Archive

Face to Face – Without Shame or Fear

~By Father Stephen Freeman, July 16, 2018 We are apparently living in the age of the face, and I don’t think it’s necessarily bad.  I know all the complaints about our culture of “selfies,” and there are certainly many things in that to make us wonder, but our fascination with our faces long predates the technology of our phones. In the usage of the early Church, the word for face (prosopon) is also the word

ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΑΝΕΣΤΗ! CHRIST IS RISEN! The Fifth Friday of Pascha: The Soul Is a Mirror

By Fr. Stephen Freeman, April 25, 2017  There are meditations and insights that simply change your life. I recall walking across the campus at Duke some 30 or so years ago. I had been plowing through a book of Orthodox theology (very thick reading). I would read a page and think, and read it again. But I recall very plainly a moment of insight – it regarded some paragraphs surrounding a statement of St. Basil’s.

Keeping our Faces in a Facebook World (Part II)

By Father Lawrence Farley  The truth is that real communication and authentic communion with another always involves face to face encounter—that is why there is so much hugging at airports when people are physically reunited after being separated for a time.  Did those people who greet each other at the airport not keep in touch by Facebook while they were gone?  Did they not phone each other?  Did they not exchange e-mails?  I’ll bet they

Keeping our Faces in a Facebook World (Part I)

By Father Lawrence Farley We live in a Facebook world—that is, in a world characterized by the presence of what has come to be called “social media.”  Much ink has been spilled describing this revolutionary new phenomenon, some people lauding it, and some lamenting it.  But whether it is laudable or lamentable or some combination of both, it seems to be here to stay.  For good or ill, much of our communication is now done

Me, My “Selfie,” and I

By Fr. Vasile Tudora “They say—and I am willing to believe it—that it is difficult to know yourself—but it isn’t easy to paint yourself either.” Vincent van Gogh, letter to his brother, September 1889 The self-portrait genre has been around from the very beginning of art. It was used to identify the artist, when no photography existed, or to tell one’s story in a visual manner or to dive deep into one’s existential struggles. Some