Sam Francis once said...

Sam Francis once observed that, “A nation, or even a planet, that recognizes no god other than its belly will quickly start wallowing in the ignorance, crime, corruption, and avarice that today afflicts the United States, and it will find itself unable to free itself of them.”

prayer

And here I add a few words of caution:

The quiet presence of person we may know in prayer is not a public thing – it is an intimate matter of the heart and does not belong in the public converse of our lives (just as other intimate parts of our lives should remain intimate and not public). What you find in prayer should generally remain between yourself and your confessor. Even the little I have shared here is more than I would generally care to. Those who speak a great deal about spiritual experiences are either in delusion or far worse. They should be avoided as guides for daily living. They can be the source of great confusion and sadness.

From http://fatherstephen.wordpress.com/

comentary on the world we used to live in

A quote from an article titled "ASCETICISM: THE BRIDGE BETWEEN MARRIAGE AND MONASTICISM IN ORTHODOX SPIRITUALITY" from The Web site of the Parish of the Protection of the Holy Virgin Mary

1) First is the split between Church and culture in the West, a factor seriously underestimated by many Church leaders from the Old Country. Traditional Orthodox societies were, whatever their historical faults, basically normal and human. In traditional Christian societies, whether Semitic, Slavic, Greek or Celtic, Church and culture supported one another: priest, politician and parent all worked for the same things. Marriage and monasticism were organically united in a community whose lifeblood was the Divine Liturgy, whose lifestyle was traditional asceticism, whose ‘biorythmns’ were ordered by the cycle of Church services and whose national holidays and celebrations were the great annual Feasts of the Orthodox Church. But in contemporary Western society, American or Europeanthis organic link between Church and culture has been severed at the root.

A St.Isidorian

Harvest time at St. Isidore Farm

Getting the produce ready for the store

Some new potatoes.

A St. Isidorian working in the garden.

Beans, summer squash, potatoes, beets and carrots.

the good life

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

A short but insightful quote from Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. It came to him during his time in the Gulag:

…. It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.

…. If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”