A Good Post at Second Terrace

Let me direct your attention to Fr. Jonathan’s wonderful blog Second Terrace to his post “Localities, part one“. I am looking forward to part two.

Localities, part one

Is it possible to be an agrarian and Orthodox? Is it possible not to be?

The slogan topping off one of my favorite sites, the Front Porch Republic, baldly proclaims “Place, Limits, Liberty.”

“Limits” is not a hard word for Orthodoxy to commend. The liberal political idea is based upon the unfounded certainty that commercial and industrial expansion is limitless. There is a mystical, eschatological belief that human nature has evolved, is evolving, and will continue to evolve into more complex form (and thus of a higher order). The expansion of civilization is a program that becomes the standard upon which all other values are based: local traditions, customs, folkways, family ties, dialects, mom and pop shops, little farms should all be bulldozed by the eminent domain of “progress.”

(For progress is what a liberal believes in, not taking care of the poor: don’t get excited, neocons and Obama-bashers – you don’t believe in conservatism either. You, oddly, are just as progressive……

Book Reviews at Unmercenary Readers

The blog Unmercenary Readers is hosting various reviews of the new book on theosis titled “Fellow Workers with God: Orthodox Thinking on Theosis“. The three reviews that have been posted are very interesting. The observation that an Orthodox seminary should find an Orthodox author to write on the subject of the Orthodox view of theosis is a good one. Apparently Norman Russell is a Roman Catholic priest and “independant scholar”. You can read all about it here.

Norman Russell, author
Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009
ISBN 978-0-88141-339-7
Price: US $18.00

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave: An adaptation in clay

HT:Clarion Journal

Winning is the Most Important Thing!

“There’s more to sports than winning.” “It’s not about winning and losing.” “Winning isn’t the most important thing.”

Those types of platitudes surround sports today, especially youth sports. And I have to admit:

I don’t understand them.

If you’re playing a competitive sport, you’re playing to win. That is the only substantive good that runs through all competition: baseball, cross-country, checkers, bass fishing, NASCAR, beer pong, poker. Winning. That’s the point of competition.

Does that mean that competitive sports don’t have other benefits? Of course not. Some (track) get you into shape, others (chess) help your ability to concentrate, some (poker) make you money, some (beer pong) get you buzzed. Every form of competition (except maybe NASCAR) has an ancillary benefit, but it’s not a benefit that’s necessary to the pursuit of competition in general. Such benefits are what the Schoolmen might call “accidents” of competition.

Accidents aren’t substances. When it comes to competitive sports, winning is the form that makes competition what it is. It is the essence of competition. If you’re not playing to win, you’re denying the core nature of competition, and it’s no longer competition. If you don’t want to play to win, that’s fine. Take up knitting or walking a treadmill . . . but get off the daggone track.

Now, does all this mean that winning is the most important thing?”

Read the rest at The Daily Eudemon

Ancient Chants from the Church in Rome

HT: Aeneas’ Quest

The Birth of Beer

“Cultural Anthropologists speculate that some ancient nomad stumbled upon a liquid of fermented grains and , intrigued took a sip. The biter-tasting brew was strangly pleasing, and each successive sip induced a sense of warmth, well being, and extreme happiness- even giddiness.

There was only one explanation for this magical amber liquid: a gift from the earth mother. And, clearly there was only one thing for our ancestors to do; make more of it.”- From The Little Black Book of Beer

Also check out “Beer, It’s Older Than You Think” at Buzzle.com

Greek Letters and Orthodoxy

Greek Letters and Orthodoxy:Their Relations During Two Millenia by Constantine Cavarnos

This is a very interesting  and short book by the lettered Constantine Cavarnos. The book is a published lecture Cavarnos gave to the Community Center of the Church of Archangels in Watertown, Massachusetts in 1971. This lecture was also published in various Orthodox journals in Greece. The lecture explains the place of classical culture in the life of the Orthodox Church.

“This book is  distinguished by precision, conciseness, and the feeling of intellectual integrity in both thought and expression, virtues which are seldom encountered in books in our time….Arranging the subject matter very methodically, Cavarnos examines the generral  but precise relations between Orthodox Christianity and Greek Letters, and that every effort should be made to continue the  cultivation of Greek letters.”- P. Soterchos, Orthodox Press, Athens.

The following are the titles of the three chapters in this book.

Ch. 1- The Relation of Orthodoxy to Greek Letters

Ch. 2- The Value of Greek Letters after the Early Centuries of Christianity

Ch. 3- The value of Greek Letters for the Orthodox of Today

This book can be purchased at the Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies. The book is $6.95. You will have to scroll down the page to find the book.

Reading Homer in Byzantium

I have this lecture by Dr. Bryan Smith on CD and it is a very good overview a classical education in the Byzantine empire. Dr. Smith is headmaster of St. Peter’s Orthodox Classical School in Fort Worth, TX.

“I was just listening again to a talk by Dr. Bryan Smith called Reading Homer in Byzantium. In it, he outlines how the early Christians taught their students to write, how they selected their literature, and so on.

If you teach writing, reading, or anything that uses writing or reading, or if you are involved with the curriculum for your school, I would urge you to get your hands on this CD. It’s included as disk 23 in the 2007 set.

Bryan explains things like

• Why we have nine of Euripides plays instead of the 40 or more that he wrote
• How to practice writing using metaphrasis and paraphrasis (with some very amusing examples of pop music turned Shakespearean)
• Why we need to read less and slowly

Bryan is always insightful and relentlessly practical!”

Visit the CiRCE store to secure this CD or the entire 2007 set.

From the blog Quiddity.

Berkshares

I thought this was interesting.

“BerkShares are a local currency for the Berkshire region. Dubbed a “great economic experiment” by the New York Times, BerkShares are a tool for community empowerment, enabling merchants and consumers to plant the seeds for an alternative economic future for their communities. Launched in the fall of 2006, BerkShares had a robust initiation, with over one million BerkShares having been circulated in the first nine months and over two million to date. Currently, more than three hundred and sixty businesses have signed up to accept the currency. Five different banks have partnered with BerkShares, with a total of thirteen branch offices now serving as exchange stations. For BerkShares, this is only the beginning. Future plans could involve BerkShare checking accounts, electronic transfer of funds, ATM machines, and even a loan program to facilitate the creation of new, local businesses manufacturing more of the goods that are used locally.”- From Berkshares.org

A video about the Berkshares currency from the WSJ.

Tobacco and the Soul

“The current brouhaha over smoking has made everyone painfully aware of tobacco’s effects on the body, but it has also obscured a more profound reason for smoking’s popularity: its relation to the soul. As the heyday of smoking passes into the ashheap of history, it is meet that we reflect on this connection.

The soul, of course, is a complex thing. Long ago Plato suggested that we consider it as divided into three parts—the appetitive, spirited, and rational—that correspond to the three basic kinds of human desires: the desire to satisfy physical appetites, the desire for recognition, and the desire for truth. Once this tripartite division is recalled, tobacco’s relation to the soul becomes clear: the three prevalent types of smoking tobacco—cigarettes, cigars, and pipes—correspond to the three parts of the soul….

Finally, the pipe corresponds to the rational part of the soul, which explains why we tend to picture wise figures smoking pipes: the Oxford don surrounded by his great books, or Sherlock Holmes, who, in Doyle’s original stories, actually smoked other sorts of tobacco as well, yet is almost always portrayed with a pipe. Unlike cigars and cigarettes, a pipe endures. Similarly, the questions of the philosopher far outlast the passing concerns of physical desires on the one hand and human ambitions on the other. Further, while the cigar is entirely masculine, the pipe has both masculine and feminine elements (the stem and the bowl). This corresponds to the philosopher’s activity, which is both masculine and feminine: masculine in its pursuit of Lady Truth, feminine in its reception of anything that she discloses. Finally, the effect that the pipe has on others is analogous to the effect of philosophizing: the sweet fragrance of a pipe, like good philosophy, is a blessing to all who are near.”-Michael P. Foley

Read the entire article at First Things.

HT: Aaron Taylor