Yesterday I mentioned East Germany in a post, and I think Christ's Second Advent is a little the falling of the Berlin wall. In the film "The Lives of Others" (2006) set during the fall of the Soviet-controlled government of East Germany, there is a beautiful moment when a group of secret police hear on the radio that the wall has come down. They are busy at work opening … [Read more...]
What do Joel Osteen, Latin Christendom, and Sausages Have in Common? (This Post)
In keeping with the series on the Liturgical Calendar, I thought it best to give a brief exposition on Lent. If Advent is the beginning of the Calendar and one of the two 'big' celebrations, Lent is the second. Lent traditionally was the 40 days leading up to Easter. The significance of 40 in the Bible seems constant. The flood of Noah was 40 days and nights, the … [Read more...]
What's the Point of Advent?
The purpose of Advent is to set aside some time to prepare ourselves for a celebration of the birth of Christ. In the West, we decadent Latins, marked the season by celebrating a feast at the end, and the more disciplined Eastern Greek Christians underwent a great fast in preparation for the coming of Christ. In a sense this dichotomy of feasting and fasting well marks what … [Read more...]
The Strangers in my Life
I just finised reading, for my existential philosophy class, a book called "The Stranger" by Albert Camus. Camus was a famous existentialist atheist and this is one of his 'great' works. The one thing I like about the Atheist existentialists (probably the only thing I like about them) is their logical consistency / systematic thinking. For them, there really can be no … [Read more...]
The Invisible, Uncreated world of Being, Makes More Sense than the Material World of Becoming
Plato, Kant, Thomas, Augustine, and Jesus all posited a (post) hellenic worldview whereby behind everything in the physical world, there existed ideas, the non-material, the noumenal, God. Something Other, something not like what we see. From our life experience and our own human being/existence, we know that Being must exist. Plato posited that there was a realm of the … [Read more...]