Good morning. Clear and cold, 8 degrees. Tomorrow promises to be really cold.
- How to read.
- And a call for suggestions on new reading material. I’d suggest, A Secular Age and The Bottom Billion for starters, for fun Dan Simmon’s Ilium and Olympus if you haven’t read those. (and if you open comments you’d get more suggestions). If you want more (or different suggestions, give me more guidelines of what you’re looking for and I’ll suggest other books).
- From Iraq, a sample of the daily intelligence report via Michael Yon. A map via the Fourth Rail.
- Nana (and Dostoevsky) on beauty, well, the essay doesn’t mention Dostoevsky but … “Beauty will save the world.” is his, I think.
- An anti-intellectual atheist … countered.
- Late Rome, i.e., Byzantium in Jordan. (HT: The Way of the Fathers, who tip the hat in turn to Paleojudaica.
- Trends in abortion noted (downward). It occurred to me, on the political front that the plea of “safe but rare” is a flat out lie. For if it really did become rare, the opposition to legal would evaporate.
- On sin and separation.
- On the ACLU and public sexual action.
- QoD links.
- Old worked metal.
- Blessed be the … via Weekend Fisher. I’ll note that the beatitudes are chanted every Sunday at the beginning of the liturgy “ordinarily”.
- Heh.
- On radical dependency.
- A successful prediction noted.
- A narrative from Iraq … on Sadr.
- Fasting in the evangelical world.
- The worm of temper.
- Fun with maps.
“Beauty will save the world” is from Brother’s Karamazov so you are correct.
Hi Mark
That’s cool that you all chant the beatitudes. I’ve been to quite a few Orthodox liturgies and have never heard them … though I also am more likely to visit during Lent, don’t know if that comes to play.
Actually I had something I wanted to ask you off-line and every email I’ve sent to you has bounced back undeliverable. Would you be so kind as to email me at anneakim at aol dot com?
Thanks!
Anne/WF
Anne,
Well, Lent does involve a lot of changes to liturgy, I don’t recall about the Beatitudes, but at our parish we use the St. Basil liturgy instead of the St. Chrysostom one during Lent. There are also a lot of special season changes and that may be why you didn’t hear the beatitudes chanted.
I’ll send an email tonight.
I hope you don’t mind my stepping in here.
The Liturgy of St. Basil mostly effects the priestly prayers and then during the Liturgy of the Faithful. The Antiphons (which are sung during the Liturgy of the Catechumens) should be intact unless it is one of the Great Feasts.
As the the 3rd Antiphon (the Beatitudes): From what I understand they are not usually chanted in the Greek Parishes (if you go to a Greek parish you can usually get done in just under an hour). If the Greek church does Antiphons they do different psalms:
“In the twelfth Century some monks in Constantinople began the (then) innovative custom of substituting Ps. 103, 146, and the Beatitudes for the normal antiphons at Sunday liturgy. Today some churches (such as those in the Russian tradition) follow this custom, while other churches (those in the Greek tradition) follow the original custom of singing Ps. 92, 93, 95 as antiphons.
Let Us Attend by Fr. L. Farley pg. 24
I hope you find this helpful and I haven’t overstepped myself.
Kindest Regards