OrthodoxNet.com Blog

Actually, I arrived yesterday afternoon, but I was committed to chaperone a trip to the Tampa Aquarium today. It’s a good place. Learned a lot about Florida wetlands, etc — stuff I find very interesting. The trip was good although I was late getting into Philadelphia and missed my connection. That required a 6:30am flight the next morning, which meant getting up at 3:45 to get to the airport by 5pm. Not much sleep that day but I made it to the funeral at 11. Anyway, good to be home.

I had to rebuild the blog the last few days (that’s why it was acting a bit strange if you were reading or posting). Except for a few details, it is done. Some readers were having trouble on Safari, some pages were not rendering properly, etc. so I decided to find a better built theme and design it to look like the older blog as much as possible. You will notice a few changes, but most of all everything should load a bit faster.

Good discussions this week, btw.

Suggestions for improvement are welcome. Basically I am looking for an site easy to navigate and easy to read. Is there too much white?

Thursday, March 22, 2007 at 7 p.m. Room 125, Nicholson Hall, Univ of Minn FREE! David B. Hart on “Nihilism and Freedom: Is There a Difference?”

The Anti-Theology of the Body
The Soul of a Controversy: After Terri Schiavo’s death, questions remain
Tremors of Doubt: What kind of God would allow a deadly tsunami?
Ecumenical Councils of War
The Pornography Culture
Christ and Nothing

Got in about 9:30pm last night, then started up our festival this morning. I’ll be tied up with that until Sunday evening. Looking forward to a day off.

Also, note that with 300 more visits, the blog hits the 500,000 visits mark since I started counting last March 16, 2006. Half a million. Apparently a lot of lurkers here.

Left Salem, SC around noon or so and arrived in Greenville, SC around 9pm. As usual, took a wrong turn in Raleigh. Raleigh and Charlotte have the most confused freeway system of almost any city in America it seems, and every time I drive through either I miss an exit here or there. Charlotte was easy this time around since I just stayed on 40 east. Raleigh however has an I 440 weaving this way and that and you never know if you are on the right leg. I ended up on some road somewhere, saw a car dealership, stopped for directions, and sure enough the directions I got forgot the 440 leg. Drove too far south on 40 way out in the sticks somewhere, stopped again, got more directions, and backtracked for 15 miles until I found the right road. Apart from those those missteps though, it was a good trip.

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I will be gone until next Friday. Tomorrow morning I fly to Atlanta and then drive to our conference center for a three day clergy meeting near Salem, South Carolina. Wednesday afternoon I drive up to Greenville, North Carolina (400 miles, yikes!) to visit a person in the state prison there the next morning. Thursday afternoon I catch a puddle jumper back to Atlanta for the flight back to Naples late Thursday evening. Friday our festival starts, an exhaustive affair that draws about 25,000 people over three days.

Note to anyone in the S. Florida area. I am bringing Fr. Thomas Hopko for a Lenten retreat on February 24 from 9:30am to 3:00pm. He is worth listening to. He will also speak on the Sunday of Orthodoxy Vespers on February 25 at 5:00pm.

Be good. JBL will check the moderation bins once in a while. If you post something and it does not show up right away, be patient. It will appear eventually.

…sorry but I deleted your last two comments by mistake. They ended up in the spam bin (hey, mine go there too for some reason), and I hit “delete” instead of “not spam.”

In 2006, Orthodoxy Today had 892,124 visits. I was hoping to break a million, but no such luck. Maybe next year. Still, not too shabby.

Christ is born; glorify Him.
Christ comes from heaven; go to meet Him!
Christ is on earth; be exalted.
Sing to the Lord, all the earth!
And praise Him in gladness, O people,
for He has been glorified!”

Χριστὸς γεννᾶται, δοξάσατε.
Χριστὸς ἐξ οὐρανῶν ἀπαντήσατε!
Χριστὸς ἐπὶ γῆς, ὑψώθητε.
Ἄσατε τῷ Κυρίῳ πᾶσα ἡ γῆ!
Καὶ ἐν εὐφροσύνῃ ἀνυμνήσατε λαοί,
ὅτι δεδόξασται

so I am going to change it back but it is going to take a while (a week or two) since I have to recode a different theme. Reading left to right is a lot more natural and since the comments are the biggest part of this blog, they should be on the left.

I’ve been cleaning up the site a bit. The blog had some hatched code I had been meaning to fix for a while. Apple’s Safari browser was not rendering the blog page correctly (the navbar would always float to the center of the page) and readers wrote me asking to fix it. I tried but couldn’t get it to work, so I just switched things around. It conforms more the original code so the whole enterprise should work a bit better. Now I can get back to posting.

http://www.patriarchate.org/

Wednesday November 29, 2006 11:30 PM Eastern Time

Schedule: http://www.ewtn.com/tv/advances.asp?satellite=DOM&month=11&year=2006

Sorry I’ve haven’t been as active lately. Swamped with work. First things first.

I’ve always looked forward to it starting when I was young, sixth grade in fact. Almost every election I am glued to the television (although in the last decade I rely on the internet more), watching the returns come in. There is something special about election day, almost sacred but in the same sense that, say, Gettysburg or Appomattox are sacred, or the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. I need to think about this more (I’ve been meaning to write about the sense of sanctity that surrounds Appomattox for years) but it has something to do with the reference of historical symbols to higher narrative that, if seen and undertood, evokes a sense of reverence towards things that really matter and exhort us to nurture and preserve them. Democracy matters. The orderly transfer of power matters. The virtues that define America, even if poorly or improperly applied at times, matter.

I am a patriot, I really am. I love this country. I wrote a tribute to this great country several years ago (probably more like 15 years ago) as a way of thanking the good people of this great nation for the life and freedom it has offered to so many.

It’s called “Liberty: A six year old boy begins his education about freedom in New York harbor.”

that contributors provided in the navigation bar just below the “Nice Pictures”>

First International Conference of the Orthodoxy in America Lecture Series

Co-Sponsored by the Center for Medieval Studies, Fordham University

June 14-16, 2007, at the Rose Hill campus of Fordham University in The Bronx

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On Town Hall today.

Boomers discover virtues of military service when their sons enlist

Back from Seattle folks. Great trip. Beautiful area of the country. Beautiful city, especially the water, bridges, mountains.

Tomorrow (Friday) I leave for a four day trip to Seattle, Washington. Basically it is a short vacation visiting a friend and his family. I’ll check in around noon via wireless at O’Hare during a layover. Postings will drop a bit. Be good. Fr. Hans

Some good ones here.

Directions to Orthodoxy
http://www.flickr.com/photos/directionstoorthodoxy/

Including Jim Forest’s archives
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/sets/