This October I had the privilege of moderating a discussion between British composer and ordained Orthodox priest Fr. Ivan Moody and American composer Frank La Rocca, recently retired from teaching at Cal State - East Bay. What was originally supposed to be two separate sessions, one on transcendence in music and the other on the ...
The Contrarian
Because I imagine it will come up again and again as time rolls on, I feel the need to explain what the purpose of contrarianism is to a Christian. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a contrarian as “A person who (habitually) opposes or rejects prevailing opinion or established practice; someone who behaves in a contrary ...
Redemption Beyond the Wall
We Christians like redemption. Understandable: if any group can be said to have a “thing”, our “thing” would definitely be redemption. Possibly also damnation. We seem to like that as well. We like to see people redeemed, for sure. There also seems to be going along with this the idea that each part of their ...
The Supreme Caveat
In most of my discussions with other believers on topics of interest in daily Christian living and perhaps church culture-at-large, at some point the following objection will be raised: “but what if God calls me to ?” Typically, it is asserted as a sort of philosophical silver bullet, rendering any counter-argument automatically invalid. Except, it ...
“Our Divine Romance” at Church on Tap
The recording of my sermon, "Our Divine Romance", from Church on Tap last Sunday is now live on their website here. There is also a link here to download the mp3 directly. The sermon expands on one element of my paper "The Romance of the Impossible and the Reality of Transcendence" which I presented last ...
What Is Neuestalgia?
I thought it fitting for my first post to explain the name of the blog where I’ve chosen to locate my writings. Names are important, after all: they identify our essence, our substance in a manner much more present than a simple label can. They can tell us where we have been, and sometimes even ...
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