Abbreviated blogging today. My computer has been pulled, awaiting a replacement. I have computer access, but it's not as efficient as my regular computer.
The new issue of Books & Culture arrived. The cover story: Mt. Athos. Very cool. I've wanted to go to Mt. Athos for the past 15 years, after having fallen in love with The Philokalia. The essay starts a little slow, but then it jumps with facts. Interesting stuff:
Since the 3rd century–and perhaps even earlier–ascetics desiring lives of prayer have lived in community here. Over the next seventeen hundred years, the precise number of these communities has varied, witnessing intermittent increase and decline; some documents indicate that as many as 180 such communities flourished at one point. The establishment of these communities appears to have occurred in two distinct waves, an early wave during the 3rd through the 5th centuries, and a second, more pronounced wave commencing in the 10th century and continuing into the 14th century. (MegÃsti Lávra, founded in 963, is agreed to have been the earliest in the second wave.)
Today, twenty such communities are recognized as "ruling monasteries"; because Mount Athos operates as a virtually autonomous political state, representatives from these twenty constitute the Holy Mountain's governing body. Although seventeen are identified as Greek, one as Bulgarian, one as Serbian, and one as Russian, the Holy Mountain comprises a full array of Orthodox nationalities, including substantial numbers of Romanian, Moldavian, Ukrainian, English, American, and Australian monks. There are also a dozen or more sketes; these are very like monasteries, but ostensibly–with a few notable exceptions–smaller. Each skete is a dependency of one of the twenty ruling monasteries, on whose lands it rests.
The ennobling:
The monastic rule has always revolved around prayer. And fasting, too–but fasting as a tool assisting prayer. It is safe to say that nothing about life on Mount Athos is understood as an end in itself, and that everything deliberate about life there is undertaken to accommodate prayer.
The entertaining (Martha Burke, you wanna battle these boys?):
[T]he daily limit for entry to the Holy Mountain is 120 Orthodox and 14 non-Orthodox men. Since a vote among resident monks in the year 1045 and a subsequent edict of Emperor Constantine in 1060, women are not allowed entry at all, ever.
It kinda made me want to go there even more. Right now, I'm begging my wife for a release from my marriage commitment, but it's not forthcoming.
I found this at Lew Rockwell this morning: Instant messaging hurts relationships. Excerpt:
Dye cites the case of a woman who texted her boyfriend, and didn't receive a reply for a day.
"By the evening she had convinced herself he was having an affair, the relationship was over, and she was a single girl again," she says.
When he called the next day he couldn't understand the drama. His only problem was a flat battery.
Another woman checked her phone 300 times after messaging a love interest to see if he was free for a drink.
Four hours later, she receives a reply, but in the 240 minutes that have passed, she turned herself into a nervous wreck checking her phone, just in case she missed the call.
We also risk reading all sorts of things into a simple SMS or email, Dye says.
Any married people out there besides me happy they're not in the dating world anymore?
Man, I didn't know people are text-messaging while they drive, but at least one legislature thinks it has gotten so bad that it needs to be outlawed. Doofi.
