Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Updates and Notes
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A number of updates and goings-on of variable interest: Book News: Conciliar Press tells me that Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy is selling very well. Thank you to all who have bought copies, recommended it to friends, or written reviews! I honestly had no idea when I did the original parish lectures in Charleston and then repeated them in Emmaus that they’d get so far away…
Praying in the Rain
Dombey and Son #1
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I am again reading Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens. When I started on my Dickens binge about fifteen or twenty years ago, the first work I read was Dombey and Son. I didn’t much enjoy it. I didn’t get it. The story is about a completely self-absorbed, successful businessman who fixates on the fame of his company, Dombey and Son. However, to make his fantasy complete, he needs a son. His…
Praying in the Rain
Crosses We Bear
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Freedom is one of the crosses we bear. This cross is particularly painful in relation to those whom we love the most. There is no love without freedom. We want the best for those we love. We do not want them to suffer. We do not want to see them suffer. And sometimes, we can no longer bear suffering with them. We want the suffering to stop, yet we see no end.…
Praying in the Rain
Transforming the Devil into a Serpent
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SEEING HOW LAZY I AM AT USEFUL THINGS, THE SUBTLE SERPENT BECKONS ME TO EVIL, TRANSFORMING HIMSELF TO SHOW ME THE SWEETNESS OF SIN, THE WICKED WORK OF HIS OWN HANDS, CONTRARY TO THE COMMANDMENTS OF GOD. THUS, HE PUSHES ME, // THROUGH EVIL HABITS, TO ACCEPT EVIL FOR GOOD. (Verse one, Lord I Call, Monday Vespers, Tone Three, Oktoechos, Monastery of The Myrrhbearing Women trans.) I was struck by this verse…
Glory to God for All Things
Truth
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In the Gospel record of Christ’s trial before Pontius Pilate, we are told that Christ said He had come to bear witness to the Truth. Pilate, in what he must have thought was a clever response, says, “And what is Truth?” We know from elsewhere in the Gospel that Christ explained, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” It is a statement that is easily tossed about – to settle…
Nearly Orthodox
relax...
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I always hear his voice in my head when I start to spin. For a long time, the words of greeting were, “do not fear” or “be not afraid” and “be at peace.” Now, we’ve moved past the formalities and in the midst of my spinning a loud crack of “Relax!” breaks in. Perhaps I recognize this because it’s the tone I use when my kids don’t listen to me and I…
Glory to God for All Things
The Unnecessary God
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Many years ago I knew a pastor who said he did not believe in angels. I was surprised by his statement and asked him why. His response was interesting: “I do not believe in angels because I cannot think of anything that they do that the Holy Spirit could not do instead.” I thought his reasoning was confused at the time and still do. Essentially, he did not believe in angels because…
Glory to God for All Things
The Unknowable God
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You cannot know God – but you have to know Him to know that. – Fr. Thomas Hopko +++ Fr. Hopko’s small aphorism is among my favorites in contemporary Orthodoxy. Besides the fact that it sounds humorous – it states one of the most profound paradoxes within the Orthodox faith. This fundamental truth is stated in a variety of ways: we say that God cannot be known in His Divine Essence while…
Nearly Orthodox
small town...
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I had an interesting and somewhat surprising (to me at least) feeling while I attended Wild Goose Festival in NC last month. Wild Goose is an “emergent” music and arts festival some friends of mine have helped put together. I went to teach some DoxaSoma sessions. Many of my friends spoke or played there as well. I was very excited to go and see the fruit of what I knew firsthand was…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Freedom, the Path to God, and the Orthodoxy of Orthodoxy
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I was recently passed on a question by my grandmother from some of my non-Orthodox relations who live out in the mountains of Western North Carolina. The question was whether, in my preaching, there is room for a “personal Gospel.” I must be honest that I don’t know exactly what that phrase means, but I cannot imagine they are asking whether I am “allowed”…
Glory to God for All Things
Glory to God for All Things - The Song
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Glory to God for All Things
Freedom and Slavery - A Word to Neurotic Christians
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Be both a servant, and free: a servant in that you are subject to God, but free in that you are not enslaved to anything – either to empty praise or to any of the passions. Release your soul from the bonds of sin; abide in liberty, for Christ has liberated you; acquire the freedom of the New World during this temporal life of yours. Do not be enslaved to love of…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Humanity, Unplugged
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The Third Sunday after Pentecost, July 3, 2011 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Today, let’s talk about sin. Yes, of course, almost all sermons are in some sense about sin, and sin is certainly mentioned a great deal in the hymns and readings of the Church. But let’s take a moment…
Praying in the Rain
The problem with words
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Words are like husks that carry a germ. This germ comes out of who we are. The husk is what you find in a dictionary. The germ carries the vital force of the seed; it is what determines what plant will sprout from the seed. Sometime, maybe often, the one who listens cannot hear, cannot receive the germ. When we discern that such is the case, it is generally better not to…
Praying in the Rain
Truly You Are The God Who Hides Yourself
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The role of a priest is to help people pass from death to life. He has no other calling, no other purpose, no other job to do. Everything a priest does serves this one thing: PASCHA. The life of every human being is a passage from darkness to light, from deadening passions to enlivening peace. Even the priest himself is making this passage. The one who heals is himself being healed.I’ve often…
Praying in the Rain
Clergy Seminar
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For the past three days I have been listening to lectures by Monks from Lebanon, praying three times a day with all of the clergy in the diocese (about eighty of us), eating together and encouraging one another. It has been a huge blessing so far. The main speaker is the abbot of the St. Michael the Archangel monastery near Tripoli, Lebanon and he is also the Metropolitan of Northern Lebanon. His…
Nearly Orthodox
under pressure...
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The pressure is the weight of my hands pressing down on my shoulders. At first it was a reminder to keep my shoulders from hiking up around my ears, stress-making, hunching, not at all open as postures go. Now, it’s a binding of sorts. I find I’m hugging myself tight, trying hard not to unravel and that seems all kinds of wrong to me. There’s always been some talk in our house…
Glory to God for All Things
Saints Among Us
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The first few Sundays following the feast of Pentecost are set aside for the remembrance of the saints. The first Sunday is “All Saints,” much like the West observes on November 1. The second and third Sundays mark saints of national and other particular interests. In the Orthodox Church in America, we commemorate, All Saints, All Saints of America and All Saints of Russia, and lastly, All Saints of the British Isles…
Nearly Orthodox
falling...
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Converting to Orthodoxy has been kicking my ass lately. My response has been less than holy. I’ve been kicking back and swearing a lot, clearly. There are a number of people in my life, people who know me well who may tell me now that I’m making far too much of this and perhaps I am. Drama queen much? Probably. Is this what “taming the passions” means for me? To choose to…
Glory to God for All Things
The Mystery of the Fullness
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One of the most common words used in Orthodoxy, drawn very much from the writings of the New Testament, is the term “fullness” (pleroma in the Greek). St. Paul uses it to mean something that is in its completion or its final state, transcending things as we often know them. Because the term often refers to things at the End of all things, or to realities that are greater than the reality…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
The Voice and the Silence
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Behold Elizabeth as she speaketh with the Virgin Mary: Wherefore art thou, the Mother of my Lord, come unto me? Thou carriest the King, and I the soldier; thou the Giver of the Law, and I the expounder of the Law; thou the Word, and I the Voice that shall proclaim the Kingdom of the Heavens. (Theotokion of the Aposticha, Nativity of the Forerunner…
Nearly Orthodox
Theodora...
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I’ve been writing a lot lately on my other blog about being the river, being the mountain, being the forest. As Mrs Metaphor I guess it comes naturally to me to see myself not as being outside of nature but as being fully engaged in it, being a part of everything that breathes and so it seems right that I stumbled upon a story today about Theodora of Vasta. It is said…
Praying in the Rain
Praying With The Heterodox
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I received a question from a convert living at home with his heterodox Christian family. He had been advised by a monastic not to pray with heterodox. Obeying this was causing problems at home especially around table grace. Should he say grace before meals with his heterodox Christian mother? Here is part of my response: The Church’s relationship with the heterodox is not nearly as monolithic as you seem to think. Keep…
Praying in the Rain
Learning To Be Like Abigail
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“For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 11:2) In many ways, the story of Abigail is the story of every Christian, or at least the story we are called to live out. Just as Abigail is introduced to us married to Nabal (in Hebrew nabal means fool), so we all begin our life married to a fool. The fool each…
Praying in the Rain
The Stumbling Block of The Bible: Seeing Myself in King Saul
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“The very stumbling-block of the Bible is its utter simplicity: the mysteries of God are framed into the daily life of average men, and the whole story may seem to be all too human. Just as the Incarnate Lord himself appeared to be an ordinary man.” George Florovsky I am rereading the biblical history books (1,2 Samuel; 1,2, Kings [=1,2,3,4, Kings] and 1,2 Chronicles) in the Septuagint translation (Orthodox Study Bible). It’s…
Praying in the Rain
Logocratic Tendencies
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A Greek priest in Athens with whom I have been corresponding recently noted that Protestant converts to Orthodoxy have a “logocratic” mentality. He went on to suggest that this logocracy keeps them from entering very deeply into the Mystery of the Faith. “Logocracy” means rule of or by words. I thought some of my blog readers might be interested in reading my response: Dear Fr. C. Christ is in our midst! Thank…
Praying in the Rain
A Parable: by an Orthodox Christian priest who has just returned from an ecumenical gathering of largely Evangelical clergy
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Once there was a starving man who found a field of potatoes, and finding the potatoes, he found life. Potatoes alone were enough to keep him alive. One day a family took a drive out into the countryside for a picnic and happened across the man saved by potatoes. He was a gaunt and sickly man with little strength, but he was alive and thanked God for his potatoes. “What are all…
