The journey has helped me to write to you from it and about it. I have tried to remain here, to pick out my words from it. It was not always the images that were my purpose, but rather what was behind them. How does this entire world prostrate to God? This is what I try to find an answer to every day, in everything. I do not like literature for its own sake. I likened this beautiful expanse, to some friends, to \u201calienation in the foreign land\u201d. I have said before that the houses in it are beautiful. However, those who are inside them are inside them. There is almost no expression of longing here. Life is different. There are no permanent neighbors. Here, there is no \u201cUmm Samir\u201d, our neighbor who we go to, to help us, in critical times, with some salt for our cooking, or an onion, or a loaf of bread... Our homes in the towns of Lebanon and Syria... are, for us and for our neighbors, similar to the \u201cmarket\u201d, but with a fundamental difference: your home shows us that it is an extension to ours. I told my eldest son, \u201cI loved some of the open houses here\u201d! This is the remaining sign of life that wants the world to be more delightful and eloquent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The journey has helped me to write to you from it and about it. I have tried to remain here, to pick out my words from it. It was not always the images that were my purpose, but rather what was behind them. How does this entire world prostrate to God? This is what I ...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[343],"tags":[1320,1451,2042,1293,2043],"class_list":["post-8789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections","tag-antiochian-theology","tag-beauty-in-creation","tag-longing-for-home","tag-orthodox-christian-life","tag-spiritual-alienation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8789"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8810,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8789\/revisions\/8810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fatherelia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}