ST HERMAN’S ANNUAL PARISH MEETING NOTES.

The Meeting is next Sunday, Jan 24. Following the Divine Liturgy next Sunday, grab a cup of coffee downstairs and come up to the nave for the meeting. Minutes from past annual meetings show we can expect an attendance that is well below our capacity under current restrictions. So, the meeting will be in person and also on zoom. A zoom invite will be emailed to all this week. Members attending the annual parish meeting by zoom and not in person will be able to vote and make comments on zoom. How to do that will be explained when the time comes.

If you wish to attend the parish annual meeting in person, and are not on the ‘rotation’ for next Sunday, let Fr Paul know so that arrangements can be made.

Nominations for 2021 Parish Council may be submitted to Caleb Tkach. We also will need nominations for a delegate for the Diocesan Assembly held the first week of October. The All American Council that was due to be held this summer has been postponed until the following summer in 2022.

OF INTEREST to some may be the 38th Annual Fr. Alexander Schmemann Lecture at St Vladimir’s Seminary (Crestwood, NY). This year, the event will be presented in an online format on  Saturday, January 30, 2021, 1 pm CST. The speaker is New York Times bestselling author Rod Dreher (received into the Church in 2006), speaking on: “Living in Truth: How the Communist-Era Suffering Church Can Prepare Us to be Dissidents.” Go to svots.edu and find the link to register (or ask Ed Cook or Fr Paul for help).

This morning, Sunday, Jan 17:

Cooks

Tony Dunlop

Corinne & Paul

Nick Kelly

Michael Kemp

Fred & Richie

Tim & Thecla Ketcher

Slaters

Anne and Katie Knocke

Martin Madansky

Barb T

Morses

Parduns

Swensons

Thweats

Katie Wesche

Hansens

Brennans

Youngbloods

Lucas Spencer

Connor & Dad (guests)

Names for next Sunday, Jan 24:

Helen P

Dan Faust (& Rachel)

Johnsons

Gremillions

Laurie R

Cooks

Slaters

Fred & Richie

Brad Kampf

Nick Kelly

Pavlenkos

Morses

Joe Miller (& Jamie)

Parduns

Youngbloods

Ketchers

Thweats

Barb T

Emily Phillips

Alex Wauck

Anne & Katie Knocke

See Fr Paul if you wish to attend the annual parish meeting in person next Sunday, but are not on the rotation for next Sunday. Remember the Vesperal Divine Liturgy served on Wednesday evening, especially for those not coming to the Sunday Divine Liturgy.

FR PAUL’S SATURDAY MORNING adult ed class for inquirers, catechumens and faithful is on winter break. It will resume Saturday, Jan 30, 2021, from 1030 – 1145 am.

FOCUS MN is requesting only coats, hats, scarves, and mittens until further notice due to storage space. You may bring your donation of these items to the Church and place them on the designated table downstairs.

ST HERMAN’S BOOK CLUB meets next Saturday, Jan 23, at 1030 am, following Divine Liturgy.

ON TO SPRING! Meeting of the LORD is on Feb 2. The Lenten Triodion (Sunday of the Publican and Pharisee) begins February 21. Meatfare Sunday (Last Judgment) is March 7. Cheesefare Sunday, and the beginning of the Lenten Fast, is March 14. Palm Sunday is April 25, and Holy Pascha this year is on Sunday, May 2.

2021 ORTHODOX PILGRIMAGE TO ALASKA, June 30-July 6, sponsored by Culturally Creative Travel. Go to this address for details:

https://www.culturallycreativetravel.com/2021-orthodox-alaska/

Contemporary American psychotherapy largely relies on what I would call a truth-first method, but in fact no such method could ever truly liberate man. To draw from Lev Shestov’s* evaluation of the entirety of the Western philosophic project (excepting Plotinus and, in part, Plato), rationalist methods can only claim intellectual validity if they first posit a predictable, miracle-free, and self-contained universe. Only upon such a fixed and settled basis can the philosopher (or in today’s case the therapist, the most ubiquitous and successful type of philosopher in our culture today) reliably exercise human reason to chart out a predictable and stable ethic of human life. The original move of philosophy, said Shestov, had therefore been the brutal subjugation of the world and of the human being to blind, unfeeling necessity.

Referring to the temptation and fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Shestov went on to say that philosophy since Socrates had in effect chosen to cast its lot with the serpent rather than with a personal God, by accepting that “the knowledge of Good and Evil” is man’s best destiny and would make us the equivalent of gods.

To make Shestov’s assessment of philosophy sting still more, one now unavoidably hears within this cause of the fall of man in Genesis – the desire to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – our current definition of Ethics: “the rational investigation (the knowledge) of morality (of good and evil).” Far from being a guiding light, such a truth-first Ethics can easily increase our blindness and our estrangement from God; it can easily become a way towards death.

…Truth-first methods can take the soul apart; they cannot put it back together…. Rationalist approaches to the soul tempt us because they promise easy understanding (truth) and effective action (utility, or goodness). In practice, however, they so often lead to tragic confusion and wasted effort. Indeed, reductionist methods applied to any living system may be examples of man’s perennial attempt to live away from God, for they are often the attempt to substitute sure though partial knowledge for a living relationship. Such an attempt is the repetition of the primordial error of Adam and Eve.

(Students of Fr Paul’s adult ed classes should see in Dr Patitsas words the mystery Fr Paul has set out in terms of the “what” and the “who”.)

[Timothy Patitsas (Professor of Ethics at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox Theological Seminary in Boston) Ethics of Beauty (St Nicholas Press, 2019), Preface: pp.vi-vii]

*Lev Shestov, Athens and Jerusalem, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1968.