sam kim's blog

Find me over there now.

2010-04-14T14:05:00.000-05:00

http://samkimsblog.wordpress.com/

Art

2010-04-13T11:14:00.001-05:00

Art is showing the real in light of the ideal, thereby transfiguring it.

Lessons

2010-03-30T23:03:00.003-05:00

I think sometimes God lets us fall into certain sins to snap us out of the delusion of pretending to be holier than we actually are. I know I need those lessons.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Night Thoughts

2010-03-28T21:40:00.009-05:00

Orthodoxy is about cleansing your heart to see God. The purer your heart is, the more of God you see in the world, in other people, and most of all, in yourself, in the image of God that's in you. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."

REAL Ultimate Orthodox Power!!!!

2010-03-11T17:41:00.020-06:00

NOTICE: What follows here is meant only to be a joke. I am only trying to poke fun at myself, and other people who may take themselves too seriously. Lord have mercy on all of us.

==================================

Are you ready to get pumped?
If "Yes," then continue. If "No," then you're a little baby.

Hi, this Blog is all about Orthodox, REAL ORTHODOX. This Blog is awesome. My name is Sam (REAL ORTHODOX name SAMONAS) and I can't stop thinking about Orthodox. These guys are cool; and by cool, I mean totally sweet.

Facts:

1. Orthodox are mammals.
2. Orthodox use incense ALL the time.
3. The purpose of the Orthodox is to flip out and destroy heretics (may they be anathema).

Weapons and gear:

Orthodox Incense

Orthodox Prayer Rope

Orthodox Hat

Orthodox Beard

Orthodox Fire

Orthodox Jesus

St. Nicholas

Testimonial:

Orthodox can destroy any heretic they want! Orthodox anathematize ALL the time and don't even think twice about it. These guys are so crazy and awesome that they flip out ALL the time. I heard that there was this Orthodox who was fasting. And when some dude ate a cheese pizza the Orthodox anathematized the whole town. My friend Vasily said that he saw an Orthodox totally uppercut some kid just because the kid wanted milk.

And that's what I call REAL Ultimate Power!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you don't believe that Orthodox have REAL Ultimate Power you better get a life right now or St. Nicholas will punch you in the face!!! It's an easy choice, if you ask me.

Orthodox are sooooooooooo sweet that I want to grow a beard. I can't believe it sometimes, but I feel it inside my heart. These guys are totally awesome and that's a fact. Orthodox are beardly/holy, smooth, cool, strong, powerful, and sweet. I can't wait to start reading the Philokalia.

Q and A:.

Q: Why is everyone so obsessed about Orthodox?
A: Orthodox are the ultimate paradox. On the one hand they're the Undefiled Pure Faith of the Apostles, but on the other hand, they don't give a crap.

Q: I heard that Orthodox are always cruel or mean. What's their problem?
A: Whoever told you that is a total heterodox (may they be anathema). Just like other mammals, Orthodox can be mean OR totally awesome.

Q: What do Orthodox do when they're not punching people in the face or flipping out?
A: Most of their free time is spent chanting the Akathist Hymn to Our All-Holy Immaculate Most Blessed and Glorious Lady Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary, but sometime they anathematize. (Ask Vasily if you don't believe me.)

This is a picture of my best friend Vasily showing off. His beard is a lot bigger than mine which is bragable.

"We seek the return of our brethren."

2010-02-17T18:04:00.001-06:00

(Image: Holy Mother Church)

"We seek not conquest but the return of our brethren, whose separation from us is tearing us apart." St. Gregory Nazianzus

"We are unchanged; we are still the same as we were in the eighth century, before the West had rudely spurned its Eastern brethren. Let us be brought to the test. Oh that you could only consent to be again what you were at that time when we were united by Unity of Faith and communion of spiritual love and prayer!" Alexis Khomiakov

"We seek and we pray for our return to that time when, being united, we spoke the same things and there was no schism between us." St Mark of Ephesus

"Outside the Church there is no salvation." St. Cyprian of Carthage

Vande Saccidananda ("Saluting the Holy Trinity") by Brahmabandhab Upadhyay

2010-02-11T00:35:00.003-06:00

I bow to Him who is
Being, Consciousness and Bliss.
I bow to Him whom worldly minds loathe,
Whom pure minds yearn for,
The Supreme Abode.
He is the Supreme,
The Ancient of days,
The Transcendent,
Indivisible Plenitude,
Immanent yet above all things.
Three-fold relation,
Pure, unrelated knowledge beyond knowledge.
The Father, Sun Supreme Lord, unborn,
The seedless seed of the tree of becoming,
The cause of all,
Creator, Providence, Lord of the Universe.
The infinite and perfect Word,
The Supreme person begotten,
Sharing in the Father's nature,
Conscious by essence,
Giver of true Salvation.
He who proceeds from Being and Consciousness
Replete with the breath of perfect bliss
The purifier, the Swift,
The Revealer of the Word the Life-giver.

(About Brahmabandhab Upadhyay)

Mother, I have killed thy son...

2010-02-01T18:53:00.003-06:00

"'Mother, I have killed thy son. If you forgive me, I can be forgiven. If you withhold forgiveness nothing can save me from damnation."'

(From Beginning to Pray by Metropolitan Anthony Bloom)

Here is a refuge from the vanity and the storms of life...

2010-01-22T16:32:00.007-06:00

"Here is a refuge from the vanity and the storms of life. Here is the calm harbour for souls seeking after salvation. Here is incorruptible food and drink for the soul. Here is the light that enlightens all men existing upon earth. Here is the clean air of the spirit. Here is the fountain of living water which flows to life eternal (John 4:14). Here are distributed the gifts of the Holy Spirit, here is the cleansing of souls. The reading and chanting is done in church in a holy language.... Here in the temple, man comprehends the truly noble origin of his soul, the worth of life and its goal and purpose. Here he is torn away from his fascination with earthly vanities and passions. Here he comprehends his temporal and eternal fate. Here the Saviour lives – in His Life-giving Mysteries, in His salvation. Here he recognizes his true relationship to God and to his neighbour, to his family and to the society in which he lives. The temple is heaven on earth, a place where intimate union with the Divine takes place. It is a heavenly school, where Christians are taught to become citizens of heaven, where they are taught heavenly norms, the way of life in heaven. It is the threshold of heaven, a place of communal prayer, thanksgiving, praise of the Triune God, creator and protector of all. It is a place of unification with the angels. What is more honourable and more esteemed than the temple? Nothing. In its Divine Services, as in a blueprint, are severally depicted the fates of all humanity, from beginning to end. The Divine Services are the alpha and omega of the world and of mankind." (St John of Kronstadt)

Quotation Source

Some men come to the Church...

2010-01-08T20:49:00.008-06:00

Some men come to the Church hoping to find in Christ a champion of their own particular causes and ideologies. God becomes a way to validate their obsessions, perhaps even idolatrous obsessions, with abstract ideas like human equality, justice, liberty, all these things that sound good, and are good, but are rather absurd when considered as ends in themselves.

Christianity is not an abstract moral system. It is not the patron of the radical right, or of deluded utopian socialism. Nor is it the protector of traditional western European culture, her history, her arts, her dead gods. Rome has fallen to fickle time. Christianity must be more, it must transcend -- no -- transfigure time, and culture, and morality.

Some men come to the Church looking for an "aesthetic Christianity," in the worst sense of the term. And they ignore the interior life, the life of prayer and of fasting, the labours which mark true Christianity.

But let these men come, for they may still be saved, but as through fire.

How small our problems seem...

2009-10-20T10:41:00.017-05:00

How small our problems seem at night, when we, with all the world, are embraced by the infinite black sky. Black covers up everything: all of our sins, our dirty fingerprints, the tears borne by our earthly miseries; and all of our blasphemous cries against divine providence become like whispers, engulfed in the ever-reverberating hum of the cosmos. You cannot shout into the sky without being mocked by the sound of your own voice. All our anger at the world, at people, and at God most of all, just seems silly then, like a grumpy child trying to escape the loving but disciplining grasp of his mother.

It is at that moment that we must learn to abase ourselves, to kneel before eternal Heaven, the multitude of it's stars pointing to our own smallness. If we do not surrender to the Infinite Embrace, if we too do not embrace, we can and will only suffer. We will become miserable and lonely old men and women, still angry at the world and at people, not willing to let go of our grievances, spiritually desolate, seduced by our arrogance and sense of pseudo-grandeur. They are a deluded lot who think that there is something romantic or glorious about raging before this earth and God's Heaven like a madman, necks stiff and egos puffed-up. But what glory can a man of good conscience and piety claim before the innumerable array of stars, clothed with light?

We must learn to kneel before the darkness, and to embrace the merciful black sky that does not hold our blasphemies against us. We must forgive our enemies, as the Teacher taught us, and we must love all men, accepting rebuke, misfortune, hate, treachery, and love in return, letting ourselves be swept up into the cosmic dance of Divine Providence. We must accept the fact that we simply aren't that important, but we must also see that we are infinitely loved -- loved by Him who is Love, the Philanthropic One, the Infinite Embrace: with His outstretched arms, He holds up the world.

How small our problems seem at night -- how small we are -- when we, with all the world, are embraced by the infinite black sky. Even our prayers begin to seem superfluous, and we verily find ourselves, though lost, in silent contemplation, forgetting all thought and words, trouble and misery, and anger and grievance before the Divine Darkness. And we see all the cosmos is drawn towards Him, like a magnet, or sun, or even black hole, into the depth of Himself, into the warmth of His bosom. Black covers up everything; nightfall quiets a noisy city, and the tumult of my soul.

God gives us heartache...

2009-10-06T00:58:00.006-05:00

God gives us heartache, sorrow, and failure in life to remind us that the paradise that we all long for is not this world, but the World to Come: when all the desires of our hearts will be fulfilled in the brilliant vision of His Face, and the warmth of His divine embrace. Every experience of earthly joy is meant to raise our minds to that eschatological hope of perfect Joy. And every experience of earthly joy cannot escape the reality of its own transitoriness, it's own impermanence, it's own unreality. Earthly joy is only a shadow of that perfect Joy of the Kingdom Come.

God gives us heartache, pain, and grief in this world, so that we will learn not to put our trust in princes and the sons of men, but in God, who is in truth our only hope. God gives us dissatisfaction with mundane things, so that we will be able to cast aside the riches destroyed by moth and rust. God grants us abandonment by women and friends, so that we will be able to make ourselves eunuchs for His Kingdom. God gives us tears, so that we may know what it means for every tear to be wiped away.

And the merciful God grants us the gift of retrospection, so that in the midst, or at the end, of our sorrowful life, we may be able to look back and see with clarity the meaning of it all, the sweetness of it all: the beauty of this grand meta-narrative of our salvation. Every tear, and every moment of pain and abandonment, we see working for our good, towards that Happy Ending, filled with joy, and warmth, and light, and eternal splendour...

My dad sings an old Spanish love song...

2009-08-02T22:20:00.007-05:00

My dad sings an old Spanish love song as he drives me, away from home, and to my place on campus. He sings in Italian, too. I am amazed that he remembers all these lyrics, considering he learned them when he was a young teenager in South Korea, and considering he still has trouble with English. The thought of my father's love of music moves me, and I begin wondering if his great singing voice was one of the things that attracted my mother to him.

I have recently grown attached to being home, and being around my parents and family. I used to hate it. Not any more. I don't like leaving. I don't like how it makes me feel. Maybe I'm getting older. Maybe I'm getting younger.

My dad starts singing again, this time in English, "Sad movies always make me cry..."

cold

2008-10-28T15:37:00.008-05:00

My body is not used to cold weather (weather below 80). I like it, I like dressing up in jackets and layers to try and keep warm. It looks good. It's better than being hot and sweaty I think. But perhaps this points to the fallenness of my nature, that I find my home in coldness, the coldness of the world after her Fall. The world that desires the warmth of Love, the warmth that comes only from the embrace of the Philanthropic One; the warmth of Christ's body and blood -- divine communion in my mouth.

But like the coldest day in Texas, the sun is never too far gone. His light still permeates, filling the day with distant traces of his heat.

I have nothing to clothe myself in, nothing that will warm me. But Thou, O Lord hast clothed me in a wedding garment.

her watch said 4 am

2007-08-03T00:52:00.004-05:00

"Right now, this is all that matters. This, this is the only thing that's real. I mean, ultimately, if we get honest -- really honest -- we don't know if there's a God, or heaven, or hell, or whatever, or if anything is really real. But this, this is real. In time, it may pass, and it probably will. But this moment is outside of time. So it's eternal. We can only hope there is a God and he's good and there's a heaven for us, and I do, but right now we can't touch it. But I can touch you, I can see you, and smell you, and taste you. And right now, this is all that matters."

And she agreed, but did not smile, though she was not sad. But I was a little sad. And I took her hand and looked at her watch. I opened the blinds, and it began to rain.