08.31.05
Posted in Uncategorized at by mountzionryan
In April of 2004 Metroolitian HERMAN visited Georgia (the country not the US state). For some reason I fell in love with these pictures.
No disrespect, but forget the hierarchs and check out that fresco!
A 1000 year old Cathedral in Georgia.
The Skull of Saint Thomas the Apostle.
Due to historic isolation, the Georgian church developed her own iconographic and musical style. The icons have a wide-eyed look similar to Coptic icons and often feature a bright turquoise color.
As per the Georgian music, I was going to link an audio file, but I’m still looking.
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- We watched most of Larry King’s coverage of the Katrina devastation. I simply cannot fathom what those people are facing. One of the experts pointed believed they would be setting up what amounts to a refugee camp north of New Orleans as there are about 1,000,000 homeless people as a result of the destruction. Lord Have Mercy, Lord Have Mercy, Lord have Mercy.
- Andy Roddick, 2003 Champion and 2005 4th seed, was defeated in straight sets 7-6, 7-6, 7-6, by Gilles Muller of Luxembourg, a relative unknown. I caught the last set as Lainey doesn’t like to watch sports. Muller was amazing. Although Muller had a tough time defending against Roddick’s serve, Roddick couldn’t stop Muller’s at all. He won the last tie-breaker 7-1! I wish I had seen the whole match.
- I am no stranger to research. My degree from Berea College is in Religion with a minor in History. For three summers I was a research assistant for the Northwest Semitic Inscription Archive project (in fact I named it, woot!). Part of my job was bibliographic research to track down journal articles about inscriptions. I really enjoy research. But the more I look for research materials for the St. Moses book, the more I realize that I need access to a serious library. I simply don’t have access to some of the tools I need (JSTOR for instance). Arrgh, looks like I’ll have to buy a “membership” to either the University of Tennessee Library (at $100 per year) or the Knox County Public Library (at $25 per year). I hope Knox County will suffice.
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08.30.05
Posted in Uncategorized at by mountzionryan
You can ignore this if you want. It is the beginning of a bibliography for the St. Moses book. Feel free to suggest any others. You can purchase them for me at my Amazon wish list. Just kidding! Actually, I find amazon wish lists to be a great way to build a bibliography.
- The Life and Times of St. Moses: The Black Desert Father John Ackert $30.99
- Lives of the Desert Fathers: The Historia Monachorum in Aegypto (Cistercian Studies No. 34) Benedicta Ward $12.95
- The World of the Desert Fathers: Stories and Sayings From the Anonymous Series of the Apophthegmata Patrum Columba Stewart $7.95
- Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt (The Transformation of the Classical Heritage , No 6) Philip Rousseau $21.95
- Ascetics, Society, and the Desert: Studies in Early Egyptian Monasticism (Studies in Antiquity and Christianity (Sac) Series) James E. Goehring $34.95
- Graeco Roman Egypt (Shire Egyptology Ser. No. 17)) Simonp. Ellis $14.00
- Life in Egypt Under Roman Rule (Classics in Papyrology, V. 1) Naphtali Lewis $19.95
- Egypt After the Pharaohs: 332 Bc-Ad 642 from Alexander to the Arab Conquest Alan K. Bowman $19.95
- Alexandria in Late Antiquity : Topography and Social Conflict (Ancient Society and History) Christopher Haas $48.31
- Blacks in antiquity;: Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman experience Frank M. Snowden
- Symbolic Blackness and Ethnic Difference in Early Christian Literature Gay Byron $33.95
- Egypt in Late Antiquity Roger S. Bagnall $18.45
- The Demography of Roman Egypt: Cambridge Studies in Population, Economy and Society in Past Time(No. 23)Roger S. Bagnall, Bruce W. Frier
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08.29.05
Posted in Uncategorized at by mountzionryan
Yesterday was the day we remember Saint Moses the Black.
Kontakion
Your mind was filled with a holy inspiration from God,
Turning you from the lust and pleasures of the flesh,
Bringing you to the height of the city of God!
O Holy Father Moses, intercede with Christ God that He may grant us great mercy!
I have a particular fondness for St. Moses. If you are not familiar with his story, here is the short version:
He was born a servant in the household of a Roman Official in Egypt. The master released him because he was violent and murderous. He fell in with a band of robbers and, due to his prodigous size and strength and his violent nature, he was soon their leader. The band terrorized the countryside. Eventually he had a conversion experience and entered a monastery. All his life he strove to be Christ-like. Here are a couple of my favorite episodes from his biography.
One day robbers attacked him as he sat in his cell, not knowing who it was. They were four in number. He tied them all together and, putting them on his back like a truss of straw, brought them to the church of the brethren, saying: “Since I am not allowed to hurt anyone, what do you bid me do with these?” Then these robbers, having confessed their |88 sins and recognized that it was Moses the erstwhile renowned and far-famed robber, themselves also glorified God and renounced the world because of his conversion, saying to themselves: “If he who was so great and powerful in brigandage has feared God, why should we defer our salvation?”
THE LAUSIAC HISTORY by Palladius
Once a brother had been caught in a particular sin, and the abbot asked St. Moses to come to the church and render judgment. He came reluctantly, carrying on his back a leaking bag of sand. When he arrived, the brothers asked him why he was carrying such a thing. He simply said, “This sand is my sins which are trailing out behind me, while I go to judge the sins of another.” At that reply, the brothers forgave the offender and returned to focusing on their own salvation rather than the sins of their brother.
I like saints that weren’t born that way. Many saints are holy and pious children, but some of my favorites are the ones with some dirt under their nails. Saint Moses is one of those saints. He was about as despicable character as one can be and still was given the grace of repentance. His story gives me some hope that I may someday overcome my own demons.
I have been long considering writing a book about Saint Moses. Using the scant information we have and filling in the details to make a fictional biography. Bev Cooke has done this from Macrina the Elder. Another idea I had was to use the life of Saint Mose as a narrative frame for the story of a completely fictional character. This second idea would entail a good deal of research, but I think I’d enjoy it.
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08.26.05
Posted in Uncategorized at by mountzionryan
The infamous Westboro Baptist Church continues their militant ignorance by protesting at the funeral of a local soldier.
According to their press release, God is punishing America for being a “rich fag nation.” I try to tell myself that the first amendment was written for these idiots.
It gets worse:
His in his retaliatory wrath, God is killing Americans with Muslim IEDs [Improvised Explosive Device]…God Almighty killed Army StaffSgt. Asbury Hawn II, in shame, casting him into hell, with his other soldier pals, cursing each other bitterly, being tormented with fire and brimstone.
What the crack? How do you become so warped that the command to love becomes something so vile. The easy way out is to blame the enemy: the evil one has lied to them. I am just flabbergasted at this group.
And their tactics are working, they’ve made the news for several days here.
Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy.
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08.25.05
Posted in Uncategorized at by mountzionryan
Star Wars fans beware, this may cause you to injure yourself laughing.
Backstroke of the West
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I have always claimed to have just enough computer savvy to get myself in trouble. Most of what I know I learned on the job as a help dest agent for a broadband ISP.
So, when I realized that I could have two monitors on my computer and double my desktop, well I just had to try. You might ask why I would even want two monitors. If you have a huge, sexy, flatscreen monitor then you should realize that many of us are still stuck on monitors that date from the first Clinton administration. And some people still use dial-up. If you’ve ever used Photoshop or some other graphics program that has a bunch of tool windows floating over your work, then you know exactly why.
After doing a little research I came home and checked out my situation. In less than half an hour I had cracked both cases, cannibalized the monitor and video card from an old machine and booted back up. I held my breath and…
It worked!
It is awesome. I’ve been blogging and surfing with windows open on both monitors and its been great. You never know what your missing until you upgrade. I highly recommend adding another monitor to your set-up if you can. Old monitors and video cards can be had real cheap.
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Posted in Uncategorized at by mountzionryan
“There would be no need for sermons, if our lives were shining; there would be no need for words, if we bore witness with our deeds. There would be no pagans, if we were true Christians.”
St John Chysostom
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Widely diverse reading goining on. Here are some nice quotes from three different reads.
First God’s Politics (2005) by Jim Wallis.
Christ commands us to not only see the splinter in our adversary’s eye but also the beams in our own…To name the face of evil in the brutality of terrorist attacks is good theology, but to say they are evil and we are good is bad theology that can lead to dangerous foriegn policy…Christ instructs us to love our enemies, which does not mean a submission to their hostile agendas or dominations, but does mean treating them as human beings created in the image of God and respecting their human rights as adversaries and even as prisoners…
The words of Jesus are either authoritative for Christians, or they are not. And they are not set aside by the very real threat of terrorism. They do not easily lend themselves to the missions of nation-states that would usurpthe prerogatives of God. the threat of terrorism does not overturn Christian ethics…
The issue here is not partisan politics, and there are no easy political solutions. The ruling party has increasingly struck a religious tone in an agressive foreign policy that seems much more nationalistic than Christian, while the opposition party has offered more confusion than clarity.
Next, Two Years Before the Mast (1840) by Richard Henry Dana.
“I say! you know what countryman ‘e be?”
“Yes,” I said, “he’s a German.”
“What kind of German?” said the cook.
“He belongs to Bremen,” said I.
“Are you sure o’ dat?” said he.
I satisfied him on that point by saying that he could speak no language but the German and English.
“I’m plaguy glad o’ dat,” said the cook. “I was mighty ‘fraid he was a Fin. I tell you what, I been plaguy civil to that man all the voyage.”
I asked him the reason of this, and found that he was fully possesed with the notion that Fins are wizards, and especially have power over winds and storms. I tried to reason with him about it, but he was not to be moved. He had been in a vessel to the Sandwich Islands, in which the sail-maker was a Fin, and could do anything he was of a mind to…
As I still doubted, he said he would leave it to John, who was the oldest seaman aboard, and would know, if anybody did. John, to be sure, was the oldest, and at the same time the most ignorant, man in the ship; but I consented to have him called. The cook stated the matter to him, and John, as I anticipated, sided with the cook, and said that he himself had been in a ship where they had a head wind for a fortnight and the captain found out at last that one of the men, whom he had had some hard words with a short time before, was a Fin, and immediately told him if he didn’t stop the head wind he would shut him down in the fore peak. The Fin would not give in, and the captain shut him down in the fore peak, and would not give him anything to eat. The Fin held out for a day and a half, when he could not stand it any longer, and did something or other which brought the wind round again, and they let him up.
“There,” said the cook, “what you think o’ dat?”
I told him I had no doubt it was true, and that it would have been odd if the wind had not changed in fifteen days, Fin or no Fin.
“Oh,” says he, “go ’way! You think, ’cause you been to college, you know better than anybody. You know better than them as has seen it with their own eyes. You wait till you’ve been to sea as long as I have, and you’ll know.”
Third, Danse Macabre (1981) by Stephen King.
The genre we’re talking about, whether it be in terms of books, film, or TV, is really all one: make-believe horrors. And one of the questions that frequently comes up…is: Why do you want to make up horrible things when there is so much real horror in the world?
The answer seems to be that we make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones. With the endless inventiveness of humankind, we grasp the very elements which are so divisive and destructive and try to turn them into tools–to dismantle themselves. The Greek term catharsis is as old as Greek drama, and it has been used rather too glibly by some practitioners in my field to justify what they do, but it still has its limited uses here. The dream of horror is in itself an out-letting and a lancing…and it may well be that the mass-media dream of horror can sometimes become a nationwide analyst’s couch.
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08.24.05
Posted in Uncategorized at by mountzionryan
Nah, I thank her for pointing this out.
Blame the spammers.
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