A history textbook we studied at High School showed pictures of the Australian landscape drawn by early British settlers. The scenes they showed seemed far too domesticated, with trees standing amid grass. This, we were told, was because the artists still looked at things in a British way, and had been in Australia too short a time for their eye […]
Read moreThe Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England has a table of days of fasting or abstinence, according to which something like a hundred days a years are to be observed in this way. Can there be a single Anglican in the world now who follows this table? The practice of fasting runs so contrary to contemporary thinking […]
Read moreGregory Palamas (1296-1359) has become very influential in recent Orthodox thought, especially for the distinction he drew between the divine essence and energies and the way in which this clarified such questions as the nature of grace and the possibility of being in contact with God. The study of Anestis Keselopoulos, originally published in Greek in 1982, is rather concerned with […]
Read moreWhen a schoolboy I was bowled over by the excitement of Tchaikovsky’s stirring 1812 Overture, and I imagine girls of a similar age being entranced by the delicate beauty of Swan Lake. Tchaikovsky is a thoroughly enjoyable composer. But there are some things that should never be attempted. I’ve been listening to his Suite No. 4 in G, the Mozartiana, in […]
Read more‘Then he sent out a raven, which kept going to and fro until the waters dried up from the earth.’ (Gen 8:7) Disagreeable because of its appearance, its call and its eating habits, the raven (crow) is a hard bird to like. The Law of the Old Testament reckons it among those birds that are an abomination, whose flesh is […]
Read moreA number of productions of Mozart’s opera are taking place in Australia at around this time, and while I probably won’t see any of them they’ve led me to turn again to a version of it on one of the first CDs I bought, that in which Kiri Te Kanawa sings Pamina (further back lies a dimly recollected and most enjoyable movie version directed by Ingmar Bergman.) […]
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