Jacob's Well

19/10/2023

Benedict Sheehan and Talia-Maria Sheehan, in a beautiful essay in our newest issue:
"Many Orthodox believers today seem to have constructed an image of tradition as, essentially, a perfect harmony without dissonance. Thus, when they encounter dissonance of some kind within the church—whether in the form of opposing perspectives, beliefs, or modes of behavior, or simply in the form of doubt, questioning, or criticism—they tend to assume that the dissonance needs to be eliminated, that the opposition must be silenced, and that alignment needs to be reasserted at all costs, lest the harmony of the tradition be damaged. However, anyone who has undertaken even a cursory study of church history will probably suspect that such a picture of a changeless, unbroken harmony doesn’t quite match up with the facts on the ground."

In Praise of Dissonance: Reflections on Stability, Harmony, and Tradition BENEDICT AND TALIA SHEEHAN On November 7, 1940, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge failed spectacularly. That morning, only four months after it had opened, the structure started shaking in the hard wind.  Drivers felt their cars slid...

17/10/2023

During his time in Russia, Fr. Michael Meerson (of Christ the Savior Orthodox Church in NYC) worked with Alexander Men to publish samizdat. He had to flee the country to avoid imprisonment, and when he came to New York he stayed with Alexander Schmemann and found his way to St Vlad's. In the newest issue of Jacob's Well he looks back on his two mentors.
"In the decades since they reposed, as I’ve reflected on my experiences with them, and have pored over their writings, I’ve realized there was a remarkable overlap in their apostolic work."

Fr. Men and Fr. Schmemann, each in his own way, became a living embodiment of the same theme: “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday and today and forever."

17/10/2023

We were honored to publish this beautiful new poem by Scott Cairns, which will be in his forthcoming collection _Lacunae_ (https://bookshop.org/p/books/lacunae-new-poems-scott-cairns/19835655?ean=9781640608818), in our newest issue.

A poem by Scott Cairns

09/10/2023

Here are our diocesan graduates!

Read 2023 Diocesan Graduates by Jacob's Well on Issuu and browse thousands of other publications on our platform. Start here!

09/10/2023

https://www.jacobsmag.org/war-chapnin-brown-7

Christian Harmony and Discord in Time of War

09/10/2023

https://www.jacobsmag.org/alexandersmeerson

The Two Alexanders in My Life:Fr Men and Fr SchmemannV. REV. MICHAEL MEERSON Fr. Alexander Men and Fr. Alexander Schmemann never met. They lived and worked under totally different circumstances. The life of each was short by modern standards. Fr. Men was assassinated in 1990, at the age of 55, after...

09/10/2023

https://www.jacobsmag.org/new-page-95

Christianity’s Asian FutureDAVID ARMSTRONG Palm Sunday mural discovered at Christian temple in Oocho, 7th-9th century. Museum of Asian Art, Berlin. “The most holy one of great wisdom is equal to emptiness,” wrote the author of the seventh century CE text Discourse on the One God. “He cannot ...

09/10/2023

https://www.jacobsmag.org/new-page-62

Working with Discord to Achieve Interpersonal HarmonyJohn Livick-Moses Who among us doesn’t crave peace, harmony, and love in our lives and relationships? We all want to get along with our families, friends, and romantic partners. Yet, as the adage goes, ‘to err is human,’ and with any human c...

05/10/2023

https://www.jacobsmag.org/raboteauteriba

A Unity of VisionA Tribute to Dr. Albert RaboteauDoyin Teriba “Have you heard about Albert Raboteau?” a friend asked me after Divine Liturgy. We were in the sanctuary at Holy Trinity, the Greek Orthodox cathedral on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. I was still wearing my cassock, basking in the af...

05/10/2023

https://www.jacobsmag.org/religiohake

Religio as a Universal Human Quality:On the Harmony of Faith TraditionsJesse Hake Christians today slip easily into thinking that our faith is in competition with other religions. In fact, however, for most of Christian and pre-Christian history, there was a widespread understanding that everyone sh...

05/10/2023

https://www.jacobsmag.org/fissuresanzoulatos

Family Fissures:On the Challenges and Joys of Blended FamiliesAmelia Anzoulatos When Katherine created an account on Orthodox Circle, the social networking platform for Orthodox Christians, in 2012, she didn’t realize others had already started using it as a way to meet future spouses. “I was ju...

05/10/2023

https://www.jacobsmag.org/new-page-39

Letter from the Catskills: A Teen Parishioner on the Lenten RetreatBeatrice Olderog A Lenten retreat provides an opportunity for us to step away from our busy lives and focus on our spiritual growth. It allows us to disconnect from the distractions of daily life and engage in activities that foster....

02/10/2023

Additional Photos from the article "Making Faith Come Alive" by Kristina Baktis.

02/10/2023

https://www.jacobsmag.org/letter-editor-7

Letter from the EditorNick Tabor The scriptures and our liturgical prayers are forever extolling the importance of unity and harmony. “For the union of all, let us pray to the Lord,” we hear in every litany. The psalmist writes of “how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity,” a...

02/10/2023

https://www.jacobsmag.org/dissonance-sheehan-7

In Praise of Dissonance: Reflections on Stability, Harmony, and Tradition Benedict & Talia Sheehan On November 7, 1940, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge failed spectacularly. That morning, only four months after it had opened, the structure started shaking in the hard wind.  Drivers felt their cars slidin...

02/10/2023

The new issue is here!

This issue of Jacob's Well features a collection of essays on harmony and discord, the ways conflict and discord are necessary and productive, how to navigate conflict in your relationships, the problem of war, the role of dissonance in tradition, the harmony and difference between religious traditi...

23/09/2023

The upcoming issue of Jacob's Well will be available in your parish next Sunday the 1st of October. The digital version will be made available that weekend also. Stay tuned!

23/07/2022

Congrats to all our high school and college 2022 graduates!

Read 2022 Diocesan Graduates by Jacob's Well on Issuu and browse thousands of other publications on our platform. Start here!

22/07/2022

"In order to create what we might call successful melodies—ones in which the words and the melodic elements are intimately woven together—a composer must follow Fr. Sergei’s advice: to become, above all, musically literate and learn to 'hear' the sacred song by reading it on the page."

The Case of Fr. Sergei Glagolev (1928–2021)

22/07/2022

“Maximus is clear that all creatures benefit from the union that Christ’s Incarnation brings about, not just human beings … It is through God’s becoming the perfect human being that all of creation is brought to unity; and from our perspective, the long, and sometimes tragic, process of evolution is healed of all its suffering and death. The majority of biologists today believe humans share a common ancestry with all life on earth, which, from a Maximian perspective, can make sense: Maximus believed the human, in a way, contained within itself the entire universe. It is because Christ, as the perfect human being, contains within Himself the history of the cosmos that he can bring it to its glorious participation in the life of God.”

Maximus the Confessor, The Incarnation, and Modern Science

18/07/2022

From Andrew Boyd, a tribute to one of the OCA's luminaries.
"Father Leonid had a commanding presence. He seemed to know every conceivable religious leader, and could also get them on the phone on a moment’s notice. His influence and notoriety were impressive, but they were part and parcel of his work as a pastor. He didn’t do anything for his own status or ego. He viewed all of his work as his duty, and he carried it out with love and sobriety."

The Witness of Fr. Leonid Kishkovsky

18/07/2022

A much-needed pastoral reflection from Fr. David Bryan Wooten:
"Pluralistic society requires us to 'live and let live' so that the center may continue to hold. For us as Orthodox Christians, this means maintaining certain firm boundaries, so as to be faithful to Christ and His commandments, while also respecting others’ boundaries, even (and especially) in those instances in which the Church disagrees with them. A certain respect for the person in front of you is always required; after all, that person is created in the image and according to the likeness of our God, and is always so much more than simply that belief or practice you don’t like."

Kind Disagreements in the Secular Landscape

18/07/2022

One of our favorites from the new issue: David Armstrong on sources of the self.
"But despite these differences in emphasis, Christian Tradition agrees with Advaita that God is the source of existence and awareness for all beings, and therefore that the idea of an absolute separation between God, world, and self is nothing other than an illusion arising from ignorance of the truth. And with Buddhism, Christian Tradition concurs that much of what we conventionally call the 'self' is really a misidentification, that all such misidentifications are impermanent, not constitutive of either the soul’s endurance beyond death or of the future resurrection. The self’s fluidity and emptiness is exactly the possibility, in Christian hope, of theosis: the possibility of deification through our ever-greater unification with God—which God, from his own vantage, has always eternally known and willed."

The Dangers of DualismDAVID ARMSTRONG In 2020, Metropolitan Kallistos Ware spoke with Michael James, a practitioner of classical Hinduism, in an interview recorded for YouTube. They discussed the relationship between the Orthodox concept of theosis and the Hindu notion of jnana, which James describe...

16/07/2022

“Because this way of life is all-consuming, one of the easiest ways to cope is to simply abandon ourselves to the role of motherhood. We subconsciously conclude that to hope for anything else is to be disappointed, and the energy and planning it takes to find a break from the children never seem worth it. We might as well resign ourselves to the necessities of life, give up that shower or the book we thought we might read during nap time, and resolve to make our lives entirely sacrificial. We are walking in the footsteps of the Theotokos, after all. This, we assume, is what salvation requires.
As heroic as that sounds in theory, I have realized that this kind of self-abandonment is not the path to Christ.”

On the Limits of Self-Sacrifice

16/07/2022

"It is my hypothesis that the excessive distress and hostility felt by the majority of Orthodox Christians toward secularism stems from their addiction to another form of secularism: the Byzantine one. Though we shouldn’t ignore the Byzantine empire’s excellent cultural achievements, Byzantium also set a precedent by which Orthodox Christians became accustomed to having a privileged status before the state. I believe many are now experiencing a traumatic displacement from that condition."

On Secularism and the Orthodox Faith

15/07/2022

"There's a reason why such large crowds will go to a concert of great artists, more than almost to anything else. There's a vocation that great athletes have as well, and I don't think it’s a demonic or bad thing. I think there's a place for these things. Extraordinary talent has the touch of God. To be a genius, people who are ingenious in something, they're often absolutely un-extraordinary and underwhelming in anything else. But when they're doing what their vocation is, then we’re touched by God, when we learn from them. Well, we’re healed by them."

An Interview with Sister Vassa Larin

15/07/2022

Cyril Hovorun:
"Even in the post-secular era, after such European thinkers as Jürgen Habermas declared truce between ideologies and religion, ideology remains heterogeneous to religion. Their superficial similarity does not make them allies. On the contrary, such similarity should alert the church to be vigilant and not allow ideology to affect the church’s own agenda. In contrast to ideological agendas, which seek to promote particular social programs, the church’s agenda is one of salvation for one and all, regardless of their political or social credos. This does not mean the church’s focus on eternal salvation excludes any social awareness or activity. On the contrary, caring about the human soul is genuine when it translates into the care for humanity in its various social forms."

Cooking the Snake of SecularizationARCHIMANDRITE CYRIL HOVORUN The alter ego of the Orthodox churches is symphonic, which means their self-perception has been formed through a close relationship with a state. Most of these churches, which also identify themselves as “Byzantine,” have lived for m...

15/07/2022

Paul Gavrilyuk:
"What would emerge out of this crisis is a mature theology of war and peace that is seasoned by this experience. We've made some important forays into the subject, but it would be more than theology understood as a purely theoretical discipline; it would also be a theology that is now grounded in life and offers a moral vision for the future. To the extent to which we can participate in that work, we will. It is also simply that Seraphim and I, as much as we love scholarly conferences, believe this needs to be set aside in this moment. We kind of need to get a spade or just get our hands dirty and do the work that needs to be done now."

An Interview with Paul Gavrilyuk and Seraphim Danckaert

14/07/2022

Sarah Riccardi-Swartz on radicalization and the Orthoweb:
"In truth, I believe, this project does not reflect Orthodox theology or teachings, so much as it reflects the long history of the American culture wars—and by extension, the machinations of modern secularism ... Yet to call out the replacement of religion and true spirituality with political ideology and propaganda—both online and in our parishes—we have to come to terms with the social context of why this might be happening and what it has to do with modernity."

Orthodoxy and the E-Spirit of Radicalism PROFESSOR SARAH RICCARDI-SWARTZ It seems American Orthodoxy has a radicalism problem. The Church has almost always had a conservative social posture. But in our own moment, it is becoming more bent toward reactive politics and ideology, and nowhere is that m...