Sunday, January 21, 2007

Two Books and the Wall Street Journal

In the last three days we have received two fabulous books in the mail.
1. "We Praise, Bless, and Worship: Daily Prayer for Orthodox Christians". Now we can do Vespers, Compline, and Matins at home! Very exciting. We've done Compline. Tomorrow we are adding Matins. Thanks, Kum.
2. "Discovering the Universe". It is a college astronomy text book that comes with a cool CD-Rom that lets us observe the night sky regardless of clouds, artificial light, or smog. (He is doing very well in learing the constellations and 1st mag. stars.) Thanks, Philippa.

My comment was chosen for publication on the WSJ Online. I have commented on many of their stories but this is the first time one of my comments made it past the review process.

6 comments:

Huw Richardson said...

Totally my pleasure, Matt. I was using that book before I became Orthodox: it's a wonderful resource.

Pray for me.

Matt said...

Well, it is no wonder you became Orthodox!

Mimi said...

Enjoy the books.

Anonymous said...

Blushing furiously!

May God bless Anselm's study of His Creation. You've brought me joy to know that the book is being enjoyed!

Pray for me, a sinner.

Seraph said...

I repeat my earlier question: what do the seven days of creation have to do with the eight musical tones and eight phases of the moon? I am truly interested.

Matt said...

Sorry, Sereph. I'll post a longer version in the main body of this blog but essentially:

the Patriarchs (both pre and post flood)and Moses, and perhaps, St. John of Damascas learned the music from angels.

The angel part of this is not controversial at all. See the work of Prof. Drillock at St. Vlads and Prof. Seppala at U. of Joensuu.

The part that is controversial is to whom these melodies were revealed.

The connection to Gen. 1 has to do with the heavenly bodies being given for signs and the 8 day liturgical week of pre-Abrahamic Babylon.