Kevin Basil

After being given a light rebuke by my priest last year over my observance of the fast (or the lack thereof), I’m trying again to observe the fast with renewed zeal. This evening, I’m enjoying a bowl of vegetable soup with croutons, a pbj sandwich, and a glass of Gumdale 2005 Shiraz, an Australian vinter I’ve never heard of before. Oh, perhaps that last is not totally lenten. Anywho. I read it on the web.

You see from that Google search above that most everyone who had something to say about the Gumdale 2005 shiraz had something bad to say. Frankly, it does what I wanted: Provide a decent, inexpensive table wine. In reality I wanted a Rosemount Estates shiraz, but there were none that I could find. I really miss Liquor Barn.

Robert Taft S. J. - “The Evolution of the Byzantine ‘Divine Liturgy’”

I found this online version of an article in Orientalia Christiana Periodica, a scholarly journal dedicated to Eastern Christian studies. There is, of course, much more that can be said about the development of the liturgy. Fr. Robert himself has written several volumes on the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom alone. But this has some fine nuggets and provides a good starting point for those interested.

Liturgical Studies

This page lists a basic bibliography for liturgical studies.

From my beloved godfather, Father Stephen Freeman, rector of St. Anne in Oak Ridge:

Our default position within modern America is some form of atheistic or agnostic materialism. On a bad day, we barely believe in God but remain utterly convinced of the power of the market and the engine of industry.

Lent comes to take on even greater importance in such a setting - for we are not only seeking to repent - we seek to believe. And Lent makes it clear that the two are not separate things but mutually interdependent. Without repentance, there can be no belief in the God Who Is. To know God - to actually know Him - repentance is indispensable. Only a broken and contrite heart can know God.

There are many things that break our hearts, and many others that bring us to the point of contrition. But often these very crushing blows drive us only deeper into ourselves and despair. Thus the need of Great Lent.

To be broken by grace and crushed by the hand of God is far kinder than the treatment we receive from the world. To take up the Church’s Way of Life during Lent, and to lean into it, will always put us on a path towards brokenness and contrition. But there is a world of difference between the brokenness and contrition that comes as the gift of grace and the brutality of the world’s humiliation.

Read it all: Lent in the South « Glory to God for All Things

If Father Stephen’s blog isn’t on your blogroll, fix yourself!

Guantanamo Detainees Denied Rights to Legal Appeal in Federal Courts- Google News

From the Christian Science Monitor:

“The suspension clause is a limitation on the powers of Congress,” Judge Rogers writes. “It is only by misreading the historical record and ignoring the Supreme Court’s well-considered and binding dictum in Rasul v. Bush” that the court can conclude that it lacks jurisdiction to hear the detainees’ cases.

From the Guardian:

Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a lawyer representing several of the detainees, said: “The court of appeal has said it is perfectly legal to lock men up for ever without even a hint of due process.

“The conclusion would seem to violate most principles that most Americans believe are fundamental to our country.”

…

In the ruling, the appeal judges said: “Precedent in this court and the supreme court hold that the constitution does not confer rights on aliens without property or presence within the United States.”

Does the Constitution “confer” rights? Or does it protect them?

What could the Tenth Amendment possibly mean if the Constitution confers rights? To read the Wikipedia article on Amendment X is to read a sad story of the subversion of the Constitution, begun under Lincoln and expanded under Roosevelt.

In Australia, only the cold glow of fluorescent bulbs will light the night. Time to light the world with flame once again. Read it all: Watt is wrong with the bulb? - Business - The Washington Times, America’s Newspaper

This evening at vespers, we hear for the first time these words:

O Lord and master of my life! Dispel from me the spirit of discouragement and slothfulness, of ambition and vain talk!

Instead, give me the spirit of prudence and humility, of patience and charity.

Yes, my king and Lord, let me look at my own sins and refrain from judging others: For you are bless’d unto ages of ages, amen.

With each of these verses, we make a prostration. Then after the service, we prostrate ourselves before each other and ask forgiveness, because forgiveness of each other is a prerequisite for forgiveness from God, as our Lord taught us.

I have duty today, and I am far away from the people I most need to ask forgiveness. (I could not be in all those places at once, anyway.)

Please, my brothers and sisters, forgive me, a sinner.

Appropriately, the choir sings the paschal stichera hymns during the forgiveness rite:

Today is the day of resurrection, let us be illumined by the feast, let us embrace one another joyfully and let us call brothers even those that hate us. Because of the resurrection let us pardon all and let us sing:

Christ is risen from the dead, conquering death by death, and upon those in the grave bestowing life.

This past Wednesday was Saint Valentine’s Day. Do you remember the story of St. Valentine’s life? (The correct answer is, “Which story? There’s so many to choose from.” In second place is, “He’s not on the Roman calendar anymore, silly.”) So, anyway, I was reminiscing on the year that I dyed my hair black (all of it, eyebrows and goatee included), painted my fingernails (I wanted black for that, too, but had to settle for dark gray, as it was all Chris had) and wore all black to school. (Few souls at the Christian college got the joke; most just thought I was being weird. One professor told me I looked like Rasputin!) Then I did the math and realized I must have done that in 1997 — which would be ten years ago.

My (second) senior year of college was ten years ago. I am old.

Much prior to my Valentine’s reminiscence, I attended Theophany services at my home parish. Having met my new priest a year prior at the parish in Oak Ridge, about an hour from my parents’ home, I was able to meet his wife and son. But not the coming arrival she bears within her. As father welcomed me and my traveling companion into the house, matushka^[1] walked out of the kitchen — barefoot and pregnant. (I let her know I wouldn’t forget it. She’s highly educated, so I hope she took it well and wasn’t offended!)

Watching her care for their young son during services on her own, I imagined what things will be like once there’s two. In fact, I kept thinking about it while I was underway for about two and a half weeks.

It takes a very strong woman to be a priest’s wife. During the services, while the priest is completely occupied with the prayers and rituals of the church, she carries the burden of a single mother. It strikes me that the Roman Catholic practice of requiring celibacy of priests is a mercy towards would-be priests’ wives. By freeing priests to focus entirely on service to the Lord, the Roman Catholic Church saves women from marriages to double-minded men.^[2]

The price of both is high. But it seems to me that prospective Orthodox priests have a heavy burden when they decide whether to be married or not.

I’m back on land (and I have been for a few weeks now).

I moved in with my brother upon arriving in Norfolk; he’s an airman at Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Center (METOC). This has been cool and a little stressful, too. Not because we’re having any friction, but because I have a lot of stuff in boxes from moving that I keep trying to move around, like a game of Tetris that I’m about to lose because there’s no room left.

While out at sea, I received my silver dolphins. (Readers of the mailing list already know this.)

More to come on the mailing list. I’ll return to my eccentric reflections on the meaning of all things once I get some movement going in organizing my stuff.