Journal, December 19, 2022 Bob Dylan said: “I’m a religious person. I read the scriptures a lot, meditate and pray, light candles in church. I believe in damnation and salvation, as well as predestination. The Five Books of Moses, Pauline Epistles, Invocation of the Saints, all of it.”

Songs for Pascha

Love Sick - in the manner of Hosea’s prophecy

Dirt Road Blues - incarnation

Standing in the Doorway - in the womb (cf Dignity alternate verse)

Million Miles - living far from heavenly home

Tryin to Get to Heaven - ministry coming to crisis

Til I Fell in Love with You - being nailed to the Cross

Not Dark Yet - dying just before sunset

Cold Irons Bound - descending into Hell

Make You Feel My Love - the risen Lord proclaiming

Can’t Wait - awaiting the Second coming

Dylan ends the album on a more personal note, with Highlands in contrast to the Lowlands of his Blonde on Blonde album.

Let’s now consider each of the songs in more detail (to be continued)

Ward Farnsworth, Dean of the University of Texas School of Law, writes on a wide range of topics. His series on Classical English is special in its quantity and range of examples. The series consists of:

• Classical English Rhetoric
• Classical English Metaphor
• Classical English Style
• Classical English Argument (forthcoming)

From Preface of his Classical English Style:

Abraham Lincoln wrote more beautifully and memorably than anyone in public life does now. So did Winston Churchill; so did Edmund Burke, so did many others, none of whom sound quite alike but all of whom achieved an eloquence that seems foreign to our times. What did they know that we don’t? It might seem strange to seek instruction form writers who lived so long ago. It certainly would sound odd to imitate their styles directly. But writers of lasting stature still make the best teachers. They understood principles of style that are powerful and enduring, even if the principles have to be adapted to our era, or to any other, before they become useful. That is the premise of this book, at any rate. It is a set of lessons on style drawn from writers whose words have stood the test of time.

This book is the third in a series. The first, Classical English Rhetoric, showed how rhetorical figures - ancient patterns for the arrangement of words - have been used to great effect in English oratory and prose. The second, Classical English Metaphor, did the same for figurative comparisons. This one takes a similar approach to more basic questions of style: the selection of words, the arrangement of sentences, the creation of a cadence. It shows how masters of the language have made those choices, and how the choices have put life into their writing and their speech;

. . . .

Typical books about style contain a lot of precepts and a few illustrations of how the concepts work. The ratio in this book is reversed, it depends more on illustrations and supplies them generously.

From Wikipedia:

The Melkite Greek Catholic Church is the largest Catholic community in Syria and Israel, and the second largest in Lebanon. As of 2014 the Melkite Greek Catholic Church was the largest Christian community in Israel, with roughly 60% of Israeli Christians belonging to the Melkite Greek Catholic Church.

Due to the Christian emigration from the Middle East, São Paulo is now home to the largest Melkite community in the diaspora (estimated around 433,000), followed by Argentina (302,800). Other large Melkite communities can be found in Australia (52,000), Canada (35,000), Venezuela (25,400), the United States (24,000), and other countries. According to figures by the Holy See in 2008, Lebanon is now home to the largest Melkite community in the Middle East (425,000), followed by Syria (234,000). There are more than 80,000 Greek Melkite Catholics in Israel and Palestine, and 27,600 Greek Melkite Catholics in Jordan. The Melkite Greek Catholic Church is by far the largest Catholic church in Israel.

One can pray anywhere, of course. However, I expect most have favorite places to pray and for me that is in the nave of a parish.

Whether sitting or standing, whether alone or with many, whether in joy or in sorrow, I find the set apart nature of the location is an aid to prayer. Fortunately, being Catholic, many places and times are readily available nearly everywhere and one is not limited to a home parish/congregation.

This widespread availability is, I think, significant theologically. Again, of course one can pray anywhere. However, ….

Alexander Schmemann, of blessed memory, wrote a concise history of Eastern Orthodoxy that deserves to be more widely read, particularly by Eastern Catholics. Here is the foreword to ‘The Historical Road to Eastern Orthodoxy’:

This book is not a scholarly investigation into the history of the Orthodox Church nor a mere manual. It is a reflection on the long historical pilgrimage of Orthodoxy, an attempt to discern in our past that which is essential and permanent and that which is secondary, mere past. I have always been amazed by the absence within the Orthodox Church of historical reflection aimed at the whole Church, at the Church as a totality. Our historical memory seems to be fragmented into local and national memories, just as — alas — is our Church life itself. Yet without restoration of a common and truly “catholic” memory, without a common understanding of our common past, we shall not recover that catholicity, that universality of Orthodox life and experience which we confess and proclaim to be the very essence of our Tradition.

Written at first in Russian and for Orthodox readers, the book may also serve as a general introduction to the Orthodox Church and her history for Western Christians. The twentieth century has witnessed a rediscovery of the Christian East by the Christian West. Today few people in the West would say, in the words of Harnack, that ‘the Orthodox Church is in her entire structure alien to the Gospel and represents a perversion of the Christian religion, its reduction to the level of pagan antiquity….’ On the contrary, Western Christians are seeking and often find in her spiritual and theological tradition, her religious art and her liturgy, the forgotten elements of their own background-forgotten standards, now recognized as necessary, for the measurement of Christianity. Nevertheless, despite the encounter of these two religious realms and the ever deepening intercourse between them, and in spite of the recognition by all Christians of their common destiny in the contemporary world, knowledge-and therefore also understanding of Orthodoxy-is still far for complete in the West. Our past has not yet been integrated into Western “memory.” To the majority of Western Christians, Orthodoxy is still marginal, exotic, oriental.

It is my sincere hope that in reading this book Western Christians may realize that our past is also their past, or rather our common past, that essential “term of reference” without which no mutual understanding is possible. As the “Eastern” isolation of Orthodoxy is coming to an end, as it becomes more and more implanted in the West, it becomes urgent that its history be known and understood. The present always depends on the degree to which we have “digested” the past, it is my hope that is book may be of some help in this essential process.
Alexander Schmemann, July 1977

“Both John and Wisdom mention the miracles of the Exodus as a model for the signs operated by wisdom (in Wis) and by Jesus (in John). Both John and Wisdom present these signs in the same order, which is not that of Exodus.

John 2:1-11, the marriage at Cana, recalls the first antithesis of Wis 11:4-44, underlining the theme of thirst. John 4:43-54 and 5:1-9a are centered on the theme of healing which appears in the third diptych of Wis 16:4-14. The diptych of the manna (Wis 16:15-28) finds its correspondence in John 6 (the bread of life). Finally, the diptych of the darkness (Wis 17:1-18:4) can be set in relation to John 9 (the man born blind) while John 11, the resurrection of Lazarus, corresponds to Wis 18:5-25, the death of the firstborn and the saving of the Israelites.

To conclude, in John as in Wisdom, the historical facts become symbolic, signs, that is, of spiritual and eschatological realities. Thus the darkness of the Egyptians in Wisdom 17:1-18:4 is the sign of the darkness of Hades which will strike the ungodly (Wisdom 17:21). In its turn, the cure of the man born blind is the sign of the spiritual blindness of the Pharisees. The light which illuminates the world (Wis 17:20) is the light of the law (18:4), just as Jesus himself is the light of the world (John 8:12; 9:39).”

from the commentary “Wisdom” by Luca Mazzinghi, page 41