We westerners (western Europe and North America) love our bad news. Steven Pinker, for instance, has been trying to convince us for years that the world is getting better, but few of us believe him. Global warming, a new, more virulent strain of the pandemic, the reality that the new Matrix movie is even worse …
Gregory Palamas taught that we can respond to what life throws at us at three different levels, what Klara Kobelyukh calls three kinds of experience. The first is the experience of evil in all its forms, which includes temptation, sin, and death. The second (and here we need to remember that Gregory was a monk …
It dawned on me this week, while driving around a residential neighborhood, that I saw far more Halloween lights and decorations than I'm seeing outdoor Christmas lights. As I think back, it's been a trend over that last several years, but it was the one lonely house with some paltry lights on the house and …
I have always preferred Advent (the western Christian season of preparation for the Nativity Feast) over the Nativity Fast (the eastern Christian version). It’s not the duration (Advent is usually less than 28 days while the Nativity Fast is 40 days) nor is it intensity (the Nativity Fast, like Great Lent means no meat and …
Just Another Jim 