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May, 2008

Bells!

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— mariagwyn @ 11:50 am
Tue
27 May 2008

This weekend I was up in Seattle for the fabulous NW Folklike festival, which really deserves a post all its own, but probably won't get one this time around. On Sunday I decided to visit St. Spiridon's Orthodox Church (OCA) which I had not been to in decades (literally). And I got to hear bells! Beautiful, ringing, real live bells!

This weekend I was up in Seattle for the fabulous NW Folklike festival, which really deserves a post all its own, but probably won't get one this time around. On Sunday I decided to visit St.

Poem: Phillip Lopate

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— mariagwyn @ 9:21 am
Sat
24 May 2008

I am reading Anne Lamott’s book, Bird by Bird in which she cites Phillip Lopate’s poem as an example of shaping one’s paranoia “into something artistic and true.” I chuckled. In that sort of painful and true kind of way.

I am reading Anne Lamott’s book, Bird by Bird in which she cites

Hauerwas on Liturgy, Take 2

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— mariagwyn @ 5:00 pm
Fri
23 May 2008

It seems that putting up a provocative Hauerwas quote without explanation is a bad idea. Which is fair because he usually requires some explanation and context. So, in lieu of a reply to a comment, here is simply "Take 2" on Hauerwas.

It seems that putting up a provocative Hauerwas quote without explanation is a bad idea.

Quote: Hauerwas on Liturgy

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— mariagwyn @ 2:10 pm
Fri
16 May 2008
Stanley Hauerwas wrote:

One reason why we Christians argue so much about which hymn to sing, which liturgy to follow, which way to worship is that the commandments teach us to believe that bad liturgy eventually leads to bad ethics. You begin by singing some sappy, sentimental hymn, then you pray some pointless prayer, and the next thing you know you have murdered your best friend.

Sometimes, you just have to toss something out there and see what happens. There is no ethicist better at this than Stanley Hauerwas.

"A Rueful Observation"

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— mariagwyn @ 4:58 pm
Wed
14 May 2008

Mother's Day coincided this year with the reading from the conclusion to the gospel of Mark. The Gospel of Mark presents to us the tension of fear versus faith, calling us to step out of our natural fear into a faith grounded in the Resurrection which, as Fr. Paul so beautifully reminded us, makes all things new, all things possible. I was a bit derailed from this message early on ...

A Radical Mother's Day

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— mariagwyn @ 2:52 pm
Sun
11 May 2008

I must admit that until this week, I knew nothing of the beginning's of Mother's Day. Like Valentine's day, I wrongly assumed that it was yet another Hallmark Holiday, full of sentimentality and the idealization of motherhood, which is a noble but hardly sentimental or idealized profession (it is a profession, whether paid or unpaid!). How wrong I was! For the first time today, read in church, I heard the words of Julia Ward Howe, who apparently wrote something other than the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Visual Metaphors: Shut Out

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— mariagwyn @ 11:21 pm
Fri
09 May 2008

This post is so overdue it is almost pointless, except that I keep returning to this idea of “visual metaphors.” We are used to verbal metaphors which refer things we see, and my current reading companion, Gregory of Nazianzus, uses abundant pictorial language to convey his rhetorically and philosophically rich theology. What I mean here are not metaphors that refer to what we see, but things that we see which serve as metaphors.