POAAS

Editorial Note:I have trusted Google Meet for six years, but today it betrayed me tremendously. There is some bug it has with file type compatibility where it works online in workspace, but I had to troubleshoot for hours to get that downloaded file to be compatible with Substack. Youtube is of course the giant in this field, and connected with Google, so there was no trouble uploading this conversation there. Mea culpa, I originally sent out a five minute clip to your email, and now it should be the full hour plus conversation. Pray to God, and any patron saint(s) of technology that reflect his glory before Him, that no such hiccups occur in the future.Hunter x Hunter, the well-beloved manga and anime of Togashi Yoshiro, is known by its fans affectionately but annoyedly as Hiatus x Hiatus. I deserve a bit of this chastisement myself, but of course dear readers and watchers you know that I am always in the kitchen cooking something up for you. I can be accused of having too many projects and not too few. Today, The Philosophy of Art and Science (POAAS) returns with episode 153 featuring Wild West Filmmaking’s Josh David Jordan.This episode is a conversation about his film, El Tonto por Cristo.Aksum Review of Books (ARB) is a reader-supported literary review. Free subscribers help it grow by liking, commenting, and sharing with friends, strangers, and enemies. Paid subscribers help keep the lights on for the price of a cup of pour-over coffee a month.Gemini Summary:Title and Cultural Context: The film’s Spanish title, El Tonto por Cristo, reflects the filmmaker’s background in the Tex-Mex culture of Dallas, Texas. The title was chosen to avoid the common, “on-the-nose” branding of “The Fool for Christ” (and help with Search Engine Optimization) and to reflect how Jordan perceives the world.Orthodoxy in Film: Jordan clarifies that while the film does not explicitly mention Orthodoxy, it is deeply influenced by the tapestry of the faith, including the Jesus Prayer (Lord Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy on me) and the lives of saints and desert fathers of Egypt. The work aims to portray human imperfection within a monastic setting, rather than serve as a direct representation of the divine liturgy.The Filmmaking Process:The production faced challenges during the 2023 SAG strike, but was able to secure an interim agreement to continue filming with professional actors.The filmmaker emphasizes the necessity of humor to balance drama, noting that life contains a mix of seasons.The project was a collaborative family effort, with the filmmaker’s wife and children playing key roles in production, editing, photography, and social media.Distribution and Audience:The film toured 25 cities, finding significant engagement in smaller, more rural areas rather than just major metropolitan hubs.The filmmaker highlights the role of Substack as an anti-algorithm platform that allows for deeper engagement with the audience.The film is currently available to rent or buy on platforms including Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, YouTube, and Google Play.A couple of my visits to Dallas, Texas: This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aksum.substack.com/subscribe

The Fifth Sunday of the Great Fast, Lent in the EOTC, is called Mount of Olives. Pascha is a stone’s throw away. Keep fighting. The lectionary assigns the Gospel According to Matthew Chapter 24 to be read aloud before the great gathering (Psalm 39/40:9). I was called upon, by my former and beloved archdiocese of the great city of Los Angeles dba Southern California Orthodox Tewahdo Youth (SCOTY), to share a reflection on these words (debarim) of the Lord (yahweh).Praytell they edify.Aksum Review of Books (ARB) is a reader-supported literary review. Free subscribers help it grow by liking, commenting, and sharing with friends, strangers, and especially enemies. Paid subscribers help keep the lights on, for the price of a cup of coffee a month. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aksum.substack.com/subscribe

OTYG invited me back to wish their great gathering a Merry Christmas. I decided to do so with the Gospel According to Matthew.Aksum Review of Books (ARB) is a reader-supported literary review. Free subscribers help it grow by liking, commenting, and sharing with friends, strangers, and especially enemies. Paid subscribers help keep the lights on, for the price of a cup of coffee a month. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aksum.substack.com/subscribe

Mihret Melaku, an Ethiopian Orthodox deacon who went viral defending the apostolic teaching on the eucharist and on baptism, is on a book launch tour for his second book Defending the Ancient Faith: An Orthodox Response to the Knechtle Debate. The first stop was our hometown of Los Angeles. The second stop was Washington D.C. This is a snippet of the third stop in Seattle. The next stop is scheduled for this weekend in Dallas. And after that, Godwilling, Adees Abeba, Ethiopia.h/t OTYG Seattle.Aksum Review of Books (ARB) is a reader-supported literary review. Free subscribers help it grow by liking, commenting, and sharing with friends, strangers, and especially enemies. Paid subscribers help keep the lights on, for the price of a cup of coffee a month. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aksum.substack.com/subscribe

Here is a guest spot from last Sunday (11/30/25 A.D.) at Abouna Lazarus’ Christ the Good Shepherd Coptic Orthodox Church in the LBC (Long Beach, CA). I was home for the holidays. I hope that you are edified by my words as I was edified by the words of the gospel and the eucharistic liturgy which is its context. Remember me in your holy prayers!Aksum Review of Books (ARB) is a reader and watcher supported review. Free subscribers help it grow by liking, commenting, and sharing with friends, strangers, and enemies. Paid subscribers keep ARB’s lights bright for the price of a cup of coffee a month.“Now great multitudes went with Him. And He turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it— lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish’? Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace. So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple. “Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is neither fit for the land nor for the dunghill, but men throw it out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”” (Luke 14:25-35 NKJV) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aksum.substack.com/subscribe

My top piece here at ARB is my book review of Saints of Ethiopia by Scriptorium Press. This video is a reading of Chapters 7, 8, and 9, with the most minimal commentary short of no commentary. I hope you enjoy the reading, buy and read the whole book, and share this scary and spooky story with others.For this post, comments are open-to-all.Aksum Review of Books (ARB) is a reader-supported review. Free subscribers help it grow by liking, commenting, and sharing with friends, strangers, and enemies. Paid subscribers keep ARB’s lights bright for the price of a cup of coffee a month.Notes:-Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America Saints and Feasts Arethas the Great Martyr and His Fellow Martyrs-Britannica:At its height, Aksum extended its influence westward to the kingdom of Meroe, southward toward the Omo River, and eastward to the spice coasts on the Gulf of Aden. Even the South Arabian kingdom of the Himyarites, across the Red Sea in what is now Yemen, came under the suzerainty of Aksum. In the early 6th century, the emperor Caleb (Ella-Asbeha; reigned c. 500–534) was strong enough to reach across the Red Sea in order to protect his coreligionists in Yemen against persecution by a Jewish prince. However, Christian power in South Arabia ended after 572, when the Persians invaded and disrupted trade. They were followed 30 years later by the Arabs, whose rise in the 7th and 8th centuries cut off Aksum’s trade with the Mediterranean world. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aksum.substack.com/subscribe

When maximally polemical, I refer to the communion that I serve as deacon in as Apostolic Orthodoxy; short for the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church. This is the communion that began in Alexandria and Antioch, very quickly added Armenia and Aksum, and one thousand years later grafted in the Malabar Coast. When I am being more neutral, I refer to our communion as Afroasiatic Orthodoxy, because Coptic (Alexandria) and Syriac (Antioch) and Ge’ez (Classical Ethiopic) are Afroasiatic tongues, and Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia, Greater Armenia, Greater Ethiopia, and India are all geographically home to the indigenous Church of Africa and Asia.My brothers and sisters in Christ from OTYG Seattle invited me to give a talk on Orthodoxy last night, and so I did. On Sundays, I normally take my students through series on scripture. Occasionally, I do one-off talks like this when prompted with a topic. It is my hope that this talk edifies you and sparks your curiosity to dig deeper into Christendom and Church History.Leave a comment about any topics you would like me to explore in further depth and at more length in the future.Aksum Review of Books (ARB) is a reader-supported review. Free subscribers help it grow by liking, commenting, and sharing with friends, strangers, and enemies. Paid subscribers keep ARB’s lights bright for the price of a cup of coffee a month. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aksum.substack.com/subscribe

I am joined on the latest philosophy of art and science broadcast by Subdeacon Moses Barjon of the Coptic Orthodox jurisdiction (specifically the Los Angeles and Hawaii archdiocese which gives us the gift of the saints Athanasius and Cyril Theological School (ACTS) and the In Spirit and Truth app) of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.Aksum Review of Books (ARB) is a reader-supported publication. Free subscribers help amplify this project by liking, commenting, and sharing with friends, strangers, and enemies. Paid subscribers keep ARB’s incandescent lights bright, for the price of a cup of coffee a month, which after all originates in Ethiopia. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aksum.substack.com/subscribe

They say the number one way to get you to read or hear something is to be recommended it by someone whom you trust. A dear reader (and hearer) recommended the True Anon broadcast to me with gumption, and I gave it a try. I like it in the way that you smell something you do not like but it is so unique that it keeps beckoning you back to smell it again, an olfactorial siren. Some experience this feeling with smelling salts. I have experienced it with Newcastle Brown Ale, black drip coffee, and now True Anon.The episode that lured me in was about Ethiopia’s neighbor and newest African nation-state South Sudan (2011 A.D.), and Ethiopia (800 B.C.) herself was mentioned. Including, the infamous Polish communist journo Ryszard Kapuściński’s fever dream fiction-nonfiction hybrid The Emperor, about Ethiopia’s last king of kings and the world’s last functional Orthodox Christian emperor. It is not surprising that unlicensed private investigators Liz Franczak, Brace Belden, and Yung Chomsky swim in the same circles as Kapuściński, because they too are outright communists (I commend them for this, many are hidden, but they are manifest), but it is noteworthy that American monarchist blogger and computer programmer Curtis Yarvin has on more than one occasion made the same recommendation. And, dear reader, he is not a communist, but perhaps up there with Michael Moynihan as one of the leading anti-communist voices in the media today.As an American anti-communist, and monarchist, of Ethiopian descent, I did a video review of this book a couple of years ago, which had been sitting in my dad’s library in North Los Angeles for decades. I am sharing it here with you to encourage you to take under consideration more recommendations from your friends, strangers, and enemies. And to further demonstrate that when it comes to literature, the horse-shoe theory of political science is correct. I especially find this to be the case when it comes to antiwar or non-interventionist voices from Aaron Maté and Glenn Greenwald to Dr. Ron Paul and Tucker Carlson. And to remind you that the formation of nation-states are accidental and not necessary happenings in our timeline. Nothing but the individual action of human beings perpetuates them into the future…Cheers.Aksum Review of Books (ARB) is a reader-supported publication. Free subscribers help amplify this project by liking, commenting, and sharing with friends, strangers, and enemies. Paid subscribers keep ARB’s incandescent lights bright, for the price of a cup of buna a month. በእንተ:ስማ :ለማርያምNotes:-If you stare closely at Emperor Haile Selassie, and recall the visual below which was in my Race in Greater Ethiopia article, you can begin to visualize him (as an amhara/oromo hybrid) as part Peter Biar Ajak (or Luol Deng or Manute Bol or Bol Bol or Oballa Oballa or Barack Obama Sr.) and part Mota Man and part New Stone Age Levantine (Palestinian) and part Bronze Age Mesopotamian. -It is very interesting that True Anon, multiple times, deride and disparage the Juba International Airport of South Sudan and the entire humanitarian-industrial-complex. The way horseshoe theory works is that the critique is usually the same, but the solutions are different. I saw this when I worked in Congress for the Honorable Dennis J. Kucinich who would often agree with the Honorable Ron Paul on what the government should stop doing, but they would disagree on what the government should start doing. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aksum.substack.com/subscribe

Friend of the online zine and show, Childish Wiseguy, invited me to speak to his adult English group that he runs for his Eritrean Orthodox parish in London, United Kingdom. The advantage of this digital age is that geographic distance and eight hours of time zone difference are stumbling blocks that we are able to overcome for the sake of the euangelion.I discuss love, as it is written (John 21). And as I have written.Aksum Review of Books (ARB) is a reader-supported publication. Free subscribers help amplify this project by liking, commenting, and sharing with friends, strangers, and enemies. Paid subscribers keep ARB’s incandescent lights bright, for the price of a cup of buna a month. በእንተ:ስማ :ለማርያም This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit aksum.substack.com/subscribe