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Warmest wishes for the New Year to you as well. Yes, I’m finally back, and grateful for your patience. December was a whirlwind of activity, and I’m afraid I ended up unconscionably behind on my email correspondence, and hence with nothing new to post here on Anamnēsis—even if I’d had the time to consider doing so!
My usual end-of-term schedule was complicated in large part by a trip to Zürich early in the month, where I participated in a series of panel discussions on “The Search for Religious Identity in a Postmodern Culture”, “Beauty and the Sacred in Music and Art”, and “The Divine Feminine in the Esoteric Teachings of Different Religions”. As you may remember from my post of 24 October 2007, these discussions were in conjunction with a week-long festival sponsored by Religio Musica Nova—”eine biennale für spirituelle neue musik”, in the words of their website.
The festival concluded on December 8 with the premier of a new “universalist” setting of the traditional Latin Mass for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, written by the British composer Sir John Tavener. Tavener and I were able to speak at some length one afternoon, mostly about Orthodoxy, perennialism, things Schuonian, and his years as a disciple of the late Metropolitan Anthony Bloom. The day after our conversation, however, the poor man was suddenly taken ill and missed hearing the premier of his own composition. But his Sollemnitas will also be performed in this country at Saint Thomas Church in New York on March 7, and God willing he will be able to attend.
In case you’re interested, I’ve posted the short article I was invited to write for the program book, “Provocations in Place of Answers”, here. Given the range of ideas I was obliged to address and the very small space I had to address them in, the result is considerably more elliptical than I prefer, with nearly every sentence crying out to be amplified. Even so I was happy as always to have the occasion to say a few words about the Blessed Virgin, however inadequate they might be. I pray this little piece will prove of some spiritual benefit.