The Slavonic вседержитель (vsederzhytel’) translates the Greek παντοκράτωρ (pantokrator), said of God the Father in the Nicaean Creed and of Jesus Christ in the Orthodox Church’s iconographic tradition. The word is normally rendered almighty in English versions of the Creed (probably from omnipotens in the Latin version), but literally—in both Greek and Slavonic—it means ruler of all or ruler of all things. Read More
At 16, I went through my first spiritual crisis. My faith in Christ came face to face with Darwin’s evolving monkeys. These two points of view clashed in what they told about who I was—an icon of the divine, or a hairy primate governed by natural selection and evolutionary chance.
I had been taking AP Bio and was on track for a medical program. I had been very faithful all along the course. The vast diversity in the natural world, unified in its life functions, made me step back from the text and do my cross in the Orthodox way. “How magnified are Thy works, O Lord!” Even memorizing the Kreb cycle, looking at the complexity and fragility of ecological webs, only reinforced my faith in God the Great Poet Creator. Read More
I just had the privilege of seeing a film called Jojo Rabbit by Taika Waititi. Based on Christine Leunens’ novel, Caging Skies (The Overlook Press, 2004), the film looks at the absurdity of war through a child’s perspective. While broad themes in the movie include friendship, trust, and the loss of childhood innocence, Orthodox audiences may find particular resonance in other themes: the nature of obedience and obligation, white supremacy, and the oppressive consequences of mob mentality. If readers are familiar with an earlier Waititi film, Boy, there are some recognizable motifs between the two, particularly in the way that a child’s perspective is imagined and portrayed. Waititi’s style is not unlike that of Wes Anderson in his deliberate uses of color and artistic framing.
The movie follows 10-year old Jojo, a new initiate of Hitlerjugend, the Nazi version of Boy Scouts. The blurry lines of war are introduced early in the film when it becomes clear that Jojo’s enthusiasm for the group is not enough to protect him from bullying from older youth. The inconsistencies of the protagonist’s life deepen when he realizes that his own mother (played by an energetic Scarlett Johansson) is hiding a Jewish girl in their home. Jojo is torn between deep curiosity about her and the propaganda he has been hearing. We see his inner conflict personified by an imaginary friend—a cartoonish version of Adolf Hitler played expertly by Taika Waititi himself. It is important that this character is Jojo’s own creation more than the actual dictator (he eats a unicorn steak at one point). Read More
You might think same-sex marriage is something completely new. You would be mostly right, but history has other things to show us. History is not as familiar as we sometimes think it is.
Spiritual brotherhood in the Byzantine Empire of the Middle Ages is an ancestor to our same-sex marriage. In the Byzantine Empire men became spiritual brothers and some scholars believe that sexual intimacy did or could occur. There is some controversy about this. For some it is a bridge too far to speak of sex, for we cannot know for sure. My position is that it was a possibility at all times and the Byzantines were aware of this.
First, how did men become spiritual brothers? In church two men would be blessed by a priest who would say a prayer over them. Many of these prayers survive and more are being located all the time. Spiritual brotherhood was popular. Read More
