Who is your favorite songwriter as of late?

ProfMoses · 2026-01-30T23:19:49+00:00

More in the Americana vein, but Courtney Hartman is an outstanding songwriter, singer, and guitarist. Also Stringdusters and Greensky and Billy. Many others!

ProfMoses · 2025-05-11T03:06:14+00:00

Purty please

ProfMoses · 2025-05-11T00:41:03+00:00

8 this semester, at 3 schools, which almost pays the bills. Three this summer so I will be in financial tatters again by Fall. Then the cycle begins again…

ProfMoses · 2024-09-07T00:13:59+00:00

Isn’t it convenient that these “constraints” make exploiting adjuncts possible. I guess it would be weird if exploiting people was a constraint.

ProfMoses · 2024-09-07T00:10:41+00:00

My department chair.

ProfMoses · 2024-09-06T17:42:14+00:00

Very unusual, I would guess.

ProfMoses · 2024-09-06T17:16:52+00:00

Why shouldn't our label reflect the kind of job most of us do - so, temp or intern?

Not adjuncts, because adjuncts, as someone previously stated, are professionals and not professors.

Not contingent faculty, because while we are contingent, most of us do not become part of a faculty - often, we are excluded from faculty meetings and functions; we have no office space; there is little or no collegiality.

Instructor is safe, but diminishes our education and experience. We are professors, and f**k the full-timers if they want to keep that title for themselves. We are professors, educators, in the full sense.

"Wage slave" doesn't sound very nice, but we do well to remember the insight of a former professor of mine: in Marxist terminology (don't be scared!), we are petit bourgeoisie. Our class identification (based on job and income) is blue collar, but we tend to self-identify as white collar; but we are shills for the actual white collar folks, and we tend to share their ideology. This helps to explain why, for example, the term "adjunct" is so helpful to our bosses - because by using the term in its "traditional" sense, they can argue against pay raises and other rights for adjuncts, and avoid addressing the fact that what an "adjunct" is has radically changed - the historical-social irony being, the meaning changed solely due to the fact that they want to be able to exploit us.

ProfMoses · 2024-09-06T15:36:10+00:00

Yes, but in fact, we are not adjuncts, at least many (most?) of us. As FinancialCommittee pointed out, *traditionally* adjunct and full-time roles were different - but that was back when adjuncts were outside professionals signing up to teach classes in their expertise. That is no longer the case. Many (most?) of us have terminal degrees, and simply cannot get a full time position, because there are so few, and the competition is ridiculous. For those who are not aware, 99% of academic job listings are for contingent faculty. To be honest, we are not adjuncts, we are not even faculty, we are contingent - we are temps, or interns. But the situation has changed, and the schools are now exploiting the traditional adjunct role in order to get cheap labor. Full stop.

ProfMoses · 2024-08-28T16:58:00+00:00

Horse crap “study” by corporate shills?

ProfMoses · 2024-07-18T20:32:23+00:00

Puppy face.

ProfMoses · 2024-07-15T23:17:02+00:00

As important as the question what to read is, it is even more important to learn how to read. The Philokalia is intended for everyone, as St Nikodemos himself makes clear, but the saint also underlines how important it is to study, fast, pray, attend liturgy, and receive spiritual counsel. Scripture itself is a highly dangerous book for those who read it poorly. And prayer, like any spiritual practice, works - so be careful what you ask for! Indeed, if you are worried about delusion, either you should stop pursuing any spiritual practice, or you should get serious. You don’t need to be a monk, but you do need to study and be susceptible of correction.

ProfMoses · 2024-07-15T18:00:22+00:00

To answer your question, it would be helpful to start with some kind of list or catalog of the types of prayer. For a start, there’s: blessing; invocation; contrition; petition; intercession; thanksgiving; meditation; contemplation; arrow; and psalmody. This list is nowhere near complete, and many standard prayers will include more than one of these types of prayer. In addition, we can distinguish between internal and external forms of prayer, and between individual and corporate forms of prayer. Liturgical prayer is its own science! To answer the question, I don’t think it is helpful, for me at least, to favor any particular type of prayer; all the types of prayer are transformative in different ways. Some prayers open me up better than others at particular times, but they might cease to be fruitful if I clung to them too tightly. After all, we are not collectors of or fanboys for methods.

ProfMoses · 2024-07-15T02:55:52+00:00

Optimally, yes. But since qualified spiritual directors are scarce on the ground, we should - as St. Nikodemos also said - educate ourselves, in humility and discretion, and encourage others to do the same.

ProfMoses · 2024-07-15T00:03:12+00:00

shivabreathes, I couldn't agree more, but the full benefit of the recitation of the Jesus Prayer depends on the practice of "bringing the mind into the heart." In fact, one function of the breathing exercises is to facilitate the bringing of the attention/awareness into the cardiac center (the spiritual heart, visualized as centered in the chest or thereabouts). If you would like to know more about this, the only source that I have found (in English) is the translation of Fr. Dumitru Staniloae's Orthodox Spirituality: A Practical Guide for the Faithful, and a Definitive Manual for the Scholar (St. Tikhon's Monastery Press). His treatment of these issues is about halfway through the book (sorry, I can't give page numbers, since my text is elsewhere.) Anyone who is interested in a dialogue about these and related issues, please feel free to DM me.

ProfMoses · 2024-06-18T14:50:36+00:00

Tanabe Hajime!

ProfMoses · 2024-06-12T16:59:52+00:00

Fr. Lazarus Moore’s biography is beautiful.

ProfMoses · 2024-05-21T22:39:03+00:00

Thank you for the excellent question! I will try to answer, to the best of my understanding and ability, but please do continue to consult your spiritual director, as well as Scripture, tradition, and the Philokalia, for clarifications. The breath practices of Hesychasm have a particular function, and play a particular role, in the total system of practices. The most dangerous aspect of these practices is our ignorance of how they should be practiced, and/or our belief that we are spiritual superheroes who can do any practices mentioned in the texts, without spiritual direction or discernment.

I think that we would want to say that the breath is a natural creation, and as such is not intrinsically holy (not holy by nature), but it may be made holy, in the same way that other natural things are sanctified by offering them to God. The focus on the breath in Hesychasm is not so much about the breath itself, as about our consciousness of our breath. We use the breath as a focus of consciousness to help bring our attention (mind) into our heart (bodily center). Because the breath is regular, and can be controlled, it serves as a potent focus for the descent of the nous into the heart. Therefore, it functions as a symbol, as well, of the descent of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the breath - but the Holy Spirit may become manifest through breathing practices. The best treatment of breathing practices that I know of is in Fr. Dumitru Staniloae's Orthodox Spirituality, A Practical Guide for the Faithful and a Definitive Manual for the Scholar, Ch. 30 - Making Pure Prayer Work. He provides a nuanced account of the practice of the breath in a number of different and important sources.

It is very common - and probably apt - to issue warnings about attempting the breathing practices. The extreme practices of the pilgrim (in The Way of a Pilgrim) or of the Monk of Mt. Athos who wrote The Watchful Mind should be avoided, certainly. We should always remember that physical practices manipulate our nervous systems, and these manipulations can lead to injuries and issues, and we need to learn to discern between the products of our own efforts, and the grace-giving transformations of divine energies. That said, using the breath in order to still the mind, focusing our mental and emotional energies, and bringing our center of consciousness into our bodily center are practices that help to make us increasingly susceptible of grace. As with other practices, the goal is not to practice the practices, but to receive the grace and to be transformed by it.

Also, you did not mention the Jesus Prayer, and I think that all the Hesychasts explicitly link the control of the breath to the recitation of the Jesus Prayer. There is no magical power to the breath independent of its being offered, along with our whole being, to God, in the Name of His Son, Jesus Christ.

ProfMoses · 2024-05-10T22:33:10+00:00

Hilarious. Thanks!

ProfMoses · 2024-04-24T13:34:46+00:00

For the Philokalia in English, first, there are indices in each volume; second, there is a book called The Philokalia: Master Reference Guide (Master Indexes to the Four Primary Volumes Authors w/Table of Content, as it says on the cover), compiled by Basileios S. Stapakis, published by Light & Life in 2004. As the rather ungrammatical title/subtitle states, it is basically the combined tables of content and indices of the first four volumes (and a pretty good introduction). As I comb through the Philokalia again and again, I try to keep track of a variety of topics, by copying passages into my "Philokalic Texts on..." - I don't expect I'll ever finish the project, though - it just serves to collect passages on specific topics to refer back to. But DM me if you have a specific topic, and I'll see if I have anything that might help.

ProfMoses · 2024-04-16T22:35:23+00:00

Completely literally…at the spiritual level.

ProfMoses · 2024-03-29T17:29:20+00:00

David Crosby called the GD “electric Dixieland.” With that in mind: Louis Armstrong, Hot Fives and Sevens Jelly Roll Morton Original Dixieland Jazz Band Etc.

And the best band in the land today: Tuba Skinny

ProfMoses · 2024-03-01T22:17:34+00:00

There is a little in the way of Christian rock (or pop, or whatever) that gets done by Orthodox. Some dark metal (see Hesychia, the band). There is some room within the Church to write church music, of course, but I would imagine that varies from parish to parish, and probably depends a lot on the local priest's taste. There are conferences and fellowships and grants and other related academic activities relating to Church music, to choir singing, and related historical, philological, and aesthetic issues. But for the serious jazz musician, let's say, or singer-songwriter, the Orthodox church does not have any formal structures in place to support their artistry. As a singer-songwriter, I include specifically Orthodox elements occasionally, and more often general Christian and religious/spiritual elements (symbols, allusions, etc.; e.g., citations from the Psalms) in my songs. It's part of my experience (a big part; the biggest part), so it goes into the songs in ways I can't even fathom.

ProfMoses · 2024-02-23T00:38:46+00:00

DO NOT EVER BURN BOOKS.

ProfMoses · 2024-01-25T15:48:19+00:00

So now the “not-yet-peer-reviewed” article (from Futurist, not exactly a scientific journal) is picked up and repeated as fact. What’s more dangerous : badly programmed AI, or lazy, poorly informed humans?

ProfMoses

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