Kalo St. Anthony’s Day, and contemplation

Coop

The common good sometimes requires a pause,  so, Happy St. Anthony’s feast day, to all of my Greek friends -happy Name Day: Tony/Anthony/Antoinette/Antoine/etc!!

saint-anthony-grk-ikon

Action Items:

1.) Search for two different sources relating the reasons that this person is considered father of monks (at least by the Greeks),

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.

3.) Share your thoughts on how knowing this might help, or hinder, inclusive thinking,

4.) Write a book, blog post or tweet that uses those thoughts, and maybe also either the Julian calendar, or some other alternate calendar, tells a good story, and makes a difference. I’m working on that through my historical fantasy #WiP, #WhoByFireIWill. If you write a book, once published, please consider donating to your local public library.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple , on-going education and empathy-building, to , ,  & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19:
1. ,
2. legal aid and Education,
3. , and
4. good

Read, Write

-we can learn from the past via Stayed on Freedom’s Call,

        by Teaching and Learning (Lesson Plan list) in the present, to

                                       help build a kinder future: Do Better: … a Better World

( 5 month GED lesson 29 of 67 plans),

   and  Babylon 5 review posts, from a Minbari Ranger’s perspective: story, especially historical women’s stories, can inspire courage and learning…

Nih sakh sh’lekk, sleem wa.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

the year, 2022 CE = year 12022 HE

Stayed on Freedom’s Call
(free: https://archive.org/details/StayedOnF…)
includes two ‘imagination-rich’ walking tours, with songs, of Washington, DC. New interviews and research are woven into stories of old struggles shared by both the Jewish and African-American communities in the capital city.

Shared histories are explored from a new perspective of cultural parallels and parallel institution-building which brought the two communities together culturally and historically.

Please let us know what you think.

Shira Destinie Jones is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

About ShiraDestProjectDoBetter

Shira Destinie Jones is founder of #ProjectDoBetter, a long term plan proposal for community building, and a published poet, academic author, and advocate for improving our #PublicDomainInfrastructure. Her other book, Stayed on Freedom's Call, on Black-Jewish Cooperation in DC, is freely available via the Internet Archive. She has organized community events such as film discussions, multi-ethnic song events, and cooperative presentations, and is a native of Washington, DC. She promotes peaceful planning, NVC and the Holocene Calendar, and is also a writer. More information at https://shiradest.wordpress.com/

13 thoughts on “Kalo St. Anthony’s Day, and contemplation”

  3. As a Greek Orthodox who happens to be named Anthony, thank you Shira for remembering and posting. We say Χρόνια Πολλά (Hronia Polla, may you have many years). Our tradition is for the person celebrating his/ her Saint day to treat their friends to a meal, coffee, dessert etc. Shira I’m treating!

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      2. St. Anthony the Great (in the Greek Orthodox Church). Born into a wealthy, devout Christian family in Egypt. Even though the family was wealthy, Anthony was illiterate. He was kept away from school because he and his family did not want him around the children of non-Christians or idol worshippers as they put it. As a young man, he heard a gospel message about helping the poor by giving away one’s own wealth. This message inspired him deeply. Since his parents had passed, he made certain his sister was taken care financially and gave away the remainder of his inheritance to help the poor. He then moved into a hut on the outskirts of his village to repent and pray. He lived in poverty, slept on straw and dirt floors. Legend goes he was constantly tempted by the devil but never faltered. There came a point where it’s said that even the devil gave up trying to tempt this guy. He lived this way all his life, occasionally teaching others the life of solitude and prayer. He is therefore known as the father on monasticism. Monks whose only purpose is to prepare themselves properly for the next life by shunning all the comforts and temptations of this life through constant prayer and neglect of one’s own human needs and desires. Since I am named Anthony or Αντώνιος in Greek, I am conflicted about this man’s choices. He didn’t go to school because the other kids weren’t of his religion or economic level. As we can see, these are not just modern problems. Helping your fellow man is noble. But when you give everything away all at once and disappear, only to worry about your own divinity, I find that selfish. If you stick around, you can see what the real needs are and can constantly help, especially if you have the means. Relating and empathizing with your fellow man daily makes you tolerant of others. Of course, Anthony probably didn’t see it this way. His unwavering faith and doing what he felt God wanted and needed from a human being is what made him live his life as he did. I once saw a 60 minutes interview of a Greek monk on Mount Athos in northern Greece. The monk was born in Detroit, Michigan from Greek parents. The reporter asked how long it had been since he left the monastery. He responded it had been over 25 years. The reporter then asked how long it had been since he had seen his family. He responded 25 years and that his father had passed a few years earlier. The reporter asked why he hadn’t gone to the funeral. The monk responded that there was no need, he would see his father and family in the next life. Kind of cold in my perspective, but the extreme faithful have this kind of serenity about life and death. Faith is good, necessary, and comforting since we don’t know for sure what comes after. But our faith, if we decide to stick it out in the real world, should not exclude, divide, or hurt because we don’t have the same traditions or perspectives as someone else. If we do escape to a cabin in Montana, let’s do it because we love nature and starry nights and not to write manifestos.

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