A car trip with some old mates has introduced me to a part of Australia I’d never visited but which people who grew up in this country instinctively feel at home in. We passed through a largely uninhabited landscape where nothing much happens. At one stage to the east of Tennant Creek the road ran perfectly straight for half an hour, and this in […]
Read moreThe long tradition of commentary on this most steamy book of the Bible continues, although what the contemporary Greek thinker Christos Yannaras offers is not so much commentary as a series of reflections, almost responses to the text, which are introduced in musical terms. They describe territory familiar to many people. Hence, the words My beloved is mine and I am his. He […]
Read moreIn the opinion of Rabbi Akiva, ‘All the songs of Scripture are holy, but the Song of Songs is the holy of holies.’ This judgment may seem to involve a degree of chutzpah, given the frankly erotic nature of most of the text of the Song, unique among books of the Bible in its failure to mention God. But commentators […]
Read moreResults from the Australian census of 2011 are in, and number crunchers have been working the data. Someone has correlated religious belief with postcodes, and found that belief is highest in remote Indigenous communities and lowest in the counter-cultural town of Nimbin. Within the cities, inner areas are the strongholds of non-sbelievers; if you take a freeway out of the […]
Read moreTwice in the past few weeks I’ve heard on the radio arrangements of an old song by the Beatles, She’s Leaving Home, made by people who would be generally regarded as serious composers. A friend tells me she has also heard orchestrations of Eleanor Rigby, and come to think of it I’m sure I have heard Norwegian Wood being treated in […]
Read moreTwo scholars dealing with different issues suggest differences in the ways in which the Eastern and Western Christian traditions operate. Discussing the ways in which the Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions approach the problem of divorce, Cl. Gallagher quotes the words of another author: ‘The crucial difference between the two disciplines lies not in the fact that one accepts divorce and […]
Read moreIn his presentation of the thought of St Gregory Palamas, Anestis Keselopoulos observes: ‘Summoning up all the characteristic traits of a believer who lives his repentance, Palamas describes him as mild and calm, full of mercy and compassion for others.’ How do we get there? ‘Spiritual mourning is the basic precondition for man’s exodus from bondage to the passions and […]
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