Orthodox Christian, wife & mother. Classical teacher & dean. Former lawyer from Romania. Faith, poetry, great books, education, and the things that last.
Florida
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Every morning is a morning fit for The Republic. How many of our current principal men of state are preoccupied with seeing the nature of numbers with the mind only?
"We must endeavor to persuade those who are to be the principal men of our State to go and learn arithmetic, not as amateurs, but they must carry on the study until they see the nature of numbers with the mind only; nor again, like merchants or retail traders, with a view to buying or selling, but for the sake of their military use, and of the soul herself; and because this will be the easiest way for her to pass from becoming to truth and being." (The Republic, Book VII)
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Read primary sources, dear ones. Read the book before you read the books about the book.
"There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books.
Thus I have found as a tutor in English Literature that if the average student wants to find out something about Platonism, the very last thing he thinks of doing is to take a translation of Plato off the library shelf and read the Symposium. He would rather read some dreary modern book ten times as long, all about “isms” and influences and only once in twelve pages telling him what Plato actually said.
The error is rather an amiable one, for it springs from humility. The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism.
It has always therefore been one of my main endeavours as a teacher to persuade the young that first-hand knowledge is not only more worth acquiring than second-hand knowledge, but is usually much easier and more delightful to acquire."
-C.S. Lewis, from his introduction to a new English translation of On the Incarnation by St. Athanasius
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DeSantis.
I doubt the uniparty will allow him to be the GOP candidate though. He is too effective.
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"The stone is hard, but harder still
the flinty heart of one
who seals himself against his Lord
and serves himself alone."
Sir Galahad and the Grail—The Adventures of Sir Lancelot
Malcolm Guite
If you have sealed your heart against the Lord some time ago, there is still time to come back. Your heart can beat again under the warmth of the Lord's eternal love.
Come to Church tomorrow! 🙏🏻
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I was not born here, but America is my home and the land of my heart.
Daniel's words express my sentiments exactly. Glory be to God for everything that is good and beautiful, for from Him it all comes.
So, here's the thing. I generally dont care where you are from and how long 'your people' have been in America.
It is cool background lore to you.
What I do care about is adopting traditional American values. Also, if not proud of our heritage than at least respectful.
That includes confederate, native, and colonial period.
These things are not changeable outside a time machine and honestly you are likely mid at best and would/will make no change on the course of history.
If you dont like it, go to where ever in the wide world that you do appreciate the history and heritage. Because of the blessing of being American, you can do that.
You are in top 10 percent in the world and even the poorest 5 percent are better off than most of Africa, India, and South America. Why do you think so many people want to come here?
You won the life lottery, appreciate it or go somewhere that will make you happy; away from us.
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This deserves a read and some contemplation—of our own selves as well as of the society we are part of.
I kept wondering, after reading it, if the Church herself has some kind of rite of passage for young men, as one major, individual act.
Unless they become priests, I don't think it does—and then, in the Orthodox Church, they must marry first and then become priests, if they are to marry at all.
I think the baptism itself serves as the most authentic rite of passage, as it contains the whole ritual of abandoning the life of sin and the demons of one's passions and heresies and putting on the clean garment of Christ. But, while this may happen as adults for those who convert, it happens as babies for the cradle Orthodox, when the godparents are witnesses and stand in promise for the new soul thus entrusted to God.
I wonder if the frequent sacrament of confession, which is recommended to start roughly at the age the conscience is developed enough (around 7), and in which baptism is being renewed through tears of repentance and the soul begins a lifelong routine of cleansing, standing in front of the Lord and His humble witnesses, might not serve as the quintessential, continuous rite of passage.
Shaped thus through repentance and participation in the sacramental life of the Church, men become fully men, the image of Christ being clarified in them—the priesthood of the lay men, called to lead their households to Christ, being their ultimate calling.
I think this would prove that Daniel's arguments in his article have a solid ground: it's the culture.
I think @buckrebel is right that formation failed. Though here I argue the thresholds failed first, and then the culture that used to make those thresholds bind.
orthodoxreflections.com/the-…
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As a Romanian-born American, I cannot comprehend cultures where showing up on time is optional. If we agree that dinner is at 3:45, we start eating at 3:45, and we continue eating until well past midnight.
Beware 😅
As a Lebanese person I cannot comprehend cultures where showing up on time is optional. If we agree that dinner is at 3:45PM, we eat at exactly 5:15PM.
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If only more men thought about this.
May the Lord, in His great mercy, help.
Like most men, I spend a lot of time thinking about physical courage, about what I would be willing to do and capable of doing if the need arose.
It’s easy to make fun of men for that—only because life in modern, prosperous nations lulls us with the comforting illusion that there’s no need for physical courage anymore. But it’s what we’re designed for—by God or evolution, however you prefer to think of it. So we think about it a lot. Some of us train (by lifting weights, running, martial arts, weapons training, etc) for the still relatively unlikely event that we’ll be called upon. The rest of us are made soft by our comfortable lives, and we find outlets for it in daydreams, movies, books, or video games.
It’s easy to feel like we’ve moved past the need for men to have physical courage (we haven’t), but most men can’t shake the thought that they ought to be *ready* for it, anyway. And the effort to quash this feeling in us has resulted in a lot of personal and societal dysfunction.
But *moral* courage…
Moral courage is just as important as physical, but if anything, contemporary life is even MORE deadly to it than to physical courage—partly because it supplies so many easy ways to deceive ourselves about how morally courageous we actually are. It’s hard to be a coward physically and not know it, but it’s easy to be a moral coward and not know it.
We join in with online crowds of like-minded people and feel as if we’re the rebels. Ideologies tempt us with hip and fashionable alternatives to real morality. We go to war with Those People online and think we’re really doing something. None of this really costs us anything except some irritation with people on the other side of the screen, other side of the world.
Just some thoughts with nowhere to go yet.
Painting: Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Socrates (1787)
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Two prayers that represent the totality of the entire human life: "Lord, help!" and "Thank God!"
Happiness is that simple . . . and that infinite.
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Yeah, we will vote NO. Our amazing governor is finishing his service for our beautiful state, and the vultures are piling in, trying to undo all his work and make sure there is room for waste.
This is a foolish constitutional amendment proposal. We already have a maxed out rainy day fund and have run the largest surpluses in state history.
Any additional revenue should be used for lower taxes, including assisting local governments with grants so that homestead properties can be exempt from local property tax. Surplus revenue could also be used to remove tolls once the property tax issue is settled.
I recommend a NO vote.
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The argument that reducing the property taxes as Florida's Amendment 3 proposes would automatically lead to budget reductions for firefighters, police, etc suffers of several fallacies: appeal to consequences, false dilemma, and slippery slope.
Ask us how WE want the budget to be built, and what we want out priorities to be, AFTER you stop taking our money out of our pocket only to increase your discretionary spending and your waste, but do not blame us for the local-level corruption that places police and firefighters in the situation to beg for their most-needed funds.
I will be voting "Yes" on Florida's Amendment 3 this fall, Lord willing.
Hot take: Florida’s Amendment 3 isn’t really about property taxes. It’s about who controls YOUR money.
Government says cutting taxes will cost you police, fire & EMS.
I say fund them FIRST and cut the bureaucracy.
Your home shouldn’t be government’s ATM.
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Good Monday-morning reminder. You'll take you with you everywhere you go. Stay put and work on it, prayerfully.
"If someone tries to do something good in the place where he lives but fails to complete it, he should not think that he will accomplish it elsewhere."
- St. Euthymius the Great
Shared from Axios!
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We need our storytellers back at the center of our society. Please listen to this—actually, listen to the entire interview (I will put the Spotify link in the first comment). Malcolm Guite draws on the earliest Arthurian legends and focuses on the profoundly Christian roots of these magnificent stories.
If you haven't already, get his book, Galhaad and the Grail, and read it to your children, to your students, or even to yourself or your spouse, aloud. It is simply gorgeous.
This is worth every minute of your time.
One of the greatest living storytellers @malcolmguite explains the lost Christian origins of King Arthur.
These are the stories children should be reading in school 🔥
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Speaking of beauty: for about two decades, our society has been attempting to destroy any standards or appreciation for beauty, demonizing its permanence and replacing it with a subjective, obsessive focus on emotions as defining the being—"You are who you feel you are", rather than "He has made everything beautiful in its time," (Ecclesiastes 3:11), "For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made," (Psalm 139:13-14) or "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." (Genesis 1:27). Instead of contemplation that elevates the soul towards the Creator, we get obsession that lowers the soul towards the sinful aspects of the created.
Look carefully at youth today, from teens to those in their twenties or early thirties. Point towards something beautiful, and their attention will immediately switch back towards themselves, towards how they feel, towards their own angst, sadness, or dejection. Beauty can hardly save them anymore, unless we teach them again that beauty is of God: it is not in the eye of the beholder, but it exists in eternity, and it is meant to draw the soul towards the eternal.
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I hope we're paying attention. Until the last moment, the devil will not give up. The battle does not get easier.
Thinking that politics is only about how we vote, and only about how we regulate our economic and military affairs has gotten us here. Meanwhile, the Left has been waging war spiritually and culturally for many decades and thus fueling this political degeneracy that we cannot seem to be prepared to defeat.
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