I won’t claim to be a writer, though I like to write. I found the imagery below by St. Isaac the Syrian to be an intriguing way of seeing one’s life – a draft document, a work in progress. Of course he wrote in a day and a age when once something was in print, it was cast in stone and not easy to change. He did not know the joy of the electronic document which can forever be updated, corrected and improved. Despite what technology makes possible, there still is a sense that when something moves from its electronic form to its hard copy print form it becomes more permanent, indelible. St. Isaac though when referring to a document seems to have in mind official government documents – in his time it would have been imperial documents with the king’s seal. The documents he is thinking of in his metaphor become official decrees and laws of the empire. But this imagery has some value to us as we consider God’s Book of Life is an imperial document with the kingdom being that of Heaven. There is a permanency to the document – once officially issued, decreed, it will remain what it is forever. Until that time however, we have the ability to change, alter, and improve the story of our life.
God is the author of the book known as the universe, but each of us co-authors with God our lives. (I’ve also been intrigued by those scientists inspired by our new found ability to read the genetic code who have suggested that in that genetic code and in the human genome we can really see the hand of God with the code being a script recording what was happening to humanity through the vast time in which our ancestors have been part of t his world.)
God is writing the book of the universe’s existence, but allows each of us to write our own chapters within the Book. As St. Isaac has it the book of our life is for a short while in our hands, and we have the ability to add good things to it. It is marvelous imagery about how we co-operate with God and shape some of the details which God incorporates into His book of life.
“Our way of life in this world resembles a document that is still in draft form: things can be added or taken out, and alterations can be made, whenever one wants. But life in the world to come resembles the case of completed documents that have the king’s seal already upon them, and no addition or subtraction can be made. While we are still here, where changes can be made, let us take a look at ourselves, and while we still have control over the book of our life, and it is in our hands, let us be eager to add to it by means of a good life-style, and delete from it the defects of our former life-style.” (THE WISDOM OF ST ISAAC OF NINEVEH, p 22)
If you are interested, I’ve taken all of this year’s blogs I posted related to the Gospel lessons for the Sundays after Pascha and have put them into one PDF available at 
but the acceptance of this offer by Jewish people is dependent on their embracing this interpretation of God’s salvific activity…calls for conversion. And what is conversion, but transformation of the theological imagination, which includes incorporation into the community of believers and concomitant practices? Conversion as Luke develops it entails a reconstruction of one’s self within a new web of relationships, a transfer of allegiances, and the embodiment of transformed dispositions and attitudes. That this conversion is to a particular reading of that ancient story – a reading that insists that the only genuine line tracing the actualization of God’s purpose passes through the life, death, and the exaltation of Jesus, Messiah, and Lord.” 
“The first truly ‘ecumenical’ action was the Council in Nicea, in 325, the First Ecumenical Council. Councils were already in the tradition of the Church. But Nicea was the first Council of the whole Church, and it became the pattern on which all subsequent Ecumenical Councils were held. For the first time the voice of the whole Church was heard. We do not find in our primary sources any regulations concerning the organization of the Ecumenical Councils. It does not seem that there were any fixed rules or patterns. In the canonical sources there is no single mention of the Ecumenical council, as a permanent institution, which should be periodically convened, according to some authoritative scheme. The Ecumenical Councils were not an integral part of the Church’s constitution, nor of her basic administrative structure. In this respect they differed substantially from those provincial and local Councils which were supposed to meet yearly, to transact current matter and to exercise the function of unifying supervision. The authority of the Ecumenical Councils was high, ultimate, and binding.” (Georges Florovsky, 
Archbishop Hilarion Alfeyev in his book, 
St. Isaac and Archbishop Hilarion’s words are very reflective of ideas expressed by St. Paul in the New Testament in his epistle to the Colossians:
“There is still more. Jesus appears several times in the form of a stranger in order to point out that, henceforth, when the historical Christ has ascended into Heaven, it is with human features easily recognized by us that His divine nature will be clothed. Already He declares to His disciples long before His death that He was hungry and thirsty, that He has been naked and sick, a stranger and a prisoner, in those whom we have fed and given to drink, clothed and looked after, received and visited – and in those who were in need of these things and whom we did not help. ‘As long as you did it to one of these My least brethren, you did it to Me.’ God and His creatures will never be identical. We are not Christ by nature, but we are by participation and by grace. We are His members. It is under this form that Jesus becomes visible and tangible to us. To this generation which declares itself realistic and is unwilling to adore a phantom, Jesus says: ‘See My hands and feet.’ Today on this earth, He has no other feet than those of men. If you are unable to climb directly to Jesus through prayer, leave your house and at once you will find Him in the street in the form of the man and woman who are passing by.” (Lev Gillet, 
“‘To see heaven open’: 
I give DISCOVER magazine credit for following the Wilson article promoting biological determinism in regards to war, there was a rebuttal by John Hogan author of 
While science has certainly brought about many technological inventions that have improved life on earth, faith that science can “save” the earth and accomplish something religion did not or cannot do, always seems to fail to take into account that humans will be humans. Scientific humans will make as many errors in moral judgement as religious humans, and perhaps even more since they will rely on humans to decide all ultimate values. Human hubris has proven itself enough times in history to make us realize it is a fact of life with which we must contend whether we look to science or religion for dealing with human failings.
Fraternized 