The Tower and the Wastes, Interlude 1

Books to Live With

Nikolai Velimirovich: Prayers by the Lake (A Treasury of Serbian Orthodox Spirituality, Volume 5)
You must read this.
George Herbert: Herbert: The Complete English Works (Everyman's Library)
I used to pace back and forth in my room reading passages from this aloud, and they left a strong impression in my soul. Heterodox on some points, but the work as a whole is of such quality that those passages should simply be overlooked.
Bishop of Nineveh Isaac: St Isaac of Nineveh on Ascetical Life
Excellent for beginners, and presumably wondrous also for those who are advanced in the Way of God, this is much to be desired as a companion on the Way.
George A. Maloney: Pseudo-Macarius: The Fifty Spiritual Homilies and the Great Letter (Classics of Western Spirituality)
Saint Gregory Palamas: Saint Gregory Palamas: The Homilies
The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, Revised Standard Version, Expanded Edition (Hardcover)
The notes are sometimes way off, the translations I sometimes disagree with and sometimes are simply erroneous (most of these errors are traditional English-speaking bible translation errors), and the cross-references are often lacking, but it's much better than most of what's out there, has the full canon, and is leaps and bounds better than the dreadful NIV that is, sadly, regarded so highly in some Protestant quarters and which has reached near-saturation in the online biblical search-tool sites.
Robert Alter: The David Story: A Translation with Commentary of 1 and 2 Samuel
L. C. L., Sir Brenton: The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English
Albert Pietersma: A New English Translation of the Septuagint
The Philokalia: Volume 1
The Philokalia: Volume 2
The Philokalia: Volume 3
The Philokalia: Volume 4
Dorotheos of Gaza: Dorotheos of Gaza: Discourses and Sayings
The Philokalia and the desert fathers will make much, much more sense after reading this. A treasure.
Robert Alter: The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary
The best translation of the first five books of the bible available. Not self-sufficient, but most highly recommended.
editor Hieromonk German Ciuba: Old Orthodox Prayer Book (Russian Old Believer)
Everything in traditional English with Slavonic on facing pages. Morning and Evening prayers; the first, third, sixth, and ninth hours; prayers before and after receiving the Eucharist; multiple canons, the weekly and festal troparia and kontakia; the Divine Liturgy; Vespers and Matins. There is not a better Orthodox prayer book in English that I have found (the Jordanville prayerbook, though wonderful in many ways, is inferior, though very much worth owning as a secondary and supplemental prayer book), and this has all of the hours in it - not chopped, in their proper integrity of form and meaning.

05/26/2011

The Tower and the Wastes, Interlude 1

The Tower's glassy exterior proclaims a war on secrecy even as it affirms that all is laid bare; curiously, one only sees one's own reflection on its surface.

The appropriate interior for such a buiding is to be littered with cubicles, which offer no privacy, or else to have large windows on the walls of the office-rooms, so that nothing is hidden.

"Your call may be monitored for quality assurance" --but you'd likely never know.

Posted at 07:26 AM in Philosophy, Secularism | Permalink

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