If language is the dasein of geist, Henry James is a gymnasium of the spirit.
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Peculiar, at Mass today -- stood near a fellow who recited all of the responses correctly, but in a bored, sing-song tone. The Mass as revised by the last Vatican Council brings everything into the language, and shares the language with everyone -- almost no secret prayers, or mumbling behind an iconostasis -- but we have yet to reckon collectively with the dangers of identical repetition and irony.
I'm very fond of iconostases, but they do have a certain historical role. I was speaking with an Orthodox priest in Transylvania about the glass painted icons that were characteristic of the region, and he was quite dismissive of the iconography/theology, saying they were just for the simple people, like the images on the iconostasis.
In the Latin church, everyone's now at the table -- there's no distance, no wall. But it can very easily turn into idle banter. And where there is no wall, there can be no holy door.