Musings From The High Desert

Pani-matka Susan continues and concludes her reflections on books for St. Nicholas and the Christmas Season. Pani-matka Susan and Fr. Gabriel would be eager to receive suggestions of other books and resources that listeners have found spiritually nourishing for children at the Christmas season, and we will pass that information on at a later date.

Fr. Gabriel interviews Pani-matka Susan about her favorite books that relate to Christmas and St Nicholas, particularly discussing ones that can be used in Sunday School and for family devotions, and two books that speak to Jewish-Christian relations at this time of the year. Included is the book that inspired their decade-long tradition of St Nicholas cookies (see website). We hope this will be helpful to people for next year's celebration.

Most listeners will be familiar with C.S. Lewis and his works of both theology and fantasy because he has had so much influence, particularly on people who have become Christian through his works. In this broadcast, Fr. Gabriel introduces the wider circle of his friends, known as the Inklings, a group that met in the 1930s and 1940s at the Eagle and Child Pub in Oxford England for discussion of their literary pursuits and interests. Fr. Gabriel also includes a few readings from the wonderful Screwtape Letters (1942).

In this broadcast, Fr. Gabriel offers a survey of materials that open for us the Prayer of the Heart, commonly known as the Jesus Prayer. The key example is, of course, the anonymous 19th-century Russian text known as The Way of a Pilgrim, but there are numerous resources that lead us into the prayer other than that very popular book. Join us for an overview.

Oliver Davies is well known in Great Britain and Europe as a scholar of Celtic Christianity. He is the author of Celtic Spirituality in the prestigious series Classics of Western Spirituality from Paulist Press. Here Fr. Gabriel reviews his book Celtic Christianity in Early Medieval Wales. Listeners will not find this an esoteric offering at all, but rather a heartwarming regional appropriation of Orthodox Christianity.

David Jones (1895-1975) is the subject of this podcast. Not generally well-known in the United States, David Jones has been the subject of ongoing exploration by many people here and abroad regarding the overlap and cross-fertilization between art and faith, specifically Christian faith. Jones was an Anglo-Welsh artist who specialized in line drawings and watercolor but whose epic poetry was of equal importance to his artwork. Father Gabriel has long appreciated Jones's work and invites you to listen in as he unveils Jones for you.

Fr. Gabriel, reflecting on several comments recently made by parish members, turns to a consideration of The Mind of the Orthodox Church by Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos, a book he has read five times and which he wishes everyone would read. Metropolitan Hierotheos describes the mind of the Christian and details the twin engine for its development: sacramental life and ascetic discipline.

Fr Gabriel turns to his great love, Biblical studies, and discusses two books from the mid-20th Century that were and continue to be deeply influential in his life. These were written by the British scholar C. H. Dodd, who was called the greatest New Testament scholar of his era. Dodd's books were small—Fr. Gabriel calls his writing "concise, clear, and succinct"—but they were of great importance to many Bible students. These two books are The Apostolic Preaching and Its Development (1936) and According to the Scriptures (1952). In the first of these, Dodd traced the roots of New Testament documents, not through theology primarily but through the need for preaching texts. In the second, Dodd gives a thorough presentation of major Old Testament passages shared by early writers to substantiate Jesus as Messiah.

After some notes to explain the genuine meaning of Inter-Religious Dialogue, Fr Gabriel turns to a 2010 book by the Dalai Lama, Toward a True Kinship of Faiths: How the World's Religions Can Come Together, which is about 40% autobiography, 40% interpretation of world religions, and 20% program for compassionate relationships between religions. The Dalai Lama attempts to move us beyond violence into understanding.

The Psalms are the beloved hymnbook of Israel and the Church. They are also the inspiration for much of the prayer life of the church, both east and west. In this broadcast, Fr. Gabriel explores the literary structure of the Psalms, which helps to explain their winsome and enchanting power. He explains the different categories of Psalms and reads some of his favorites.

In this broadcast, Fr. Gabriel discusses one of his favorite books on spiritual care from the Lutheran tradition. He has cherished this book for some forty years now and used it in his former teaching life at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. It is titled The Hammer of God and was written by the Rev. Bo Giertz, a biblical scholar, parish priest in rural and urban settings, and Bishop of the Diocese of Gothenburg, Sweden. Though this book comes from another tradition, Fr. Gabriel knows that you will find in its story and content good news for your heart and mind.

In this segment, Fr. Gabriel muses momentarily on his own intellectual history of reading, and then discusses one of his all-time favorite books, which he has read many times: Fr Alexander Schmemann's For the Life of the World.

In this follow-up to the introduction to New Paths, Fr Gabriel gives an overview of the six units of the course itself—Holiness, Covenant, Rejection, Conflict, Hope, and Encounter—and invites listeners to discern how and where they might utilize this course in local congregations.

In this episode outside the current theme of books, Fr. Gabriel talks about the backing institutions and the rationale for a new adult course for Christian churches on Israel, past and present and, to some extent, future. This course has been in the making for over a year and Fr. Gabriel has been on the development team. You are encouraged to check out the website. In the next episode, Fr. Gabriel will discuss the content of the course.

This week, Fr. Gabriel looks at the work of Boris Pasternak, the great Russian poet whose one novel, Doctor Zhivago, was made into a movie in the mid-sixties, and both book and movie remain enduring classics. Fr. Gabriel spoke about the novel at the Branigan Library in Las Cruces on the occasion of the publication of a new translation. A written copy of this essay is available on the church website.

This time Fr. Gabriel turns from the writers of the other Europe, symbolized by Bohumil Hrabal's work which he spoke about last time, back to the Church. Again looking at the life and overall work of one particular person, he turns to his favorite writer on prayer, Metropolitan Anthony Bloom (memory eternal), Bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church in England. After an overview of Metropolitan Anthony's life, Fr. Gabriel reads excerpts from two books, Beginning to Pray and Living Prayer. There are two important websites for those who want to learn more about Metropolitan Anthony: http://www.masarchive.org, which contains his writings; and http://www.mitras.ru, the official site.

In this segment, Fr. Gabriel talks more about his fascination with language and then moves into a consideration of the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, best known in the United States for his novels Closely Watched Trains, I Served the King of England, and Too Loud a Solitude, the first two of which were made into award-winning movies. Hrabal was a comic writer with an ironic edge and a great example of those relatively few writers who managed to slip through barriers that the communist regimes erected against intellectuals and artists. Fr. Gabriel ends with portions of Hrabal's novel Gaps, the third in a trilogy about his life written from the viewpoint of his wife Eliska.

In this series, Fr Gabriel will offer reviews of books from a wide range of interests that have touched him and which he believes either have touched or could touch you. The series will cover novels and poetry, as well as theology, New and Old Testament studies, and specifically Orthodox books. Stay tuned! We hope that you will enjoy these reviews.

Fr. Gabriel concludes his series on Christianity and Philosophy with a discussion of postmodernism.

Fr. Gabriel addresses nihilism.