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MASHUP: Conversations about Cinema and the Church (Part II)

By Paul Lundberg With regard to work, changes in the American and global economy have undermined stable, lifelong careers and replaced them with careers of lower security, more frequent job changes and an ongoing need for new training and education. It’s no longer a straight upward path: getting your foot in the door, working hard for your first promotion, and then moving into management or trading up for another position in the same field. Young

MASHUP: Conversations about Cinema and the Church (Part I)

By Paul Lundberg Perhaps you’ve seen a trailer for the movie Cowboys and Aliens. And perhaps you’ve wondered, “Has it come to this?” Have we exhausted every possible storyline to the point that we now must combine genres to come up with something new? Apparently it has, and it boasts the star power of Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford-a.k.a. James Bond and Indiana Jones. When I first saw the trailer for this movie, conflict between

Dwarfs on the Shoulders of Giants

And all that is present today. It is in us. Granted, there is a certain amount of rubbish: the sins of the Church. But above all else there is a crowd of wings fluttering in our hearts: the holiness of the Holy One, of God, and the holiness of Christians sanctified by mortification in their faith and their love. We have the twenty centuries of the Church’s life in our blood. We are its heirs.

Christians Bring the Church to Birth

Each of us ought to realize this fact: each one of us is also the Church. The Church belongs to the second Adam, the Christ. From his side dripping blood and water on the hill of the skull, God took the Church, while the eyes of the Crucified were closing for their three days’ sleep. When on the third day the New Adam awoke, he embraced the Church and made her fruitful with his Spirit.

How to Pray

I think the one thing the Church should do is teach people how to pray. Contemplative prayer in particular can give people back their birthright as children of God (inherently connected to and created by God). That is the only way to know your birthright experientially. Prayer is not something you do; it’s finally something you are whenever you collapse back into the very Ground of your being. Unfortunately, we flee into our minds instead—to

Sacred Cosmology in the Christian Tradition (Part V)

St. Maximos the Confessor 1,400 years ago, St. Maximos the Confessor (580-662) brought the ‘Logos’ paradigm to new heights, creating an unsurpassed synthesis showing that all are representatives of one simple and supreme principle, the Logos Principle which underlies the deep structure of the cosmos. For Maximos, the perennial integrity paradigm of the cosmos was self-evident. It was the Church as the cosmic ‘living symbol’; the house of all horizons and perspectives. The Logos is

Every Believer is as ‘Amen’ who will become an ‘Alleluia’

I am what my father thought; I am what my mother prayed for. I am the labour of my forebears. I am their hopes, their sicknesses, their healings. I am their loves, their struggles, even their blasphemies and their sins. I am their dawns and sunsets, their pitiless winters, their thrilling spring times, their blazing summers, their tranquil autumns. I am their births and their deaths. Scientists at one time used to speak, perhaps they

Monday of the Holy Spirit

On the day after every Great Feast, the Orthodox Church honors the one through whom the Feast is made possible. On the day following the Nativity of the Lord, for example, we celebrate the Synaxis of the Most Holy Theotokos (December 26). On the day after Theophany, we commemorate St John the Baptist (January 7), and so on. Today we honor the all-Holy, good, and life-creating Spirit, Who descended upon the Apostles at Pentecost in

Thursday before the Holy Feast of Pentecost

The Sacrament of Pentecost, by George Florovsky THE CHURCH IS ONE. This does not merely mean that there is only one Church, but that the Church is a unity. In it mankind is translated into a new plane of existence so that it may perfect itself in unity in the image of the life of the Trinity. The Church is one in the Holy Spirit and the Spirit “construes” it into the complete and perfect

Monday before the Feast of Holy Pentecost

Introduction The Feast of Holy Pentecost is celebrated each year on the fiftieth day after the Great and Holy Feast of Pascha (Easter) and ten days after the Feast of the Ascension of Christ. The Feast is always celebrated on a Sunday. The Feast commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles on the day of Pentecost, a feast of the Jewish tradition. It also celebrates the establishment of the Church through the