Tuesday, January 4, 2011

This distinctive sounding chant is from the Monastery of St. John of San Francisco in California, a place where I have had the privilege of spending several days while on a road trip around the U.S. with my Father and Brother. Although we had scheduled a stay, we suffered a major car malfunction shortly before arriving and inconvenienced the brotherhood a great deal, for which I am sorry and grateful! In any case, the chant, like the monks themselves and the monastery itself, is very American and yet still very much in touch with tradition. One of the comments about the video on youtube.com says that it almost sounds Appalachian, a sentiment that I share and consider a great development in the Church in this country. St. John's "Americanizes" Orthodoxy in a way that makes it our own while still submitting to the traditions and wisdom of the past. They are on the Old Calendar, they celebrate the full daily liturgical service, and observe everything expected of traditional Orthodox monks. This is the appropriate way to go about Americanizing, not by abbreviating the services or trying to behave like protestants. Their website can be found here, where you can purchase among other things the album on which this chant can be found. I believe the album is on i-tunes as well.

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