A bit marginal, perhaps, but I've found myself unexpectedly *obsessed* by the journalist James Delingpole's podcast The Delingpod.
It's odd, and it won't be to everyone's taste here. But it's fascinating, and I hope you give him a try. James is a former mainstream journalist, right of centre, who wrote somewhat lightweight pieces for several big papers - so, a named columnist with a lot to lose.
But during the pandemic he smelled a big rat, went massively "off-message", found Jesus, and is now fighting what he sees (as many here do, too) as the coming totalitarian night. His journey has been rapid, radical and very destabilising to his own life - but inspiring, too. Some of his views are frankly odd, but others are growing on me fast, and some of his guests are extraordinary. I've been struck in particular by Simon Elmer, Miri AF, Scrumpmonkey, Brian Gerrish, John Waters, but so many others, too. His sessions with his brother Dick are utterly lovely - daft, divagatory, teasing - and they model (for me) what a brotherly relationship could be.
Who knew... that a right-wing gadfly with (ordinarily) an assured mainstream career could find a depth of integrity and grow up into one of the most courageous, fearless and open-minded voices of our dark times. As if PG Wodehouse woke up one morning to find himself morphed not into a beetle but into George Orwell.
Mary Harrington makes a clever and mostly convincing argument regarding the impossibility of reconciling what she calls bio-liberterianism with socialised health care. In a situation where resources are limited there will not a possibility of unlimited "gender" interventions because resources will be prioritised otherwise if the public have a say. Generally I think this is true, however, there is also the possibility of health care systems getting hijacked, and this has certainly happened. In countries with nationalised health care, such as Sweden (which was at the forefront of "gender" medical intervention for young people for a while) and Britain, there is now luckily a backtracking as the wider public becomes aware of what it is happening. This doesn't seem to be the case with Canada though (I recently read about a court case won by an individual who wanted his "nonbinary bottom surgery" funded by the tax payer; I think it was on Reduxx). Due to the inconsistencies pointed out by Harrington, I think those "bioliberarian" pseudo-leftists naturally tend towards totalitarianism. For decades the strategy of the TRA orgs has been to covertly hijack instutitions and try to prevent the public finding out what's really happening. The same totalitarian responses could be found in the Covid response, especially with the "vaccines", where the NHS top bureaucrats (largely unchallenged) prioritised to transfer massive resources towards a dubious mass injection programme at the expense of other care. And the highly centralised and bureaucratised structure of the NHS, in addition to the fact that the NHS assumes quasi-religious status among large sections of the British Left and beyond, meant that this went largely unchallenged (doctors or nurses who spoke up would most likely lose their jobs). A privatised or semi-privatised health care system - which has other problems - may allow slightly more dissident voices than the NHS, though they have different means of sanctioning medical professionals.
"The Sexual Revolution has become the new founding story for many Western democracies, and thus the pantheon of old heroes is being cleared to make room for the icons of our new age"
I have been thinking about how Christianity, Monogamy, Romance, and let's say, Sexual Supression (from the modern vantage point) all sort of depend on one another to function culturally. The impact of the Sexual Revolution leaves Christianity, Monogamy and Romance all in jeopardy, as mismatched pieces that don't function well in this cultural context.
I see this as related to the phenomenon notable in Orthodox parishes in America, where we are seeing so many young, currently unmarriagable men pouring in. These are men who might have a very different life in a world where Christianity, Monogamy, Romance, and some degree of Sexual Supression were the cultural norm. But where are the women?
Women tend to be more pragmatic in their mate selction, and i don't think huge numbers of them are looking for men-or a church-offering asceticism and a counter-cultural way of life.
During the Easter holiday I went to visit my wife's family. Her brother is a pastor and told me about how the dynamic in many protestant churches is exactly the opposite. They are full of women, but there are few men. Theology aside, these churches offer a much better bargain. Comfort, entertainment, emotional highs.
I visited a local Orthodox parish on that Easter Sunday. There were 4 young men officially being brought into that parish as catechumens. I went to Easter service at my brother in law's church, and it was mostly females.
I'm not sure yet how all this relates, but I can see something happening here and I believe it's all related. Hopefully I can find some time to think it through further.
I follow N S Lyon, and read his piece in First Things (to which I subscribe), and in response I posted the following comment:
I wonder if you have read Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac (Emory University Studies in Law and Religion) by: Steven D. Smith Smith’s book provides an interesting assessment of the ongoing competition between imminent paganism and transcendent religions (exemplified by Christianity) that seems quite relevant…
With respect to Mary Harrington, I also follow her. Her perspectives on issues of ‘gender’ are mostly sympathetic to my own. Another author with useful insights on this topic is Abigail Favale, whose book, The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory, I highly recommend.
When considering the mindset of those caught up in transgenderism, I think it useful to understand their perspective as being built on delusions of solipsistic narcissism.
A bit off topic, but today's Guardian has a piece by George Monbiot which talks about the draconian laws on right to protest, and mentions in passing 'the portcullis of power hasn't been lifted since Norman times', effectively agreeing with your contention that the first colony of Empire was England and it remains occupied.
On the other side the historian Jane Ohlyemer has a book just out called Making Empire
which says that Ireland was the UK's first colony and details the historic processes by which that happened, effectively arguing that Ireland was a petri dish for the rest of the Empire project, which of course got taken over by the Americans. But the MO, go into a culture, use religion, education, theft and lawfare to subjugate an entire society and steal their resources, got invented and refined in Ireland over 600 years. The Americans are still doing this in South America.
I think both are true, in so far as power in England has always been concentrated in the hands of a few, and any hint that it strays outside the accepted boundaries is met with a monstering in the press, Angela Rayner is obviously Not One of Us.....judging by her treatment in the right wing press. And the Post Office Enquiry is shining a light on how those at the top of companies really feel about their employees.....subbies with their hands in the tills..... So England is very definitely still occupied, even if the occupiers are now 'thugs in suits' rather than armour. And Ireland has her own 'thugs in suits'.....
I feel it's a bit like comparing the Mafia in Italy, with the Mafia in America, the first is obviously the original, but as it's native to the place, the techniques used for intimidation and control are tightly bound with the local culture, like a malignant offshoot of a plant . The other is an import, it has to try and compete with the local culture, suppress it, ridicule it, and make it feel inferior, it's more like an invasive weed. But conversely there's a better chance of getting rid of it because all of those things mean that the original culture is still there. And perhaps if people like John Moriarty become better known then there is still hope for Ireland. I hope this makes sense.....
I follow Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, both evolutionary biologists, for their critical examination of what is being passed off as “the science”. Covid and gender dysphoria have been among their main topics. Bret also presents compelling discussions of what we are experiencing—a loss of sense making, a distrust in institutions we used to rely on for factual information, a crumbling of what used to be shared values, an insistence that we not believe there are objective truths. Why is this happening, he wonders. If information is power, then information must be made unreliable, even unavailable for some so others can be in control. So we were lied to about covid, scared with misinformation, even threatened. It was an experiment to see how compliant we could be made, and it worked. Even now we have to search for information about the so called vaccine’s adverse effects (it was really gene therapy, but “vaccine” is a much nicer word). Medical institutions deny there are adverse effects and continue to recommend boosting, even though there is plenty of information they are unsafe and should be abandoned. “Gender affirming care” is an abomination, a rebuke of common sense, yet it continues. Why? Are our brains being reprogrammed to accept nonsense? To genuflect to a new reality determined by—-who? And why? Power. Control. “We will own nothing and be happy.”
The only antidote I see to this insanity is trust in God.
It's tempting to dismiss David Shapiro without a second thought based upon his Star Trek tee-shirt alone. Stick around, however, and you realize this is in fact a rather intelligent guy, with a lot of interesting things to say (much -but not all- of which I disagree with). I do think he's a bit of a dick, in the same way I consider anyone a bit of a dick who waves away the encyclopedic catalog of obscene crimes against Palestinian women and children (and hospital staff, aid workers etc.) over the course of the past 6 months alone, but I'm trying to be better about not summarily dismissing people who have vastly different political opinions than mine.
One talk of his in particular I found interesting was this one, 'cognitive bias is keeping you angry and afraid'. May be interesting to those who can tolerate high nerdery:
I’ve been reading Dante during Lent, amongst a few other things. This is the first time I’ve read it since all of the re-enchantment stuff has been popularized across the internet and podcast world, as well as myself becoming Orthodox. This time I’m trying to read it with new eyes in light of all that instead of the way universities beat reading into me. It works at times, and not so much at other times. Practice, practice, practice.
Our host mentioned the prayer of St Isaac the Syrian as something read by the Orthodox during Lent. Please let me share a few other titles that I have found amazingly edifying:
St John of the Ladder, The Ladder of Divine Ascent: one of the classics, and is helped by the gentle, good-humored spirit of the author (in contrast to the severity of St John Chrysostom).
The Optina Elders, Live Without Hypocrisy: a digest of the sayings and counsels of the elders of Optina Monastery (Russia, 19th century). Probably the since best spiritual book I have ever read. St Ambrose of Optina was the model for Dostoevsky's Zossima. Their counsels, based on the ontology/anthropology of the Eastern Fathers and the Hesychast tradition brought to Russia by St Paisius Velichkovsky, are incredible in their love, beauty and simplicity (and a good measure, IMHO, of the degree to which protestantism has been throughly "americanized." which is to say turned into the handmaid of Satan.
The St Herman of Alaska folks (this is the monastery founded by Fr Serpahin Rose) has put out seven volumes of the Optina Elders' teachings. Available on Amazon, and highly recommended. Also, a group called All Saints Press has put out the "Chronicles of Seraphim-Divyevo Monastery," a beautiful edition of the Russian life of the saint.
Why the Russians? Because one can argue successfully that both protestantism and latin Christianity have surrendered to "modernity"/Americanism and replaced whatever they may have taught with the radical egalitarianism and sexual obsession that is the american stock in trade.
The Russian Orthodox Church, on the other hand, withstood the most brutal persecution that the Church has ever experienced in its history, and it did not bow or break. Your mileage may vary, but to me that represents a certain "judgment of history" on American protestantism, and protestantism in general, and Russia, with Russian Orthodoxy.
I mentioned the other week that I'd just completed a book that focused on the early Irish monastic movement’s strategy of building “monastic towns,” that helped urbanize a rural Ireland, and re-civilize and evangelize a Western Europe that was devolving into barbarism (while in the process providing an introduction to Architecture, Urban Planning, and real estate development and why these are important for the Church). Basically a strategy for the Church in dark times centered around the built environment. Well it's now available on my website at: www.ward-davis.com
Interesting links as usual, I'm looking forward to the N.S. Lyons article.
Louise Perry had a fascinating conversation with Robin Hanson a few weeks ago. Hanson is a futurist who came on to discuss, in mournful tones... the decline of Machine modernity and the rise of a lower-tech, more religious future, due to demographic trends -- primarily, the urban monoculture's plummeting birth rates. It was an odd experience to follow along with the argument but have a completely different emotional response to it, but it was perhaps more interesting that the conversation happened at all. It seems like podcast hosts have a lot of incentive to invite on ideological friendlies, but here was a techno-futurist discussing trends with conservative-leaning Louise Perry, the common interest being birth rate trends, but the participants approaching the subject from fairly different angles. Curious if anyone else listened to it and had a similar reaction!
Not to sound too cheery about collapsing birth rates. Hanson actually made it sound like we could have a soft landing into a lower-tech, less globalized future, but it could be much more apocalyptic.
Blessed Spring/Lent/Eastertide, friends. Please forgive me if I have missed previous discussion on this book, but I have just finished reading David James Duncan’s 2023 novel Sun House and want to recommend it to you all. It is a story that I hope will continue to work its good magic in me long after the first reading, and one that I intend to re-engage periodically in the hopes of picking up the many threads I wasn’t yet ready to see or hold the first time(s) through. Sun House is an obvious and immediate addition to my Library for the End of a World.
A question for my fellow Abbey readers who are Orthodox: I’ve been going to liturgies on Sundays for about a year now, and I’d like to go to a vespers service on Saturday night. Anything I should know about what to expect? How much different from a Sunday morning is it?
I’ve been going to an OCA church here in the U.S., for some context. Thanks!
Recently read Graham Pardun’s essay “Waving Farewell to Byzantium” on his Substack, Sabbath Empire. As someone who is Orthodox Curious but put off by the ultra factionalism it was just the piece I needed.
A bit marginal, perhaps, but I've found myself unexpectedly *obsessed* by the journalist James Delingpole's podcast The Delingpod.
It's odd, and it won't be to everyone's taste here. But it's fascinating, and I hope you give him a try. James is a former mainstream journalist, right of centre, who wrote somewhat lightweight pieces for several big papers - so, a named columnist with a lot to lose.
But during the pandemic he smelled a big rat, went massively "off-message", found Jesus, and is now fighting what he sees (as many here do, too) as the coming totalitarian night. His journey has been rapid, radical and very destabilising to his own life - but inspiring, too. Some of his views are frankly odd, but others are growing on me fast, and some of his guests are extraordinary. I've been struck in particular by Simon Elmer, Miri AF, Scrumpmonkey, Brian Gerrish, John Waters, but so many others, too. His sessions with his brother Dick are utterly lovely - daft, divagatory, teasing - and they model (for me) what a brotherly relationship could be.
Who knew... that a right-wing gadfly with (ordinarily) an assured mainstream career could find a depth of integrity and grow up into one of the most courageous, fearless and open-minded voices of our dark times. As if PG Wodehouse woke up one morning to find himself morphed not into a beetle but into George Orwell.
Mary Harrington makes a clever and mostly convincing argument regarding the impossibility of reconciling what she calls bio-liberterianism with socialised health care. In a situation where resources are limited there will not a possibility of unlimited "gender" interventions because resources will be prioritised otherwise if the public have a say. Generally I think this is true, however, there is also the possibility of health care systems getting hijacked, and this has certainly happened. In countries with nationalised health care, such as Sweden (which was at the forefront of "gender" medical intervention for young people for a while) and Britain, there is now luckily a backtracking as the wider public becomes aware of what it is happening. This doesn't seem to be the case with Canada though (I recently read about a court case won by an individual who wanted his "nonbinary bottom surgery" funded by the tax payer; I think it was on Reduxx). Due to the inconsistencies pointed out by Harrington, I think those "bioliberarian" pseudo-leftists naturally tend towards totalitarianism. For decades the strategy of the TRA orgs has been to covertly hijack instutitions and try to prevent the public finding out what's really happening. The same totalitarian responses could be found in the Covid response, especially with the "vaccines", where the NHS top bureaucrats (largely unchallenged) prioritised to transfer massive resources towards a dubious mass injection programme at the expense of other care. And the highly centralised and bureaucratised structure of the NHS, in addition to the fact that the NHS assumes quasi-religious status among large sections of the British Left and beyond, meant that this went largely unchallenged (doctors or nurses who spoke up would most likely lose their jobs). A privatised or semi-privatised health care system - which has other problems - may allow slightly more dissident voices than the NHS, though they have different means of sanctioning medical professionals.
"The Sexual Revolution has become the new founding story for many Western democracies, and thus the pantheon of old heroes is being cleared to make room for the icons of our new age"
I have been thinking about how Christianity, Monogamy, Romance, and let's say, Sexual Supression (from the modern vantage point) all sort of depend on one another to function culturally. The impact of the Sexual Revolution leaves Christianity, Monogamy and Romance all in jeopardy, as mismatched pieces that don't function well in this cultural context.
I see this as related to the phenomenon notable in Orthodox parishes in America, where we are seeing so many young, currently unmarriagable men pouring in. These are men who might have a very different life in a world where Christianity, Monogamy, Romance, and some degree of Sexual Supression were the cultural norm. But where are the women?
Women tend to be more pragmatic in their mate selction, and i don't think huge numbers of them are looking for men-or a church-offering asceticism and a counter-cultural way of life.
During the Easter holiday I went to visit my wife's family. Her brother is a pastor and told me about how the dynamic in many protestant churches is exactly the opposite. They are full of women, but there are few men. Theology aside, these churches offer a much better bargain. Comfort, entertainment, emotional highs.
I visited a local Orthodox parish on that Easter Sunday. There were 4 young men officially being brought into that parish as catechumens. I went to Easter service at my brother in law's church, and it was mostly females.
I'm not sure yet how all this relates, but I can see something happening here and I believe it's all related. Hopefully I can find some time to think it through further.
I follow N S Lyon, and read his piece in First Things (to which I subscribe), and in response I posted the following comment:
I wonder if you have read Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac (Emory University Studies in Law and Religion) by: Steven D. Smith Smith’s book provides an interesting assessment of the ongoing competition between imminent paganism and transcendent religions (exemplified by Christianity) that seems quite relevant…
With respect to Mary Harrington, I also follow her. Her perspectives on issues of ‘gender’ are mostly sympathetic to my own. Another author with useful insights on this topic is Abigail Favale, whose book, The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory, I highly recommend.
https://mcgrath.nd.edu/about/faculty-staff/abigail-favale-ph-d/
When considering the mindset of those caught up in transgenderism, I think it useful to understand their perspective as being built on delusions of solipsistic narcissism.
A bit off topic, but today's Guardian has a piece by George Monbiot which talks about the draconian laws on right to protest, and mentions in passing 'the portcullis of power hasn't been lifted since Norman times', effectively agreeing with your contention that the first colony of Empire was England and it remains occupied.
On the other side the historian Jane Ohlyemer has a book just out called Making Empire
which says that Ireland was the UK's first colony and details the historic processes by which that happened, effectively arguing that Ireland was a petri dish for the rest of the Empire project, which of course got taken over by the Americans. But the MO, go into a culture, use religion, education, theft and lawfare to subjugate an entire society and steal their resources, got invented and refined in Ireland over 600 years. The Americans are still doing this in South America.
I think both are true, in so far as power in England has always been concentrated in the hands of a few, and any hint that it strays outside the accepted boundaries is met with a monstering in the press, Angela Rayner is obviously Not One of Us.....judging by her treatment in the right wing press. And the Post Office Enquiry is shining a light on how those at the top of companies really feel about their employees.....subbies with their hands in the tills..... So England is very definitely still occupied, even if the occupiers are now 'thugs in suits' rather than armour. And Ireland has her own 'thugs in suits'.....
I feel it's a bit like comparing the Mafia in Italy, with the Mafia in America, the first is obviously the original, but as it's native to the place, the techniques used for intimidation and control are tightly bound with the local culture, like a malignant offshoot of a plant . The other is an import, it has to try and compete with the local culture, suppress it, ridicule it, and make it feel inferior, it's more like an invasive weed. But conversely there's a better chance of getting rid of it because all of those things mean that the original culture is still there. And perhaps if people like John Moriarty become better known then there is still hope for Ireland. I hope this makes sense.....
I follow Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, both evolutionary biologists, for their critical examination of what is being passed off as “the science”. Covid and gender dysphoria have been among their main topics. Bret also presents compelling discussions of what we are experiencing—a loss of sense making, a distrust in institutions we used to rely on for factual information, a crumbling of what used to be shared values, an insistence that we not believe there are objective truths. Why is this happening, he wonders. If information is power, then information must be made unreliable, even unavailable for some so others can be in control. So we were lied to about covid, scared with misinformation, even threatened. It was an experiment to see how compliant we could be made, and it worked. Even now we have to search for information about the so called vaccine’s adverse effects (it was really gene therapy, but “vaccine” is a much nicer word). Medical institutions deny there are adverse effects and continue to recommend boosting, even though there is plenty of information they are unsafe and should be abandoned. “Gender affirming care” is an abomination, a rebuke of common sense, yet it continues. Why? Are our brains being reprogrammed to accept nonsense? To genuflect to a new reality determined by—-who? And why? Power. Control. “We will own nothing and be happy.”
The only antidote I see to this insanity is trust in God.
It's tempting to dismiss David Shapiro without a second thought based upon his Star Trek tee-shirt alone. Stick around, however, and you realize this is in fact a rather intelligent guy, with a lot of interesting things to say (much -but not all- of which I disagree with). I do think he's a bit of a dick, in the same way I consider anyone a bit of a dick who waves away the encyclopedic catalog of obscene crimes against Palestinian women and children (and hospital staff, aid workers etc.) over the course of the past 6 months alone, but I'm trying to be better about not summarily dismissing people who have vastly different political opinions than mine.
One talk of his in particular I found interesting was this one, 'cognitive bias is keeping you angry and afraid'. May be interesting to those who can tolerate high nerdery:
https://youtu.be/RAnGfkbD378
Just a plug for my novel “Metanoia”, an anti-dystopian history of the 21st Century, set (mostly) in East Anglia. Now available in full on my Substack:
https://dsimpson.substack.com/p/metanoia-243?r=3ezew
I’ve been reading Dante during Lent, amongst a few other things. This is the first time I’ve read it since all of the re-enchantment stuff has been popularized across the internet and podcast world, as well as myself becoming Orthodox. This time I’m trying to read it with new eyes in light of all that instead of the way universities beat reading into me. It works at times, and not so much at other times. Practice, practice, practice.
Our host mentioned the prayer of St Isaac the Syrian as something read by the Orthodox during Lent. Please let me share a few other titles that I have found amazingly edifying:
St John of the Ladder, The Ladder of Divine Ascent: one of the classics, and is helped by the gentle, good-humored spirit of the author (in contrast to the severity of St John Chrysostom).
The Optina Elders, Live Without Hypocrisy: a digest of the sayings and counsels of the elders of Optina Monastery (Russia, 19th century). Probably the since best spiritual book I have ever read. St Ambrose of Optina was the model for Dostoevsky's Zossima. Their counsels, based on the ontology/anthropology of the Eastern Fathers and the Hesychast tradition brought to Russia by St Paisius Velichkovsky, are incredible in their love, beauty and simplicity (and a good measure, IMHO, of the degree to which protestantism has been throughly "americanized." which is to say turned into the handmaid of Satan.
The St Herman of Alaska folks (this is the monastery founded by Fr Serpahin Rose) has put out seven volumes of the Optina Elders' teachings. Available on Amazon, and highly recommended. Also, a group called All Saints Press has put out the "Chronicles of Seraphim-Divyevo Monastery," a beautiful edition of the Russian life of the saint.
Why the Russians? Because one can argue successfully that both protestantism and latin Christianity have surrendered to "modernity"/Americanism and replaced whatever they may have taught with the radical egalitarianism and sexual obsession that is the american stock in trade.
The Russian Orthodox Church, on the other hand, withstood the most brutal persecution that the Church has ever experienced in its history, and it did not bow or break. Your mileage may vary, but to me that represents a certain "judgment of history" on American protestantism, and protestantism in general, and Russia, with Russian Orthodoxy.
I mentioned the other week that I'd just completed a book that focused on the early Irish monastic movement’s strategy of building “monastic towns,” that helped urbanize a rural Ireland, and re-civilize and evangelize a Western Europe that was devolving into barbarism (while in the process providing an introduction to Architecture, Urban Planning, and real estate development and why these are important for the Church). Basically a strategy for the Church in dark times centered around the built environment. Well it's now available on my website at: www.ward-davis.com
Blessings!
Ward
Interesting links as usual, I'm looking forward to the N.S. Lyons article.
Louise Perry had a fascinating conversation with Robin Hanson a few weeks ago. Hanson is a futurist who came on to discuss, in mournful tones... the decline of Machine modernity and the rise of a lower-tech, more religious future, due to demographic trends -- primarily, the urban monoculture's plummeting birth rates. It was an odd experience to follow along with the argument but have a completely different emotional response to it, but it was perhaps more interesting that the conversation happened at all. It seems like podcast hosts have a lot of incentive to invite on ideological friendlies, but here was a techno-futurist discussing trends with conservative-leaning Louise Perry, the common interest being birth rate trends, but the participants approaching the subject from fairly different angles. Curious if anyone else listened to it and had a similar reaction!
Not to sound too cheery about collapsing birth rates. Hanson actually made it sound like we could have a soft landing into a lower-tech, less globalized future, but it could be much more apocalyptic.
edit: here's the link https://www.louiseperry.co.uk/p/imagining-the-end-of-the-world-robin
Blessed Spring/Lent/Eastertide, friends. Please forgive me if I have missed previous discussion on this book, but I have just finished reading David James Duncan’s 2023 novel Sun House and want to recommend it to you all. It is a story that I hope will continue to work its good magic in me long after the first reading, and one that I intend to re-engage periodically in the hopes of picking up the many threads I wasn’t yet ready to see or hold the first time(s) through. Sun House is an obvious and immediate addition to my Library for the End of a World.
To read more about the book (the blurbs are true!): https://www.davidjamesduncan.com/sun-house
A question for my fellow Abbey readers who are Orthodox: I’ve been going to liturgies on Sundays for about a year now, and I’d like to go to a vespers service on Saturday night. Anything I should know about what to expect? How much different from a Sunday morning is it?
I’ve been going to an OCA church here in the U.S., for some context. Thanks!
Interesting read in Compact today about machine bureaucratization of medicine.
Bonus points for mentioning Illich.
https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-pathologies-of-managerial-medicine/
Recently read Graham Pardun’s essay “Waving Farewell to Byzantium” on his Substack, Sabbath Empire. As someone who is Orthodox Curious but put off by the ultra factionalism it was just the piece I needed.