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Below are the 50 most recent journal entries recorded in
+Seraphim's LiveJournal:
| Saturday, December 5th, 2009 | |
| 9:54 am | Cohoes+ Deer-Proof Garden Friends, Driving up to Cohoes, near Albany, today for liturgy tomorrow at St Nicholas Church(67 Saratoga St. 10 AM for anyone in the area and free). Seems we will have our first snow today-- just an inch or two. So will be away until tomorrow evening. Just one picture, letting it be fairly large so as to not trouble with a cut here if that is ok... the path goes through what is ,in Summer, a deer-proof garden. That is a collection of flowers which deer do not eat and which are colorful. Deer eat most flowers one plants, understandably since lacking opposable thumbs and much in the way of brain for that matter, they cannot plant their own crops of things they like to eat. That path which now seems to be to nowhere and the remains of the plants perhaps makes at evening a sort of interesting scene, anyway here it is and as always welcome all response but will not be replying til tomorrow night. yours +Seraphim  . |
| Friday, December 4th, 2009 | |
| 1:02 pm | The Empire of Light + Christmas Lights Poll Friends, Preparing to go up to St Nicholas Church in Cohoes for Saturday -Sunday. Else to share, a house decoration for Christmas which caught my eye last night. The phrase 'the Empire of Light' comes to mind by association, and that is the Magritte painting of a rather stately house made mysterious by being on a dark night earth under a day time sky. ( Read more... ) but our imaged house here is made mysterious and wonderful, although a rather plain and average sort of house in not the richest section of the town, by the curtain of light and figure created by the decoration. the light a magic veil makes it a place a King may visit... Here is a larger image and that of the next house also ( Read more... ) which also is a rather plain house. It is a neighborhood which is still I think heavily Italian ,the church is Our Lady of Pompei, a chapel of the main village church, and certainly Italians and also I think Greeks, make freer with light than the american average. It seems to me quite wonderful and may to you... or may not, why not do a small poll, I have slightly set a bias by setting out the case for bright lights but, there sure is no right or wrong... Poll #1494463 The Extravagant Bright Christmas Lights Poll Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 31 I am inclined to find extravagant Christmas decoration like this and so am sharing these and as always welcome all you have in turn, as always comments help add interest to a poll if anyone is interested...someone state the contrary case for restrained good taste please! or just ideas suggested by free association etc memories etc... yours +Seraphim  .Gate of house. Full house within the post. |
| Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 | |
| 11:03 am | Exploring Submicroscopic Worlds in 1930s Harlem Friends, As I have said ,among the books I am reading for Advent, or perhaps if someone says well only a certain kind of book can be 'for' Advent, than I should say 'in' Advent. among them is The Conjure-Man Dies by Rudolph Fisher. Fisher (1897-1934) was in the early 30s at the center of the Harlem Renaissance and this book is the first mystery novel with a black detective and all black characters. It deserves to be read more, and yet also not by some perversion of 'diversity' subsituted for Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown, Raymond Chandler. 'this ye ought to have done and not left the other undone' as it was said. What schools here and now follow this word? Anyhow is a wonderful book. I will give two pages here which are interesting in a particular way and you may, you will, I think, enjoy... First the setting Frimbo, a sort of consulting witch doctor, has been killed but then the body disappears and Frimbo reappears. Dart, the police detective, and Archer the doctor, are examining a slide with blood to determine if the reappeared Frimbo is the dead (and resurrected) Frimbo. The specific point that interests me most,aside the story, is Archer's discussion of the micro worlds the microscope opens. For the pages...and for a comment on micro worlds within worlds as we look down towards the infinitely small, please click to the right here.( Read more... ) Today these and as always inviting all your response and I am yours +Seraphim  . |
| Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 | |
| 9:11 am | Meditating Bob Dylan's Watchtower+Auden Summarizes the Tempest, my dentist dies. Friends, Message on phone from wife of my dentist that ,recovering from an operation, he died suddenly last night. I will try to go to the funeral service today at least partly. Martin. a good man... Martin Ackerman. May he find a place in the world to come. and his memory and name be for a blessing. Else found a wonderfully interesting book I did not know at all. The Sea and the Mirror by W.H.Auden. He retells the story of Shakespeare's Tempest and deals with the dualities, as Ariel- Caliban,and the question of Christian art. Or so it promises to do... "...this world of fact we love is unsubstantial stuff: All the rest is silence On the other side of the wall and the silence ripeness, and the ripeness all." Now yesterday I discovered the link between Bob Dylan's All along the watchtower and Isaiah 21:5-9. Let me give the lyric of the song, the words from Isaiah and a few comments if you will.( Read more... ) I have added another photo made yesterday of some last remaining leaves, like a bright mobile in the air... How do you feel Dylan's Watchtower? well,and you can hear it also on youtube but if you are not familiar look at the words as he intones them... It seems to me an excellent song for the time before Christmas. And Auden's words summarizing Tempest in a way though of course the book goes on and I have just opened it.. and our leaves... as always welcome all you have in response and am yours +Seraphim |
| Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 | |
| 10:30 am | DYLAN sings Adeste Fidelis and his Watchtower as an Advent hymn+ Mobile of Leaves Friends, I got the Bob Dylan cd "Christmas in the Heart" and am delighted by it. It is not Highway 61 Revisited or Blonde on Blonde or for that matter Slow Train but there is no need for him to do those things again. It seems to me that the shlockier songs, here comes santa and the like appear newly minted(if still not the best coin) and the carols also compel our attention. So for example available on youtube the Adeste Fidelis(O Come all ye faithful) which I include in the post. See what you think. youube has since closed down the songs from this album for copyright reason. so you must --to hear it--get your own copy, sorry The Latin is the most somehow striking at least since that of Cardinal Cushing of Boston with his Irish brogue. I suppose someone who did not know Dylan might suppose him drunk, but as it was said it is but the third hour of the day and it is something else, perhaps not quite Pentecostal, but Christmas... Also I would like to share a picture this morning of some remaining leaves hanging like a bright mobile in the air... and words of a Dylan song which seems to go with the Advent season, the time before Christmas, if you will click to the right here.( Read more... ) So a Dylan Christmas carol with his wonderful Latin... of course you may find it quite otherwise...how do you feel it? and is Watchtower a good Advent song? the pair of horsemen are from Isaiah 21:5-9 as is the tower. and our mobile made of leaves and I welcome all you have on these or anything else at all, yours +Seraphim  .sorry. had put up a youtube which has been removed. |
| Monday, November 30th, 2009 | |
| 9:57 am | F.H.Bradley sums up Reality+ The Dog of Archangel. Friends, *St Johns beat Siena and Temple. Can it be the Red Storm is coming back finally? *Going to Borders to pick up the Bob Dylan Christmas album... people say it is quirky but surprisingly good. *a friend sends a list of entrances to hell in the United Kingdom. http://www.entrances2hell.co.uk/ as with the Three Stooges and mutatis mutandi, I expect some will be amused more than others. Else, from Advent readings, this from F.H.Bradley "Appearance and Reality." "Truth ,when made adequate to Reality, would be so supplemented as to have become something else... something for us unattainable. We have thus left due space for the exercise of doubt and wonder. We admit the healthy scepticism for which all knowledge in a sense is vanity,which feels in its heart that science is a poor thing if measured by the wealth of the real universe. We justify the natural wonder which delights to stray beyond our daylight world,and to follow paths that lead into half unknown ,half unknowable regions. Our conclusion, in brief, has explained and has confirmed the irresistible impression that all is beyond us." We live in a world which is not illusory but which is refracted, and he goes on "outside of spirit there is not,and cannot be, any reality,and,the more that anything is spiritual, so much the more it is veritably real." Bradley is, in any case, a wonderful English stylist isn't he? Now on another hand there is the photograph at the end of the entry by photographer Nikolai Gemet from "Russian Life". The situation is a line of clergy awaiting the arrival of the Patriarch in front of a theater in the northern city of Archangel. But before that here comes a dog with wagging tail, causing smiles and a bit of perplexity before slipping back into the crowd as the Patriarch's limousine pulls up. The full context within the article is here. ( Read more... ) Gemet, by the way ,is ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} nixette who has a range ofgood photography on his journal. So today these and as always I invite all your response on them or on anything else and am yours +Seraphim  . |
| Sunday, November 29th, 2009 | |
| 1:32 pm | The Stooges Gender Gap+News of John the Balladeer!+ Moon ,Barrel and Ducks. Friends, Let's make this one a miscellany... 1)Yesterday's Three Stooges poll shows they have,at least among readers here, a gender gap. At present(still open of course) men like them by 13-2, women are thumbs down at 8-10. 2)There are strangely few websites or internet groups devoted to John the Balladeer the magical wanderer with the silver strung guitar in the stories and novels of Manly Wade Wellman. So, with apologies to those uninterested(maybe about 90% of both genders from the yawns and asides I am hearing now) I will continue to use this journal as a provisional center of information on John. As: A new edition of 'Who Fears the Devil?' (a collection of the short stories) is coming out within a few days. and it will include 2 stories from before John had his guitar which have never been published together with the others. It has a silly looking cover,here if you will( Read more... ) but if it has two stories I do not know which belong in the cycle I will be pleased indeed. 3)Three photos from today and last night, Ducks, A Barrel in falling water, my condominium's Christmas tree if you will click to the right here( Read more... ) The moon over the patterned lights of the tree, and I darkened the image to leave only colors, looks perhaps a Christmas Star but I think of the line from T.E.Hulme's short poem "What seemed so far away. Is but a child's balloon, forgotten after play." as to the barrel ,though it is some time since I was in seminary, I think of the vessels which in the thought of Reb Yitzhak Luria (the Ari) were insufficient to the influx of Glory which made the worlds. We live within the result. The Shevirat Ha Kelim. Well...uh... there it is. of course it also looks sort of like an old barrel. and what have you today on these or on anything else at all, yours +Seraphim  . |
| Saturday, November 28th, 2009 | |
| 9:06 am | The "Spirit of the Depth" Meets the Three Stooges. video and poll. Friends, I am a little in awe of Jung's "Red Book", for the intensity of its spiritual exploration, of its art, its 'ultimate concern'(in expression of Tillich). It is a serious subject certainly but yet... "The spirit of the depth stepped up to me and said ...'Do you believe,man of this time that laughter is lower than worship? Where is your measure false measurer, the sum of life decides in laughter and worship, not in your judgement... you will recognize the supreme meaning by the fact that he is laughter and worship...'" Well it has a tone...I imagine somehow the spirit of the depth stepping up to Curly Howard of the Three Stooges...well and we need not just imagine there is at youtube I find, opening the old youtube volume whose ever changing images delighted my grand parents so, I find that there is a nice scene from Spook Louder. Actually you may find the whole in longer parts on youtube and it is a very nice one I think, in which three salesmen of a machine for reducing come to the door of an inventor and end up guarding his house but finding also three spies in the house in halloween costumes and a mysterious pie thrower People tend to sharply like or dislike the physical farce of the stooges, if dislike then either for its silliness or for its cruel assumption that hitting someone on the head is funny. Shall we do a quick poll? Poll #1491451 The Three Stooges Poll Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 34 As to the Three Stooges(expland in comments) A good poll in livejournal has no right and wrong, and this sure doesn't. Probably a good poll should have no misspellings like 'expland'("sic" as we say in the trade) Well... as always I welcome all your comment on these things or on anything else at all , comment on poll will add to its interest, yours +Seraphim |
| Friday, November 27th, 2009 | |
| 3:03 pm | A Late Rose+Video on the Red Book Friends, It is nice to have a day off with not much to do... Unfortunately a sinus earache which had gone away for a while set in again today but trying to think about other things as there is not a lot I can do about it... The Jung Red Book presents a problem for reading of clearing something like a space for it. It would seem to require a reading stand such as Jan Perkins has for his large edition of "Man and his symbols", or --and this is where the rubber hits the rosd--it would involve clearing all the flotsam and jetsam from the table which, never having dinner parties, I have used as a desk. alright resolution made. I will clear off everything except the boat shaped kite, the samovar , and the creche-- removing pill bottles, papers, coins, etc and put the book there and read at least a little each day. perhaps a little goes quite a ways... I am at the place where he says "the supreme meaning is the beginning and the end, it is the bridge across and the fulfillment." and how this is shadowed by absurdity etc. Good stuff but like plum pudding perhaps a little at a time. at the end a youtube on the making of the Red Book If you ask where I eat considering that seeing me in a photo it is obvious I have had a meal or two, I use a small circular table. I drove up to Caramoor thinking to take a picture but at first this spanish moorish style complex seemed cold and bare with its gardens done for the winter and then I saw a rose. and somehow that small late flower completed a scene... Here is our rose seen from within and then from outside looking into the pavilion ( Read more... ) Today, playing Sienna will be a big test for St John's basketball but I do not think too many here besides myself follow the fortunes of the Red Storm. And that is pretty much what I have to offer today ,with as always welcoming all you may have in turn, yours +Seraphim |
| Thursday, November 26th, 2009 | |
| 6:47 pm | Thanksgiving Day. New Jersey+ Sokolniki Park Friends, I am just back from Thanksgiving dinner at Russell and Judith Komline's home in Gladstone New Jersey. There is the picture below. Much good talk. Charles a rich knowledge and sense of history from Mayan to the reign of english monarchs. David and Han Luen doing graduate theology at Notre Dame after work at Tubingen where Friedoman met them. Daniel in from William and Mary after a year in Mexico. Discussed besides the normal things such as the Detroit Lion's feebleness, and the extraordinary such as Janet's tart yet sweet apple pie and Judith's perfect pumpkin pie, Augustine's answer to the 'sceptics' and the problematics of Bulgakov's Bride of the Lamb and his sophiology, with which Han Luen is working just now, also Barth on Mozart, Brunner on natural theology(which I had mistakenly supposed he rejected). Mark remarked as we were driving home (beatles rubber soul cd driving through early night) that it was wonderful to be with people working with depth and feeling in theology. also problem of Necessary Being. I held forth a bit too much hard to stop once am started sadly but it is a tendency of Bishops to pontificate. Well but a fine time--Also by Skype, which I had never seen before, hello to Jean Komline in Uganda. This is sort of entre nous in tone but it is, all and all , Thanksgiving that deep holiday which is historic to our republic, , but reaches out to include the whole of things,all the dark and the light, the happy and the sad, those in company and those alone all resolve in the light of gratitude and I am grateful to have been able to share in this festival of gratitude with these friends. But whether in company or alone in the serenity of late Autumn-- and here is the image which for me could be that solitary Thanksgiving, or each of our solitudes within a group( Read more... ) Remembering "If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, 'thank you,' that would suffice." Meister Eckhart I think that I have said it today and hope that you all have had reason to to feel this gratitude and if it is,as it were in your vocablulary. to express it but anyway to know it and as always welcoming all response I am yours +Seraphim  .Thanksgiving. L-R Daniel Komline, David Komline. Charles Folger, Russell Komline. Han-Luen Kantzer Komline,me, Mark Lerner, Janet Folger, Judith Komline. photographer Friedoman Sommer not within frame but created the whole image. The turkey of course ,like the poet's light on the kingfisher's wing, the still point centering this turning world. |
| Wednesday, November 25th, 2009 | |
| 5:20 pm | For Thanksgiving Friends, For Thanksgiving,and besides the poem cycle from the camps which I put up yesterday, there is Fr Schmemann's wonderful last sermon of Thanksgiving 1983: It is at: http://www.schmemann.org/byhim/thankyou but I have posted this over the years. This year here is Fr Alexander Schmemann's Thanksgiving day entry in his Journal for 1974: Yesterday--Thanksgiving--at Father Tom and Anya's in Wappingers Falls, the whole family...nineteen people around the table--a glorious day! First a quiet peaceful Liturgy, then--its already a tradition--a visit to Roosevelt's estate on the Hudson. A wintry ,transparent sunshine, a windless day the silence of these parks. these rooms in which there used to be so much life. And again this wonderful light, somewhere across the river the bright flash of the sun reflected from a window and in the evening the traditional turkey. The children sang "let all mortal flesh keep silence"...and Christmas carols. Perfect happiness. fullness of life. Peace! The gift of enjoying a day, of enjoying life, in these words. Otherwise the Red Book of C.J.Jung arrived. It is very big, beautiful in its german calligraphy and illustrations and it is also going to be a rather long and serious work to read the translation and notes and get a sense of it. at end a photo of a page. and perhaps this suggested by canonjohn on Thanksgivingagain: "If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, 'thank you,' that would suffice." Meister Eckhart as always welcoming all response I am yours, +Seraphim  .Pages from the Red Book. |
| Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 | |
| 11:41 am | For Thanksgiving : A voice from the camps. Friends, For Thanksgiving will go to be with Russell and Judith Komline in New Jersey... Let's do today what I do every Thanksgiving season and that is make available here the remarkable cycle of poetic prayer called Glory to God for all things! which came out of the communist death camps in Russia. The phrase 'Glory to God for all things!' echos late words of John Chrysostom in exile in the fourth century, where else you will surely meet them is at the end of entries by canonjohn. Thankfulness must include all..."It is only in accepting the dreadful that one can receive the Majesty and Grace and Glory of this world and of Life itself." Rilke Of course we ask that we may be allowed to receive directly and to fully endure only that dreadful which we can bear and yet to accept, as an alert and calm knowing,all that has been and is. So without further introduction let us read an excerpt from this and then a link to the whole. I urge that his is one of the most remarkable documents of the last century. If you will( Read more... ) So today this... Else reading on about Kandinsky and in Nabokov and Bradley etc and as always invite all your response and am yours +Seraphim  .Solovki. The far north monastery complex which in the 1920s became the first communist death camp and prototype of all that followed. From the late 1980s it is again a monastery. |
| Monday, November 23rd, 2009 | |
| 11:36 am | Hartford Afirmation. Rainbow in Fountain. Goethe on Color as play of light and dark. Friends, First a note of specialized interest. A few days ago there was the Manhattan Declaration of some Christian leaders on social issues. Responses were typically polarized and absolutely predictable and banal. I am not speaking of the response of a livejournal friend, R.M. in the style of Russian novels, which was thoughtful indeed and surely any other of yours--no banality here bedad! I do not know if the declaration was well conceived or ill- conceived, or something in between, and I am certainly not expressing a thought on its content so let that be. But I would propose that a deeper and more important level was touched by the Hartford Affirmation of 1975. The signatories included Avery Dulles, Alexander Schmemann, William Sloan Coffin, Peter Berger. It was prepared over a year and I think it holds its importance today as much as then and would commend it to anyone concerned: http://www.philosophy-religion.org/hand Now on to what it occurs to me to share. Yesterday there was again a rainbow in the fountain at our university library, here it is and I will continue with some thought after it:  ."This mirrors all aspiring human action, On this your mind for clearer insight fasten: That life is ours by colorful refraction" Goethe The rainbow was unusual this time of year ,even with light in fountain, because of the changed angle of the sun, but here it is. Some thoughts including on Goethe's color theory if you will click to the right just here.( Read more... ) I have stated Goethe's color theory approximately and in an impressionistic way because I have been for the first time reading a little on it ,as it was taken up by Wasilly Kandinsky the founder of abstract art. Finding it interesting I suppose you may, if unfamiliar, too. In any case here is our play of light and color in a fountain, and as always I invite all your response on these or on anything else at all, yours +Seraphim |
| Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 | |
| 12:37 pm | Swan. Why read philosophy?. Old Mill in Late Autumn. Friends, A couple of images. This morning the old mill up the road from me in Sleepy Hollow.( Read more... ) and at the end of the post a swan I found yesterday on Lake Titacus. Beyond that some thoughts from Advent reading. (The Conjure Man Dies, a Harlem mystery from the 1930s, books by and about Kandinsky, Gift and the new Laura by Nabokov, and Appearance and Reality by F.H.Bradley). (1) as to the last,attentive long term readers may say, 'again?' but yes I do come back to Bradley , not least because there is nothing specific that remains from reading in him as Hugh Kenner observed. So for one thing one can read it anew as my grandmother did mystery stories she only half remembered. It, Bradley, is music or ,J.N.Findlay, "darts in a pub room." What more does one want from philosophy? I ask. Of course I am also sympathetic to what I take to be the intent of his thought. I recall my mother saying that reading Proust,which she remembered rather than returned to, one felt a pure delight like that of a purring cat, for the use of language. I wrote on these things at http://seraphimsigrist.livejournal.c I do not know if my approach to philosophy as music is uncommon but perhaps some of you have things that you read for this sort of delight? for the music of words? (2) Kandinsky "The arts are encroaching one upon another and from a proper use of this encfoachment will rise the art that is truly monumental. Every man who steeps himself in the spiritual possiblities of his art is a valuable helper in building the spiritual pyaramid which will one day reach to heaven." This fits to our thought on the opening out of theology as per yesterday's. and for that matter to the melding of words into music. and then I look at a poem I have liked by Kathleen Raine called "A Spell For Creation", let me put it here because if you do not know it I think you will like it.( Read more... ) So those today. Else of course disgust at the Notre Dame loss to Connecticut which overthrows any simple sense of the working of Natural Law. But in the long run if it gets Charlie Weiss out as coach and brings Urban Myer from Florida it can be a long term blessing. and what have you today on any of these themes or others? yours +Seraphim  . |
| Saturday, November 21st, 2009 | |
| 10:53 am | Diego Rivera. Flower festival and Flower Bearer. Friends, What I would like to share today is a painting by Diego Rivera. It was brought to my attention by johnchico. He iswriting a book taking the twelve great festivals of the Eastern Christian year and meditating them through, among other things, images drawn from modern art. The festivals then are seen as a movement whose ground is not an anachronistic sense of time, but rather one which is profoundly contemporary. This will be I think a wonderful book which is also an opening out of theology to the poetic, the intuitive. In any case it is very much a work in progress but here is a painting Chico refers to:  .Festival of Flowers: Santa Anita. Diego Rivera.1931 Paraphrasing Chico on it. The figure is bent under the burden of the festival flowers as if under the Cross on Good Friday. The white Easter lilies dominate the field , there is also the restrained suffering of the bearer and ,proportionate to the white, what is almost a barricade of red roses and roses in the hands of the kneeling girls the red for the crucifixion and the suffering of the past and the white for the world of Resurrection ahead. "[Rivera's] stylized representation of the figures retains and exalts their naturalness and they appear simultaneously ageless and new-born." Opening the treasured family Google, carefully so as not to crack the aging binding, I find (for in this book one can find some form of almost anything as in Borges' Book of Sand)two further Rivera images which are powerful and ,it seems to me ,parallel. If you will click here.( Read more... ) These and I hope you may join me in being moved by these works. Perhaps you have known them before but I did not, my acquaintance with Rivera being literlly glancing (through books) (at Murals on Rockefeller Center Walls) (at his influence on Mexican restaurant decor). Today I will try to do some reading... also look to see if swans are still on Lake Titacus... and of course welcome all your response to these or on whatever else you have today, yours +Seraphim |
| Friday, November 20th, 2009 | |
| 12:58 pm | Sobornost+ Imaginary Games. any thoughts? Friends, A bit of good news. It seems my book on Sobornost is going, with a bit of editing, to be published by a substantial publisher. I am glad because it contains some ideas , not very original to me but,which seem to me important... A mention by jolies_couleurs of Herman Hesse's "Glass Bead Game",to which I respond that I remember thinking Hesse had not the slightest idea how it was to be played, got me thinking about imaginary games. Can you think of others? There is Rollerball starting with the story Rollerball Murder by William Harrison. Our friend Peter Von Berg had a part in the otherwise unmemorable second movie version. addition: I think of quidditch in the Harry Potter books which are something I dont do. Then I think of the Caucus Race from Alice in Wonderland. Here is the description( Read more... ) There is the Game of Spheres, Ludo Globi, of Nicholas da Cusa in which thrown balls sent through nine concentric circles representing the spheres of the universe(as of course we remember from science studies in school). I read the book and have it but I do not remember the rules or even the object of the game but it is also rather cosmic to say the least. Arthur Machen describes Dog and Duck a real game apparently but one rather like da Cusa's and fairly fantastical as I recall. There are of course,as to the cosmic imaginary games, cosmic elements in real games as the 360 degrees of a circle = the number of points on a Go Board +1 at the center which is the sun centering the star points for the planetaries. And almost any game represents the union of opposites on some level it may be. I would say that Raymond Lulls "Great Art" a system of charts and dials for answering any question 700 years before computer technology is a kind of game... Do you know any other imaginary games? there must be many. any thoughts on games...? and anything else you have today welcome too, yours, +Seraphim  .The dodo explains the Caucus race to Alice. |
| Thursday, November 19th, 2009 | |
| 10:23 am | Simonas Petras+ Spiritual writing on the CIRCUS. proposing an imaginary anthology. Friends, I put on a jacket I havent worn for long and in the pockets are as always with me, loose change, several dollars of it... I am thinking how to have a Thanksgiving, perhaps I could help out at a mission in the City and then have some turkey myself...unsure. The picture at the end with thanks to Bishop Savvas for pointing up the National Geographic November article on Mount Athos and thanks to that magazine. You may find a set of photos at: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2 The one I posted is Simonas Petras Monastery. I remember staying a night and standing on the balcony looking out over the sea into a sunset looking like the end of the world...Of course attentive readers if there are any will have noticed my love of things looking like shangrila...but perhaps you too will like this picture and maybe while I have hacked a copyright image still a few of us may buy the magazine on its account... Now what I am thinking today is from a note from Jim Forest but... One could make a whole book maybe of spiritual , mystical even, writing on the Circus couldn't one? Perhaps someone will... I think of Robert Lax's poem cycle Circus of the Sun where the life of the universe is figured in a circus setting up and staying a day and leaving... Henri Nouwen's Circus Journals about his days with the Flying Rodleighs. Ever the intent priest (a heavier man than Lax one senses ) and seeker, Nouwen focuses on the flying and catching off the high wires as an image of faith. But what other could go in our imagined circus anthology? You may have ideas, I have none as good as these two but I will put a couple of thoughts if you will click to the right here.( Read more... ) You see I have added a painting, Circus Parade by Mary Singleton, and one of Lax's poems as well as my ideas on book...your thought? any suggestions? any responses to what we have put up here? of course the book is imaginary... but many good books are. as always, yours +Seraphim  .Simonas Petras Monastery. |
| Wednesday, November 18th, 2009 | |
| 12:31 pm | OCMC talk+Kalymnos "silence...waiting for the boat to appear on the blue horizon." Friends, Nabokov posthumous novel "in fragments" The original of Laura arrived. looks fascinating. so many good things in the world when you think of it. 'world is entirely miraculous' said st Nikolai which segues to this: Yesterday I gave my address at the OCMC: Orthodox Christian Mission Center. I spoke centrally about St Nikolai of Japan and you may, if anyone should wish to, read it here: http://seraphimsigrist.livejournal.c this is optional, it will not be on the final... you need not be quite so open about your relief in the back row there go back to reading your comic book quietly please. Onward... It was wonderful to meet old and new friends. Cliff Argue whom I met in Japan when I was a young priest and he, with Continental Airlines then, now he is head of OCMC, was visiting. Frs Alexander and Luke Veronis, Fr John Tate and many others... I am realizing I could make a long list but if you are reading you know who you are and alsoBishop Savas Zembilas whom I will put in bold letters because of the realization that his family is from Kalymnos where the great poet Robert Lax, also lifelong friend and correspondent (Antiletters) of Thomas Merton, lived in one of his stages of hermit- like life (between the time in a rough neigborhood in Marsailles where he lived in what was partly a brothel as I recall and then after Kalymnos was Patmos). So then ,thinking of Bishop Savas and sending him the link ,here are two pages of the Kalymnos journals of Bob Lax. if you will click here( Read more... ) But I think you, like I who have no link to Kalymnos, will feel transported to a place and in fact rather as if standing within a painting which yet again is also the place where we started and where now... "the afternoon is making a poem of itself... a golden afternoon when sunlight like honey is poured on the land." as always welcome all your response to these or whatever you have on anything else at all, yours +Seraphim  .Kalymnos. |
| Tuesday, November 17th, 2009 | |
| 10:10 am | Somersault Friends, Going over my talk for the banquet tonight of the Orthodox Missions Center. Length. trim as possible. In a sense the best banquet thing would be anecdotes about my life in Japan etc, putting hand through paper doors and I dont know what. In any case humor. However I am not going that way so must be shorter. tell myself. will try... To share what here? now and here or now/here as some Zen enthusiast entitled his book with overt subtlety (a nabokov phrase I like) suggesting nowhere at all... which I surmise is an important location in Zen. on my desk a few necessary books. Groucho Marx, Wang Wei... Robert Lax. Here is a poem from Lax.  .By Robert Lax ....... Reminds me of seminary days when there was an overpass walkway between chapel and main building and leaving chapel after Matins ,on way to breakfast, from time to time a friend John Boojamra and I would do somersaults with gravity and of course wearing cassocks as we had been from matins. I think Peter Scorer, now teaching at Exeter, joined us in this. John a good man, many hard things came in his life, though he enjoyed good things too, and he died as it would seem far too young. Well but that to the side, just this for today and as always I invite all your response on anything at all and am yours, +Seraphim |
| Sunday, November 15th, 2009 | |
| 11:21 am | The Baron. Pushkin's Tragic Vision. The Chrysler Building in a Glory of night. Friends, Yesterday was the last day of Pushkin's Little Tragedies at the Baryshnikov Theater and we, a group of his friends, saw Peter Von Berg play three roles and in particular that of the Baron in "The Knight Miser". Here is Peter as Baron. and some other pictures( Read more... ) and as you see I have added some thought on the Little Tragdedies. After, good pasta and wine and talk and then coming to Grand Central Station I saw the Chrysler building strikingly radiant in the mist after a day of light rain. I put a small image at the end but here it is larger( Read more... ) I realized again and newly what a beautiful building the Chrysler Building and what a beautiful place the City is... and perhaps you will enjoy seeing it with me here, and as always inviting all your thought on these things or on anything else at all, yours +Seraphim  .Perhaps it is partly the mist, like the fog of sherlock holmes' London of romance, but we see a New York of romance don't we? Is that City always there within the city if not always as clearly visible as here...? |
| Saturday, November 14th, 2009 | |
| 8:58 am | Words from the desert Friends, Will be in the City today. Pushkin Little Tragedies at the Baryshnikov this afternoon... Last night talking with a friend, the question of what is a Christian equivalent to the famous Zen saying "If you see a Buddha in the road kill him." Which is of course a warning against inflation... There is "only the hand that erases can write the true thing." But that, and for that matter the Zen tradition too, is rather sophisticated. I look in the desert fathers sayings ,sayings which are simple and unrefined, not within a tradition but newly made. There is of course "If you see a brother rising up to heaven pull him down." but here is one less familiar maybe... "Even if an angel should indeed appear to you, do not receive him..." A couple of others strike me and may interest you, or someone... "A man may seem to be silent, but if his heart is condemning others, he is babbling ceaselessly. But there may be another who talks from morning till night and yet he is truly silent..." and "There was a man who ate a lot and was till hungry, and another who ate little and was satisfied. The one who ate a lot and was still hungry received a greater reward than he who ate little and was satisfied." These then in haste before starting out. They are easy to apply to others but there is no-one I think to whom it does not apply also ,to myself, to everyone that there are areas of self satisfaction, of inner babbling, of inflation and fascination with a false ideal self like an angel... well anyway they are road signs...vectors... as always welcoming all your response on these or other I am yours +Seraphim  . |
| Friday, November 13th, 2009 | |
| 10:24 am | M-I-C-K-E-Y . Kubrick +Holiday + Purple Leaves+ To read or to write? Friends, Some news yesterday reminded me of the conclusion of Full Metal Jacket. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmILOL55 the mickey mouse song wove in and out of my night... now looking at the thing again I am reminded that Joker said that while the world around him is askew he is alive and not afraid, going on as best he can with his comrades, that is a positive thought isnt it? Speaking of the movie I like that its effect is neither dovish nor hawkish, it is non-political in that way. The peace sign and the 'born to kill' on Joker's helmet show the poles within which his road runs... Kubrick the director was nonpolitical...His Barry Lyndon is a film I like,for its theme music perhaps the most moving music to me that I know(sarabande) but also its bitter sweet view of life...The music is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erKsIJyf and the visual clips epitomize the mood nicely... Else thinking about Thanksgiving and hoping to formulate a plan so I will not be forlorn. The family I am usually with is not doing a Thanksgiving this year. Perhaps I could drive somewhere on a two day vacation although it would cost money. In Autumn the leaves turn red and yellow but also some of the reds shade into purple and the photo at the end today shows a bit of that, and it is a transformation I particularly like... If you also like purple leaves and would like to see this photo from yesterday a little larger click here.( Read more... ) If only we could also have some blue leaves! Else reading along in the four books I am reading (perhaps I will add on one or another) One by and one about Kandinsky, Nabokov's Gift and the Conjure Man Dies. I think for many of us it can be more of a useful thing to read than to write novels. I say subversively of nanowrimo. But really I understand how it is a creativity for many and for of course some of you (I think also for some there could be publishable elements that might appear within a novel unpublishable as a whole and that is great) and its just that I ,likely rightly, sense I dont have any worthwhile novel in me. Old Japanese story of writer doing a novel based on his father, and then one on his also deceased mother, looking across breakfast table at his wife and saying "you know I think I have one more novel in me." Today these various...they are in effect just a few purple leaves maybe...and as always I invite all your thought on these or anything else, yours +Seraphim  .Purple leaves...the whole rather like a painting perhaps? larger form within the post. |
| Thursday, November 12th, 2009 | |
| 10:29 am | Dr. Tozer. Friends, Good discussion yesterday on the duties of a literary executor... Today I will go get a seasonal flu shot at noon. Hope not much in terms of side effects. Advent is coming...and of course the season is iteself a permanent place on the inner map as it were or maybe it is,or may or even ought be,a permanent orientation. I have started reading several books, four perhaps I will add another, so that can be a way to enter the outward season. Here is a quote today, which someone posted. I think it is simple and good and perhaps best served by presentation without more on it from me. “The widest thing in the universe is not space; it is the potential capacity of the human heart. Being made in the image of God, it is capable of almost unlimited extension in all directions. And one of the world's greatest tragedies is that we allow our hearts to shrink until there is room in them for little beside ourselves.” A. W. Tozer Well we could make one comment without being intrusive perhaps and that is that as to Advent, if there is no inner space then there can be no Advent. Else Autumn recedes, grey skies, more bare branches though still some leaves, perhaps you will join me in liking this image at the end and as always I invite all your comment on anything at all and am yours +Seraphim  . |
| Wednesday, November 11th, 2009 | |
| 12:03 pm | "The Death and Destruction Poll" Friends, A lot of small things on mind. Preparing talk for banquet next Tuesday of OCMC--Orthodox Missions Center. I will not work that here in this journal as I have some papers. This Saturday we will go to Pushkin little tragedies (the first performance of it, Stanislavsky failed to stage it) and I am told our Peter Von Berg petervb42 isgreat in it. Anyone able to join us for 2pm matinee contact me. Also Dr Steven Ware of Nyack agrees to meet our group Transfiguration on December 5. But for here I have perhaps not much special to say today ... I am interested in reading of a 'new' book of Vladimir Nabokov , made from notes left by the author and released by his son Dimitri Nabokov after many 30 years of family and inner debate--The Original of Laura Now my question, to order or not to order? Out on November 17th. Michiko Kakutani(New York Times) summarizes "in a sketchy hall of mirrors Nabokov jousts with death and reality". She is of two minds as to whether it should have come out at all.Perhaps I should wait for the New York Post review? Together with C.G.Jung's even more important Red Book, which I have on order, this makes two great publishing events this Fall of works which were not intended for publication by their authors. That leads to the following poll if anyone is interested. It is an old question in literature. Sometimes it has personal ramifications. When my father died he told me to destroy all his papers. I did in general. certainly all the personal papers, all the notebooks in small illegible hand writing recording books and concerts. but not all of his writing. This I feel he would have been happy that I cared to keep, and it is not I think at this point publishable in any case. Anyway: Poll #1483965 The Death and Destruction Poll Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 36 With publications this year of posthumous work of Jung and Nabokov the question arises of obying author's wishes to not publish a work after his death...
View Answers I tend to think the author's wish to have remaining work destroyed or anyway not published should be obeyed I tend to think that works that may have value should be made available in any case Of course the title of the poll is a bit gaudy and the options are not very exact but it seems to me that a subject that divides people can have some interest in seeing how they divide...just if you are interested and it may add to interest if you will add a comment. really the poll cannot measure fine points but it can show what is the first gut reaction and that can have interest. otherwise I have only a photo from yesterday at a nearby pond.( Read more... ) and a Kandinsky at the end,and I am yours inviting all your response, +Seraphim  .Kandinsky Several Circles |
| Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 | |
| 11:48 am | Conjure Man+ Ellul's criticism of icons + Klee's Magic Garden and Kandinsky's Black Arch. Friends, Notes and asides today... 1. 'The Conjure Man Dies" by Rudolph Fisher is a Harlem murder mystery from 1932. It is out of print and not available cheap unfortunately. I am reading a library copy but just the note that it deserves availability--not great writing, not I think(looked ahead to end)a great story either, but atmospheric and with a fine ear for talk. 2.Fr.Vinogradov remarks on the critique of Evdokimov on icons by Jacques Ellul (this entry is rapidly devolving into a 'talking heads' thing isn't it?). I find it on line Ellul's most, to my mind, effective point is this-- "This theology of the icon rests on a certain conception of the incarnation that utterly fails to take into account its unfulfilled aspect:the waiting and hope.". My response would be to regret the word 'utterly'--why could he not be satisfied to say 'perhaps risks to insufficiently take into account etc' and to wish that thoughts could be placed side by side(of course intent readers here if there are any will recall my preference for complementarity ,for allowing opposite statements to complete each other)rather than in either/or form. If he would say 'a somewhat romantic iconology like Evdokimov's risks, entirely contrary to its intent, to undervalue openness to the future, expectation and hope'...it might be better? 3.Whether or not icons are separate from 'art history' here is an image I like by Paul Klee, Magic Garden I will put it large here with such commentary as I find on line.( Read more... ) I would be happy for some other commentary from some reader here or from some writer to put more clearly what we like in this image. Perhaps it is essentially musical... 4.Here ,speaking of musical, is a Kandinsky I especially liked at the exhibit at the Guggenheim. Black Arch ( Read more... ) Perhaps this time I do not feel an urge for interpretation or verbal appreciation. Is it that the arch seems a simpler image than the goblet or chalice at the center of the Garden? Today these, I think it can be enough, and as always invite all your response and am yours +Seraphim  .Magic Garden. Paul Klee. larger image within post. |
| Monday, November 9th, 2009 | |
| 9:41 am | Kandinsky's Moscow+ LOS TRES AMIGOS in Georgian hats. Friends, At St Gregory's yesterday I was given a Georgian cap (skoufia ) made in Montreal , Frs Alex and Michael already had them so we took a photo after liturgy which reminds me of the movie Three Amigos.  .M.Plekon S.Sigrist A.Vinogradov "Wherever there is injustice, You will find us! ... We'll be there! Wherever liberty is threatened, You will find.....The Three Amigos!" Trailer at the end reminds pleasantly of that Steve Martin film --or introduces if you haven't seen it. Besides this I look up to look at again a painting I saw at the Kandinsky exhibit. It has a particular interest, not as one of his masterworks ,but because it --made when he was briefly back in Russia in 1920 --is a step back from pure abstraction and is an image of the city of Moscow. for this please click to the right here( Read more... ) Today these, lighter than yesterday but you may say something serious as well as light if you wish, all welcome, yours +Seraphim The final 'why?' from Carmen is touching. |
| 8:05 am | OCMC ( Read more... ) |
| Sunday, November 8th, 2009 | |
| 1:25 pm | Harlem Changing+ The Archangel Sermon +Guggenheim Friends, At the end of today's an inner view of the Guggenheim museum looking up. It is where I was at the wonderful Kandinsky exhibit yesterday, if you are anywhere near New York you must see it at least once before it closes in January. Yesterday it seemed everyone was there, a long line but moving quickly for tickets. On the way in passing through Harlem we could see many new housing units like condominiums, a very genrified upscale uptown is emerging in parts alongside the old Harlem. I borrow the dvd of Cotton Comes to Harlem based on what I remember as a wonderful novel by Chester Himes celebrating the eccentric characters of the old Harlem. Also think to read The Conjure Man Dies a Harlem mystery novel from the 1930s. I have not been much in Harlem but I sense that something will be lost... Anyone knowledgeable on Harlem? Do you have a feeling of it losing as well as gaining? Now this morning I made my sermon on St.Michael the Archangel. It is a fairly major production for me as anyone who has read this journal in recent days knows, not really so much a sermon as a paper or a meditation... I will give it all here with footnotes added. I hope you may be interested to read it and having read it that you may have found something of interest and even share in turn your thought. Here it is if you will click to the right.( Read more... ) I have added some pictures of the Guggenheim Museum, and the street outside... as always I invite all your thought on the subject of the text on Archangel Michael or the footnotes of course you do not need to read it all unless you are interested. It will not be on the final exam. or the pictures or on Kandinsky or on Harlem or on whatever else you have today, light or serious all welcome and I am yours, +Seraphim  .Guggenheim Museum looking up...the museum tier upon tier of its winding path might remind also of Jacob's great dreamed ladder on which the angels moved to and from absolute Height. |
| Friday, November 6th, 2009 | |
| 10:55 am | Kandinsky shows us "A THING OR TWO"+What are they saying about Archangels?+More Late Autumn. Friends, I think we had enough on the Archangel Michael yesterday to last a while. It is not a topic you hear discussed much on the street or in pubs or salons is it? However it is there if anyone is interested. well I will add one thought that the old image of the world in its spheres rising in height on height is of course quite different from the contemporary myth (=model) in which it extends endlessly like a level sea to a horizon lost in the mist. I expect the sense of the Angelicals we have to the extent we are within one world image or another will differ. Klee's "Angel of the Future" in the userpic seems rather between or outside either which may not be bad... But there I go again.We would not wish to dwell on a somehow esoteric topic here! Quelle Idee! as we say in the trade. Right but here is a poem by the painter Wasilly Kandinsky which I think you will like!  .Notice how the border between what one sees and does not see fades away as the fish descends....perhaps there are other features of interest. And here are more late Autumn leaves here today in the lower Hudson Valley( Read more... ) And as always I invite your response on these or on anything else at all, yours +Seraphim  . |
| Thursday, November 5th, 2009 | |
| 11:14 am | Leaves. + "Seeing" by Kandinsky +" Michael's Sword" by me. Friends, The leaves become fewer and yet the remaining ones against a sparer background have their own fragile beauty... Here is a picture from this morning in which we can see each leaf in a way we could not when there were more, as if the whole were a mobile hanging in space. I am trying to think about three difficult things at once and it is too much. So I put aside the book "Menorah for Athena" which I have on interlibrary loan about the relation of Charles Reznikoff to his Judaism. It seems, in the triage of things, more than I need to know on the subject. Secondly my little unit on Kandinsky, have several open books as it were. But I am not spending enough time with them to take in much especially given my lack of background in art. Still I like his poems in Sounds and here is one with its illustration, the Kandinsky poem Seeing if you will ( Read more... ) Thirdly thinking, for this Sunday ,about St Michael and All Angels. After those of yesterday and the day before a further coordinate for thinking about Michael( Read more... ) These today quite various, Perhaps you will find even some parallel between Kandinsky's poem and its rising from the 'gloom' and St Michael as we set it out. Of course anything in a sense parallels anything, but Kandinsky's work is always a spiritual journey too... and here are our leaves remaining and floating in the air like a mobile and as always welcome all you have on these or any other, yours +Seraphim  . |
| Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 | |
| 11:17 am | An Image From Ischia+ To Michaels Friends, I am burned out as a Yankee fan and was long ago, but (like some believer whose practice has been set aside for a time and who yet goes through a church door at Christmas) I still like Andy Pettitte and so if the Yankees win tonight with him pitching I will be happy. and if they lose I will think of Alex Rodriquez. Now here at the end of the post is an image from forioscribe,JohnPalcewski, who lives on the isle of Ischia--multi talented writer, critic, keen observer of life and not least photographer. He posted today this image as a response to ours of yesterday on the Angelicals and citing the words which I put under it here. It seems to me somehow that my little thought and this image do resonate well to each other and it shows that livejournal can really be a little creative and fun too. Now I will say a couple more things about Angelicals, in the runup to my sermon for St Michael's day on the Eastern calendar this Sunday. They may be nonlinear a little and just added coordinates to go with those yesterday. and finally a greeting to all named Michael. If you will click to the right here( Read more... ) Today these and as always I invite all your response and am yours, +Seraphim  .""...ones own ideal self, that which one is called to be, and draws to the ascent of the levels of inner life..." |
| Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 | |
| 11:40 am | Culture Wars. The Ultimate Praying Championship. Kandinsky at Prayer. Ladders and Circles. Friends, Listening to radio on way to library this morning,two hosts discussing seeing in some press release the word 'opprobrium' which no-one in the studio could identify until the producer looked it up on the computer. This is a difference I have with those who feel the 'culture wars' crisis is about controverted social issues. I would say the deep crisis is in the evaporation of what culture we have. End of above, and not a moment too soon you may say... Speaking of culture wars a friend sends me this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_E4haW1 "The Ultimate Praying Championship" adding Mystery Science Theater type commentary to a Jerusalem brawl between Greeks and Armenians. He says it is 'a bit edgey but funny' well it is a real event and one might as well smile as anything else... Continuing my little study of Kandinsky I discover a wonderful book Kandinsky the language of the eye by Paul Overy. Unlike many art books it is more than a glorified catalog, a real study of the artist's inner life. Speaking of prayer It seems that during his years at the Bauhaus Kandinsky went to Dresden every Easter for the Orthodox Liturgy and his wife records that he also prayed every night in private. In general prayer and church life is so various isn't it? Some receive communion every day and some once a year and yet...well there is no 'ultimate praying championship' really, just the ways of each in an effort to fidelity to ones own given way... Well here at the end is an interesting late work of Kandinsky and I will add a note on why it interests me in connection with my sermon preparation for this Sunday if you will click here.( Read more... ) Today these, and as always I welcome all your response on them or on anything else, yours +Seraphim  .Red Circle. 1939 |
| Monday, November 2nd, 2009 | |
| 10:35 am | Looking from Sleepy Hollow Bridge+ Prophetic words from Kandinsky. Friends, Worked my way through Verizon(area phone company) voice mail to speak to customer service agent...After 30 minutes on hold ,how wonderful her voice, flat accent and all, sounded! How I feared losing this wonderful human contact when put on hold! Well let me today share two more Autumn pictures from the bridge in the old cemetary at Sleepy Hollow, the next town up the road from where I live. I think they are pleasing ( Read more... ) And secondly we are talking about, because I am studying a little, Wasilly Kandinsky the creator and theoretician of abstract painting. Here at the end is a youtube with music of Arnold Schoenberg --Kandinsky's composer of choice while painting. I have also a thought on a quote from Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art in which he speaks of art emerging from the darkness of "materialism...infected with the despair of unbelief." Here is the quote if you will( Read more... ) This was written in 1915 before the still deeper darkness of the unprecedented communist effort to destroy religious belief, which leaves the world(together also with all the tendencies in our society here to live in the world of surfaces) in a situation of which his words seem prophetic perhaps? Today these, hoping you may find something of interest in photo image or in these thoughts and in the video which in any case are shared here ,and as always I welcome all your response, yours +Seraphim "Colour is a power which directly influences the soul. Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammer, the soul is the strings.The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul..." Wassily Kandinsky. |
| Sunday, November 1st, 2009 | |
| 11:15 am | Still Autumn at Sleepy Hollow Bridge+ More on Kandinsky, Cezanne etc Friends, Preparing to see the huge gathering of Kandinsky work at the Guggenheim Museum I am doing some reading and learning some things. Some dubious. Sadler says that Picasso developed Cezanne in parallel to Kandinsky's development of Gauguin ,creating respectively cubism and abstract art."unless a spiritual value is accorded to the work of Cezanne, unless he is believed to be a religious painter, his follower Picasso cannot claim to stand with Kandinsky as a prophet of an art of spiritual harmony." I rather thought Cezanne was a deeply spiritual painter? What do you say? It is an area, the whole area of visual art, where I am far from knowledgeable but that has been my impression as to Paul Cezanne. Of course in seeing Kandinsky ,or for that matter Paul Klee, as religious painters we are in any case agreeing with Fr Alexander Men that the spiritual in art is not determined by the subject matter, "religious painters need not paint madonnas" as Michael Sadler says, or icons either for that matter, but art that is deep and great is also spiritual and more so than hack work on religious subjects. Well, more in some places than others but steadily, the leaves are falling and the trees beginning to assume their winter bareness and openness to the sun... I drive through Sleepy Hollow cemetary and take a few pictures and there it is still a beautiful autumn... worth seeing now as it will not be there so long. A picture at the end. and another if you will just here( Read more... ) Perhaps we may allow a word from Fr Men on art here... “I will sing to the Lord as long as I live!” This should be the motto of every artist,poet or creator. As long as we breathe we must create! And there is great diversity in that work of art. What is important is the creation of one’s spirit. This is eternal art.What is painted on the canvas, veneer or slab is only a sign of what has taken place in your heart." Today these, tentative thoughts on approaching Kandinsky, and leaves still bright at a bridge in Sleepy Hollow. userpic why not use a Klee angel. as always welcome all your response on these or any other, yours +Seraphim  . |
| Saturday, October 31st, 2009 | |
| 12:19 pm | Jack Pumpkinhead. (and) Kandinsky. Friends, It is a gloomy sort of day but I was happy to see Jack Pumpkinhead visiting from Oz and standing at a corner this morning. He waved as we passed him.  .He is one of my favorite of the Oz characters. He has the limitation that his head has to be replaced from time to time as when the pumpkin gets mushy his thoughts get fuddled, but he has a pumpkin patch and then picks one with nice new seeds in it. You may wish to join me in reading the conclusion of Baum's "Little Wizard Story" Jack Pumpkinhead and the Sawhorse here if you will( Read more... ) Otherwise, I think next Saturday I will go to the Kandinsky show at the Guggenheim with Fr David. That will give me time to read the little book by Kandinsky, which I have started before and put down, Concerning the spiritual in art. Here is a sample. if you will click here.( Read more... ) There is certainly an assertiveness and pride of felt spiritual authority in Kandinsky which is alien to the Pumpkinhead, but I suppose it is assertion in a rather good cause, of culture moving the material into the spiritual etc Dont see a lot of that around here where dumbing down of high culture seems the goal of education only too often. In terms of the spiritual, the lack of self questioning or discernible humor may seem a limit of Kandinsky's maybe as need of a new head from time to time is of Jack's. well assertiveness is also a limit one feels in a range of writers from orthodox sorts of theologian to theosophists and esoterists...sometimes it seems more common than the gentle and self questioning... anyway yes Pooh, I say in an aside, I know you are a bear of little brain and so am I but let's try to read this ,this week... And what have you today? yours +Seraphim |
| Friday, October 30th, 2009 | |
| 9:55 am | Reznikoff. The SHAKH-I ZINDEH. lost and found cities. drawings in childhood Friends, There seem to be less Halloween decorations than usual? Perhaps people are economizing? or perhaps more people are taking a sort of high class looking down on junk in the yard etc attitude? maybe just local... Some years it has seemd excessive and somehow grotesque (as halloween can be) but the happy fancifulness which is also possible is to be missed. Anyway a bit more Reznikoff to lead to sharing something quite different. "Scrap of paper blown about the street, you would like to be cherished, I suppose, like a bank-note. and this... God and Messenger This pavement barren as the mountain on which God spoke to Moses— suddenly in the street shining against my legs the bumper of a motor car. " It is all here and now. All the dreams grounded in the moment here in the city where papers blow and cars pass... An alternative vision is that, link sent to me by Fr Paul Koruluk a Ukrainian priest in Tokyo, of S.M.Prokudin-Gorski who in the last days of the Russian Empire recorded its rich variety in some of the earliest of color photographs. Here: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/ Does not the monastery at the end here suggest Shangrila (Shambhala) to the mind and spirit? But to me even more so of these photgraphs is that of Shakh-i Zindeh in Samarkand looking out to the Pamir Mountains and I will give a large image here( Read more... ) This in turn reminds of the dream like paintings of inner Asia by Nicholas Roerich. As a boy one of the themes of the drawings I would make would be, well one would be battles in outer space between various rockets, and another would be attempts to resemble Monet water lilies,garden at givenchy etc but another was lost cities and lands with turrets and onion domes and mountains very like that photo. Early read Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar a lost city book etc Reznikoff's city perhaps in some way intersects these lost cities anyway today these and as always invite all your thoguht, how you feel poems or pictures, what you drew as a child? yours +Seraphim  .The Monastery of St. Nil' on Stolobnyi Island in Lake Seliger in Tver. |
| Thursday, October 29th, 2009 | |
| 10:32 am | Reznikoff "The day's brightness dwindles into stars." New York of Reznikoff and Coburn Friends, Seems our costume party will be fine indeed! still time to sign up on yesterday's post. though I will be disguised by holding a bacce ball(represnting Nicholas da Cusa's Game of Spheres) it seems jadeejf will comeas me. Wonderful to see a pitcher throw all 9 innings last night in world series! This normal feat rendered rare by use of computers etc in laying out games, pitch count, match-ups etc. Happy to have my car back. It was a stress somehow and also a lot of money for me but the shift works and I can drive. and listen to Tavener on cd in car. There is perhaps $20 wasted, it is not really my taste. On the other hand 20 for complete poems ofCharles Reznikoffis money well spent. I feel at once silly for not having known his poetry before and delighted to have this new pleasure...Perhaps I am not the only one to whom he is new? Here he is on Time and the Heart. The last line was chosen for his grave marker ... "Now the sky begins to turn upon its hub— the sun; each leaf revolves upon its stem; now the plague of watches and of clocks nicks away the day— ten thousand thousand steps tread upon the dawn ten thousand thousand wheels cross and criss-cross the day and leave their ruts across its brightness; the clocks drip in every room— our lives are leaking from the places, and the day's brightness dwindles into stars." Let us have some more if you will. ( Read more... ) I find a couple of images from my favorite photographer, Alvin Langdon Coburn(1882-1966) when you think of it of the same generation as Reznikoff(1894-1976) and both were influenced greatly by Ezra Pound...Pound, the in some aspect antisemite, association to Jewish poets like Reznikoff and Zukofsky says something for them and for him perhaps. Coburn only briefly in New York and Reznikoff forever walking its streets... How do you feel these? or what else have you today? yours +Seraphim  . |
| Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 | |
| 8:38 am | The All Hallow's Eve Costume Poll Friends, My car will be ready at noon. said goodbye to the Suzuki rental, one of consumer reports worst cars. It will be a hectic day, lunch with someone, picking up car, work...what can we offer here at what ,on a rainy day, looks like the crack of dawn? Well yesterday pithhelmet,had what seemed sort ofa seasonal good question which I will put here. It will be a virtual gathering to be sure, so one need not worry about expense or details of costume, availability etc. In our virtual store one can find about anything and I quickly found the needed rubber mask to complete mine. and of course it can be anything from characters of literature or history or comicbook or legend and dream. The party at the friends place will include St Martin of Tours, the Erlking and Pogo(my mood of yesterday). So: Poll #1477482 Costume Poll Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 36 If we had an All Hallows Eve Party for readers here ,who or what would you come as? Just if anyone is interested...and if you add a comment separately it would make it more interesting certainly. perhaps even a picture if you find one as I did... Secondly a tree nearby which I associate in mind with this season-- here if you will( Read more... ) and at the end of the post-- seen from two angles and so with different colored leaves. Finally,for a dark morning perhaps this poem from Charles Reznikoff: "The park is growing dark and quiet and lights are beginning to shine among the trees here and there,near a light leaves and lawn are green again" Charles Reznikoff So today these and welcome all your comment on these or on anything else at all, yours +Seraphim  . |
| Tuesday, October 27th, 2009 | |
| 11:17 am | Pogo's World Series Friends, It is rainy today and of course my umbrellas are in the car in the garage not in the rental car, which it seems I will have to hold for a second day. It costs money and also somehow leaves me feeling a little unsettled but that is not in itself a bad thing. I do not like the Suzuki Forenza they gave me and do not recommend it to anyone renting still less buying a car it is a piece of trash in my opinion. Yesterday we spoke of Fr Schmemann, I thought the pages I posted from Juliana Schmemann's book were interesting and somehow moving but anyway) he did not like the comic strip Pogo by Walt Kelly ("too Freudian" he somewhat cryptically expressed it) and much preferred Andy Capp about the cockney layabout. That is not much of a segue but... Here is another, the World Series starts tomorrow... That's two segues to a Pogo cartoon on the World Series as experienced by that set of characters in the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia. Pogo is a possum. I have always liked Pogo,in a mild but affectionate way, and am looking in The Best of Pogo from which this is taken.( Read more... ) It occurs to me to wonder how many of my readers know Pogo? It is not interesting enough to do a poll on I guess...If you don't you have missed something and perhaps this can be an introduction? I am reminded by Pogo's solution to the problem, of the Mass without elements in Graham Greene's Monsignor Quixote, on which I wrote with pictures of Alec Guinness acting the part at: http://seraphimsigrist.livejournal.c This does not perhaps make Pogo 'Freudian' in this case (in Fr Schmemann's remark) but does suggest ideas to mind. Anyway today these, and as always welcome all your response and am yours +Seraphim  . |
| Monday, October 26th, 2009 | |
| 11:17 am | A Reznikoff Poem Fr Schmemann Loved. "As I was wandering with my unhappy thoughts." Friends, My car's shift has been sticking and this morning after a mighty pull it was loose but in fact only moved in reverse. stopped,put rocks under wheels since it was on a slight slope, got tow truck. It will be alright tomorrow with a cable replaced, my wallet lighter by all in all maybe eight hundred dollars. Besides that my shoulder is sore... And I am reading "My Journey with Father Alexander" by Juliana Schmeman about her life with Alexander Schmemann. Here is a poem he liked, it seems (of many, his poetic loves ranged from e.e. cummings, to Rimbaud to Pushkin) and it is worth sharing, New York 1951 Charles Reznikoff As I was wandering with my unhappy thoughts, I looked and saw that I had come into a sunny place, familiar and yet strange. “Where am I?” I asked a stranger. “Paradise.” “Can this be Paradise?” I asked surprised, for there were motor cars and factories. “It is,” he answered. “This is the sun that shone on Adam once; the very wind that blew upon him, too.” Also worth sharing is the context about the time of his diagnosis with incurable cancer, for this please click here.( Read more... ) So these various... If anyone has unhappy thoughts, a broken car and not enough money or anything, maybe the poem or even the words of Fr Schmemann, will help? and an autumn picture from yesterday evening included and as always welcoming all your thought, yours +Seraphim  . |
| Sunday, October 25th, 2009 | |
| 4:16 pm | Festival of St. James Friends, I went to liturgy at St Mary Magdalene Church in the City today and we celebrated the liturgy of St James, which is rather rarely used now in most churches, except perhaps in India and also in Jerusalem, but it is the most ancient of liturgies in use today with roots going back to the beginning as it may be and compilation in the 4th century. It was the Sunday nearest the day of St James and so also the day of the name of the priest Fr Yakov(James)Ryklin. After liturgy the congregation, about 50 present today small but familial, had a buffet dinner with caribbean chicken beans and rice and a vienna cake. I have shared pictures of this place before and these can be deja vu all over again as we say in the trade, but a favorite view of mine is that at the end here of the table of preparation (of the bread and wine) looking out into a back alley. Another picture of the liturgy and two excerpts from the Liturgy of St James, just very small bits, and a thought from me on the interest of occasionally doing a liturgy in a different way than usual which(the changeable changed) could apply to many things that people do...well these if you will click to the right here.( Read more... ) So today these and I invite all your thought... and congratulation to my, and some others of the friends here, canonjohn, rebeccaam for two, friendFr Yakov on the Festival of St James... and to all others named James and I am yours... (and off to check the football scores today. Happy yesterday that Notre Dame beat the Jebbies*,as we say in the trade, at Boston College, --*=Jesuits. BC is a Jesuit school.) +Seraphim  . |
| Saturday, October 24th, 2009 | |
| 11:50 am | Liturgy Tomorrow+A site to bookmark+Tavener and us. Friends, Tomorrow I will attend Liturgy at St Mary Magdalen. Location is http://www.saintmarymagdalen.com/Direct Time 10 AM. The parish will celebrate according to the Liturgy of St. James which is an early and rather rarely,if at all, used liturgy in most places. I believe there may be some rites(perhaps in India one for example?) where it is standard. It has features of interest and also the quality of being a compilation of prayers which later were edited down a bit perhaps improving the flow... well this is put impressionistically. anyway would be happy to see anyone. If anyone wished afterwards to visit the Kandinsky show at the Guggenheim or the Jung Red Book at the Rubin Museum these are two things I could be tempted to do although likely I will set aside another day for that by itself. Several small things: 1)Here is a photo from yesterday.  .and here it is in broader perspective of the branch overhanging the water.( Read more... ) 2)Thanks to Chico for the link to this daily posting from Charles Williams' day by day collection of Christian quotations through the year: http://tomwills.typepad.com/thenewchris Today's quotes are from Julian of Norwich, Pascal, and a commission on doctrine.( Read more... ) Perhaps some will wish to bookmark this page. 3)We wrote of composer John Tavener yesterday. His thought is expressed considerably in an interview: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/ju We learn of his continued devotion to the Eastern Orthodox way but in a somewhat unusual inner context of Apache medicine men and admiration of the Pope's conservative impulses (dedicating a Mass of the Immaculate Conception to the Pope)and so on. The errors of the Enlightement, visions of the Virgin Mary(always naked) The descent into trash culture of the Kali Yuga(in Indian cycle of ages)in which sadly we are living, his brief marriage to a Greek dancer etc This leads to reflection on how various minds are and how we all at best perhaps are llke the blind men with the elephant each sensing and seeking to express something of Reality. One would like perhaps to put this sort of mind and that of some passionate, literal minded and agenda driven social activist into a mix and divide by two...but the result would likely not be good...maybe the interdependency of all minds is required for Adam to wake from sleep and know himself and God at once... But now I am exampling my own poor mind and thought. Enough for today ,as always invite all your thought in turn on anything at all and am yours +Seraphim |
| Friday, October 23rd, 2009 | |
| 11:47 am | John Tavener: "Our glory lies where we cease to exist." Friends, Recently the Requiem of John Tavener, one of our day's leading composers certainly,was performed,the first time in New York, at St.Ignatius Church. I was not there but have the program with text from Fr Michael Plekon who was present. Although it is a Christian Requiem Mass, there is certainly an unusual quality in one which juxtaposes the Dies Irae of the requiem with a hymn to kali. Taverner is a convert to the Eastern Orthodox Church, for some time he did Eastern Orthodox liturgical themes, with a Russian background. Around the year 2000 he said in effect 'this is too narrow a musical ,and thought, framework, I am opening out...' This was interpreted by some as a conversion to Sufism or something of that sort in the school of Fritjof Schuon, but it seems this was not quite the case although he respects that 'perennial wisdom' thought. Rather it appears, and is said, that he remains fully Christian in intention but finds a unity of the global thought to that. A little like the universal,Chrsitian, wisdom approach of T.S.Eliot's use of Buddhist material in the Wasteland. In a discussion of Mozart which I put at the end you will find a similar situation. That gives a quick introduction, but what is his requiem about? Well about death for one thing of course but what is he saying? Then one might ask 'How Christian in fact is that? or withhold judgement of course but let us see... Let us look at the brief text and give some thoughts if you will.( Read more... ) Today then this on John Tavener. I do not know how many people will be interested but anyway this and as always I invite all your response on these or on anything else at all, yours +Seraphim |
| Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 | |
| 11:49 am | Autumn Leaves+ Ducks of the Far Side. Friends, Yesterday I posted a Far Side duck cartoon, today four more far Side ducks, I find looking at a collection of that Gary Larson feature. Here if you will.( Read more... ) Apart from the sense that there is something inherently comical about a duck, there is in the first two and in yesterday's the additionally ludicrous idea of the duck as dangerous character. The third, Professor Leibowitz has another approach and I include a Larson drawing for it and comment as well as the cartoon itself. The fourth is one I see for the first time and it too is satisfying in its way perhaps? though one is a bit sorry for Irwin and wonders at the medical ethics involved... Besides that not a lot to share today, but it is a bright day and the leaves are still beautiful here and perhaps, since that will only be for a bit more, we ought enjoy them while they are here and so a photo this morning to end the post, as always welcoming all your response on these things or on anything else at all, yours +Seraphim  . |
| Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 | |
| 10:42 am | Duck. Water. Vedic Hymn of Creation to which we add a new line.+Far Side Duck. Friends, Two items somewhat parallel occur to me to share today. First I find in my yahoo 'drafts' where I keep some things the text of a not bad translation, or it seems as English readable I mean, of the Nasadiya Sukta, the Vedic hymn of creation. Second I take some pictures of a duck. The thing that makes the two fit together is perhaps water, here,at the end of the post, is our duck on the water with reflected autumn foliage. Now here is the ancient creation hymn together with another of duck and then also a far side duck cartoon very unrelated to the vedas etc ( Read more... ) The old Indian verse advances in a series of questions, probing the limits of knowledge. Some reader might find it agnostic, by some early member of the ethical culture socity or unitarian or something(many of whom including any on my friends list surely being marvellous people) but I think not that, but the questioning that reaches towards the beyond-words rather than is satisfied to say 'well that is beyond words'... "Was there water, deep profound?" and looking at our duck we might add, "were there reflections of color in it? color from whence? color of what?" You see we have added a line to the Vedic hymn! well... what have you on ducks or creation or viaduct(the marx brothers "why a duck" routine), far side duck jokes, no need to be philosophical unless you feel like it, or anything else at all yours +Seraphim  . |
| Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 | |
| 11:13 am | Play. Path in the Woods. Searching for Addison Helton author of Lonesome water. Friends, Some notes and asides: 1)Last couple days sore neck and shoulder, which are better today. turning point seemed to be a bit of Jameson's Irish mixed with Carolan's cream after work yesterday. 2)I have 12 tickets for matinee at 2pm of Pushkin's "Little Tragedies" at the Baryshnikov theater in New York with Peter Von Berg featured. anyone want to join us? we can order more. $18 each only. 3)I paused by a path into the trees and took a couple of pictures this morning... here( Read more... ) 4)I have been thinking about Roy Addison Helton the author of Lonesome Water the poem which I gave and also the singing of it by Joe Bethancourt at: http://seraphimsigrist.livejournal.c I wonder if you read and heard it? and what you felt? or maybe it is hard to put in words... So I have been trying to find something about Helton and there is little in available books(I ordered the 1930 collection of poems "Lonesome Water" from Amazon) it seems he was a poet who wrote also articles, one in harpers seems to be in the agrarian tradition of the "Fugitive" group of writers of Vanderbuilt University etc(Robert Penn Warren,Alan Tate, Ransome etc)seems like his writing trailed off to nothing after an early start... but...I wrote on facebook to Joe Bethancourt asking if he knows or...just reply if interested of course him being a noted singer and all. I will put a poem from a book "Outcasts in Beulah Land" which is available on line.( Read more... ) Well today these things , wondering about a forgotten poet... still thinking about that lonesome water... and stopping by the road in a wood where a path branches off... and as always welcome all your response on these or on anything else at all ,yours +Seraphim  . |
| Sunday, October 18th, 2009 | |
| 11:27 am | "LONESOME WATER." photos today and an old deep poem sung by Joe Bethancourt. Friends, I am amazed and delighted by a song... Listening to Joe Bethancourt's tape of songs related to and from the John the Balladeer stories of Manly Wade Wellman, I liked them more and more. Today I will share one,Lonesome Water which is on youtube. It is not from the stories themselves but Bethancourt says " probably encapsulates the whole "feel" of Mr. Wellmann's stories the best of any song I know" It begins: "I drank lonesome water I was a child then Up in the willow brake Huntin' for a sign Came on a place where The rocks was made hollow And the water beneath me Rippled and rhymed..." Listen to it, if you have speakers on your computer, and read the words of Bethancourt's version and the original ones they grew from in passed on memory, and I add a photo or two of rainy Autumn waters today, if you will...( Read more... ) Thoughts on the song in brief: *The lonesome water a sacrament of the earth and the hills. *the groundhoggy fellow counting the stars reminds of the hedgehog in the russian story counting the stars at night with his friend the little bear. *John travelled some,he was a sharpshooter in Korea(because when the President calls you 'hark at him')and he found love with Evadare, but he was indeed wed to the mountains as it seems his creator Wellman came to be. *reminded of expression 'deep song' for flamenco... Your thoughts? Anyway this is some kind of song isnt it ? welcome all response or on anything else at all , yours +Seraphim |
| Friday, October 16th, 2009 | |
| 10:17 am | St.Thomas Aquinas' Limerick. Free "Translations". Make one for us? Friends, It is interesting, and perhaps to be expected, from yesterday's poll that we are split almost 50-50 ,on jaywalking, between the lawful and the anarchic! Perhaps a good balance... Rainy days from yesterday through the weekend. I kind of like this picture,with which the post ends and put in large form within the post. Two days ago a limerick by St.Thomas Aquinas was noted by macseamus1 or rather he gave the link to a blog of Fr Hunwicke a British priest who discusses liturgy and has a ready wit, and it was there. It is a prayer for saying after communion and it is in limerick form although of course long before the limerick proper was invented. It was Ronald Knox, priest and mystery writer of Oxford,who first noticed this as a limerick. Sit vitiorum meorum evacuatio, Concupiscentiae et libidinis exterminatio, Caritatis et patientiae, Humilitatis et obedientiae, Omniumque virtutum augmentatio. I would invite attempts at translation, or rather limerick form extensions of the theme. It is not difficult, I even did one as you will see! If you allow yourself to do it lightly and loosely So I will give first straight translation by canonjohn and one other source perhaps, and then my riff on the theme in limerick form and that of macseamus1. And invite you to join,it is not hard! please then,if you will, click to the right here( Read more... ) In inviting more efforts, I would note beyond the ease of doing this at least in a loose quick way,that one need not be a theologian or something, expand the theme but remain perhaps more or less within the intent of Thomas as number 4 does. But feel free to invent and rework outrageously if you feel like it... welcome limerick 'translations' then,and free translations and then verse going off on the theme. Let us add that Edward Lear was the former of the limerick as we know it in the nineteenth century. Also that St Thomas was a man of great breadth of mind and thought, attributed author(though it is not clear) of the Aurora Consurgens an alchemical book which Bolingen published as companion volume to Carl Jung's "Mysterium Coniunctionis". Marie Von Franz has written on the question of authorship... but I am trailing off into some sort of graduate school ramble as the bored repose heads on table. Of course his main work is in his monumental theological synthesis. Well and just off hand, like a Picasso doodle on a napkin,production of a limerick. Today these invite your response, for that matter your taking a shot at our limerick 'translation', or even have you a limerick for today of your own, not related to Thomas'words? and finally the wood on a damp autumn day. yours +Seraphim  . |
| Thursday, October 15th, 2009 | |
| 10:38 am | The POST covers an issue+ THE JAYWALKING POLL Friends, Yesterday in the comments section a good exchange of limericks rendering St Thomas's prayer in Latin which had the satsfying limerick form long before limericks proper were invented. Perhaps we might continue that...but maybe another day because today I find something good in the newspaper! I have more than once remarked that I read the New York Post not the other lesser papers of the City. Perhaps it is a good moment to share an unbiased coverage of an issue which shows why it it the City newspaper of record. The issue of jaywalking, that is (I dont know if the word is international) crossing the street when opportunity presents even if the light is red. This is very common in New York, I was surprised when I first visited Los Angeles to see people waiting for the traffic light to change many years ago, perhaps they are still waiting? In Moscow people would but the cars,if it is not a case of jammed traffic, will not slow down. Anyway here is an article with pictures giving types of jaywalking style, and then also two columns for and against, if you will click here,( Read more... ) Perhaps we might do a small poll on this as I expect it divides people in a sort of interesting way. We have presented it lightheartedly but of course I am aware, voting one way, that there are honorable and sound reasons for feeling the other way. I would suggest looking at the materials provided from the Post and that comments after will certainly add to interest if anyone is interested... Poll #1471596 The Jaywalking Poll Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 53 In City traffic, where there is a chance to apparently safely cross before the light changes,
View Answers I would tend to wait for the light to change I would tend to cross against the light Today let it be just this, from the morning paper...and as always invite all your comment on these or on anything else at all, yours +Seraphim  . |
| Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 | |
| 10:09 am | Blocked Punt+ Reflections in Pond+Σήμερον η Παρθένος Friends, A beautiful day...Dentist unwell so had to put off appointment til next week which is ,though just a routine check, somehow pleasant. Today a couple of you tube things. First a blocked punt at apparent end of a high school game which shows what happens when referee does not blow whistle to end play and game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFWIzoxY Then another youtube I found through someone who friended me Nikodimos Kabarnos who turns out to be a singer. One which is very impressive in some ways is this ,filmed at Hagia Sophia http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwFYUJb0 but a little long, anyway I chose this other and shorter one to post directly. Note that it is somehow apparent that while it is sacred music and Kabarnos is a deacon, he has rather the manner and is filmed in the way of a 'singer'. A little like Pavarotti singing Christmas carols or something. Also note that Byzantine music is different in tonality from western ,including Russian, music. Finally I have a picture of reflections in a pond which I like, you may too. if you will...( Read more... ) Today these and invite all your thought on them-- How do you like Byzantine music can be one question? or on anything else at all, yours +Seraphim  .Reflections.Detail of larger image within post. |
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