Tag: St Tikhon’s Monastery

NEWS UPDATE: Thebaid Book Preview at the OCA All American Conference

On By zosimasIn Publishing, Thebaid Book1 Comment

Dear Friends and Supporters, Fellow Pilgrims all!

Much news to share as our pre-press work on The North American Thebaid Book continues:

If you’re going to be at the Orthodox Church in America’s All American Council next week (July 18-22) in Baltimore MD, I hope to see you there!

I’ve been invited to join St Tikhon’s Monastery Press at their display where we will have a special section just for The North American Thebaid Book, featuring an advance look at the book design and some actual page spreads, as well as some large display prints of some of my best images from the project. I’d love to meet you so please stop by and visit!

Our pre-press work on text and image layout continues to proceed very well, with our weekly production meetings often running to an hour or an hour and a half as we fine-tune the details at all levels of the book design. Last month we moved a couple of the main articles around to improve the flow of images and written word sections. There are whole sequences now which are virtually complete and are an absolute joy to page through, inviting the viewer to linger over images before eagerly moving on to see what’s next. As you may recall from my earlier posts, our design has taken the form of a sequential pilgrimage through the great regions of our continent, and we are seeing that approach come to fruition as our work nears its end, the alternating images and texts creating an engaging narrative for the viewer.

Happily, I have had a few opportunities to make new photographs at some of the monasteries, which greatly improve the overall collection, and help make sure the book will be as up to date as possible. Plus it has been a joy to visit again at some of these holy places where I now feel strong connections from my prior pilgrimages.

STILL OPEN FOR PRE-ORDERING: My sincere thanks for all of our new pre-orders of the Thebaid Book since my last update. (We have even had our first pre-order from Australia!) We are still encouraging pre-orders at the Thebaid Store, as this helps us determine our initial print run, and helps offset the printing costs.

As an added perk, effective immediately all pre-orders made through the Thebaid Store will be signed by me, and will include a matted print, ready for framing, of one of the images from the Thebaid Project, signed on the mat. You can check out the specifications on the Standard Edition (Cloth Bound, Hardcover, with French-fold Dust Jacket) and place your preorders here. (Discounts available for multiple copies.) *

Most importantly, the only way to secure a copy of the Deluxe Limited Edition with leather cover and ribbon marker is through pre-order. Each Deluxe Limited Edition copy will be signed and numbered, and will feature a special insert page with the names of all our supporters and pre-orders who selected this special edition. All Deluxe Limited Edition pre-orders will also include a matted print, signed on the mat. Once we close the portal for pre-orders and send the files to the printer, the offer for the Deluxe Limited Edition will cease; this version will not be available through ordinary retail or online stores. You can learn more about the Deluxe Limited Edition (with discounts for multiple copies) and place your pre-orders here.

Perhaps the biggest news I have to share on the publishing end concerns a special trip I am making right after the OCA All American Council, as I will be staying at St Tikhon’s Monastery from July 25-29 for a week-long working session on the Thebaid Book. The STM Press offices are on site at the Bookstore, and we’ll be able to spend hours together each day fine tuning the details. I’m really looking forward to this intensive on-site session which should really move the ball down the field.

Needless to say, this is an exhilarating time for me with the AAC event and our special week-long working session bringing the goal of publication ever closer into view. I can’t wait to complete the book and get it into your hands.

In the meantime, feel free to browse around the many articles about the Thebaid Project, and explore the galleries to learn about or visit anew this amazing and unique multi-year journey. Thank you all again for your support and prayers, and I look forward to sharing the next round of news with you!

* Please note: The Standard Edition is no longer available by itself for preorder, unsigned and without the signed/matted print.

At Long Last! – A Thebaid Book Update

On By zosimasIn Project, Publishing, Thebaid Book3 Comments

Greetings for the Dormition Season!

The Platina Pilgrimage
The hand operated printing press at St Herman of Alaska Monastery in Platina CA, where Fr Seraphim Rose and Abbot Herman produced The Orthodox Word and numerous important books.

First of all, my sincere apologies for not posting any news on the Thebaid book for quite some time. We simply haven’t had any news to share, but have been in somewhat of a holding pattern. But all that is changing rapidly, thanks be to God!

Some of you have reached out to ask about the book’s progress, and I am very grateful for your contact, and happy to have some solid news to report.

Met-Leonty-Cover-500x738
St Tikhon’s Press had asked me last December to be patient, as they had new books which had been scheduled for publication in 2019 well ahead of mine. The first of these was published in conjunction with St Tikhon’s annual Memorial Day Pilgrimage Weekend (a beautiful new book on Metropolitan Leonty of blessed memory), and the other titles have been proceeding apace, meaning the Thebaid Book is next up.

This is most invigorating for me, I can assure you, and I am looking forward to making an extended working visit to St Tikhon’s in mid-September, which will enable us to make much progress. But even in advance of that, we have been fleshing out the specifics of the book sections, and image use and sequencing remotely through correspondence. Continue reading “At Long Last! – A Thebaid Book Update” →

Jordanville Conference features speakers from the only two American Orthodox seminaries joined to monasteries

On By zosimasIn Missions, Monasteries, Pastoral Theology1 Comment

Titled Chastity, Purity, Integrity: – Orthodox Anthropology and Secular Culture in the 21st Century, this visionary conference, perhaps the first of its kind in North America, features speakers and a planning committee who hail primarily from Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary (ROCOR, Jordanville NY) and St Tikhon’s Orthodox Theological Seminary (OCA, South Canaan PA), both of which are unique in North America among Orthodox seminaries for being linked to and deriving their traditional Orthodox ethos from the monasteries out of which they grew.

Confronting in a firm and direct manner the raging cultural heresies of the day, yet with love and compassion befitting a truly Christian endeavor, the conference features presentations with such traditional Orthodox titles and teachings as these:

  • Orthodox Anthropology: Encountering the “new gnosticism” of transgenderism, pansexuality, and post-humanism
  • Nurturing Christian Purity and Chastity among Young People Today
  • The Mystery of Male and Female
  • The Relevance and Application of Orthodox teachings of Purity and Chastity to 21st-Century America: Culture, Families, Parishes
  • Leavening American Society with the Moral Teachings of the Church

This conference clearly is intended to present in a living and engaging manner the divine-human Orthodox phronema, the Mind of Christ and His Church on the nature, calling, and destiny of mankind.

Unlike certain academic platforms, cut off as they are from the living Orthodox tradition, and which therefore spread heresy and error and seek to overthrow the divine teachings and commandments of Christ and the Scriptures regarding man and woman, marriage and sexuality, and to reimagine and subvert the living tradition of the Orthodox Church, this Jordanville Conference, deriving as it does from two of the oldest and most stalwart Orthodox Christian monasteries in the entire Western Hemisphere, offers not just Orthodox teaching on the nature of Mankind, but presents the Way of Life, as distinguished from the way which leads to death (see the Didache, esp. ch. 1 & 2).

Rather than reproduce the lovely aerial photo of Holy Trinity Monastery and Seminary featured with the conference announcement, I think it more appropriate to use one of my favorite images from The North American Thebaid, my photograph of the entrance to Jordanville, its domes faithfully shining beneath dark and threatening skies, a metaphor for the Orthodox Christian presence shining in the midst of the dark age we have entered into here in America.

More info and links on the Jordanville Conference are below the photograph:

20161114-Thebaid-HolyTrinityJordanville-5

 

Chastity, Purity, Integrity:

Orthodox Anthropology and Secular Culture in the 21st Century

Holy Trinity Seminary Jordanville, New York

March 7 – 9, 2019 | Conference announcement and info

This three-day conference focuses on the application of Orthodox teachings on anthropology and morality to contemporary challenges posed by secular American culture (even within the Church).

It will include both scholarly and pastoral perspectives, with the goal of articulating the application of Orthodox Tradition and apologetics to current needs, in the face of current social trends regarding sex, body, and human nature.

It seeks to do so in a prayerful and traditional framework, out of compassion for both struggling Orthodox Christians and families, and those of our neighbors facing spiritual shipwreck in our culture today.

Speakers include::

  • Bishop Irenei (Steenberg)
  • Bishop/Abbot Luke Murianka
  • Dr. Alfred Kentigern Siewers
  • Dr. David Ford
  • Dr. Mary Ford
  • Dr. Edith Humphrey
  • Kh. Frederica Mathewes-Green
  • Fr. Chad Hatfield
  • Fr. Peter Heers
  • Dr. David Bradshaw
  • Fr. Hans Jacobse
  • Fr. John Parker
  • Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon
  • Fr. Alexander Webster
  • Dr. John Mark Reynolds

Full information is available on the Holy Trinity Monastery website.

January 2019 Thebaid Update

On By zosimasIn crowdfunding, Project, Publishing, Thebaid Book6 Comments

On to publication of the Thebaid Book in Spring 2019!

This update serves as a special ‘Thank you’ to our dozens of dear supporters, for propelling the North American Thebaid Project to the threshold of its goal, the publication of the large-format, photographic coffee table book, due in Spring 2019 from St Tikhon’s Monastery Press, South Canaan PA.

In the coming weeks and months I’ll be deeply engaged in photo editing and book design, sending files back and forth with the design team at St. Tikhon’s Press, and working closely with our pre-press partners at Four Colour Print Group in Louisville and FCI Digital in Dayton, as we work to fulfill our goal of creating an inspiring, museum-quality photo book. We can’t wait to get it into your hands!

St Tikhon’s Press announces the Thebaid Book to over 20,000 readers

St Tikhon’s 2019 Liturgical Calendar, featuring photographs from the North American Thebaid.

St Tikhon’s Monastery Press chose to announce their role as publisher of the Thebaid book through a statement in their 2019 Liturgical Calendar, which features fourteen full-color images from the Thebaid Project.

Covering over a dozen Orthodox monasteries across America, from several of the canonical Orthodox jurisdictions and archdioceses here, this beautiful calendar has now been distributed to hundreds of parish churches, reaching an audience of over 20,000, who began using this unique liturgical calendar on January 1 of the New Year.

We are deeply grateful for St. Tikhon’s Press and their public endorsement of the Thebaid Project. You can order the St Tikhon’s 2019 Liturgical Calendar direct from STM Press…

Continue reading “January 2019 Thebaid Update” →

Thebaid Images featured on covers of STM Press 2019 Liturgical Rubrics Book, Pocket Planner

On By zosimasIn Photographs, Project, Publishing, Thebaid Book1 Comment

The close relationship between the North American Thebaid Project and St. Tikhon’s Monastery Press continues to bear fruit, with the publication of the STM Press 2019 Liturgical Rubrics & Calendar, and their 2019 Pocket Planner, each of which feature a stunning photograph from The North American Thebaid on the cover.

These are in addition to the publication of the 2019 St Tikhon’s Monastery Press Liturgical Calendar, which features fourteen photographs from the Thebaid Project. More info, with images from this large-format wall-calendar and links to order from STM Press are provided here.

I continue to feel deeply thankful and honored that St. Tikhon’s Monastery Press has so embraced the North American Thebaid Project, and is using more of the images for their outstanding line of liturgical calendars, books and resources, which will go out to many hundreds of Orthodox parishes and thousands of believers across the United States and Canada.

Specifications for the STM Press 2019 Liturgical Rubrics & Calendar, and 2019 Pocket Planner follow:

Continue reading “Thebaid Images featured on covers of STM Press 2019 Liturgical Rubrics Book, Pocket Planner” →

First Photo Gallery: St. Tikhon of Zadonsk Monastery

On By zosimasIn Monasteries, Photographs, Pilgrimage4 Comments

The first gallery of photographs from the North American Thebaid Project is online, featuring some four dozen images taken at St Tikhon’s Monastery in South Canaan PA.

img_0095Captions to follow, but you can get nearly a virtual tour of the monastery, and a real inside look at monastic life, including the divine services, veneration of icons and relics of saints, the monks living quarters and dining room (trapeza) and more.

Also featured are links to learn more about St Tikhon’s Monastery, including videos and helpful instructions for visitors.

Proceed to the St Tikhon’s Gallery, and watch for posting soon of my photographs from Holy Transfiguration in Ellwood City PA, as well as upcoming itinerary…

Preparing for Pilgrimage: St Tikhon’s Monastery, Part 1

On By zosimasIn Monasteries, Pilgrimage, ProjectLeave a comment

With real joy and thanksgiving, but also with not a little fear and trembling, I realized today that I leave for the first leg of the North American Thebaid Pilgrimage in less than a week and a half…

This is a powerful awareness. I feel as if my life may change forever through this venture. I certainly hope it does, that as a pilgrim first, I may grow closer to the Lord, repent more, pray well, and, God willing, make some good photographs for the Thebaid Project.

The first monastery I am visiting is St Tikhon’s, in South Canaan, Pennsylvania, from September 6-8. Below is a look at America’s oldest monastery, featuring an interview done with Fr. Abbot Sergius in 2009.

I ask your prayers and support as I prepare to begin my pilgrimage…