Praying in the Rain
Power and Humility
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“The Lord Jesus Christ visited the earth in power and humility, in order to teach men to love God and man. Men are powerless in themselves; love for God fills them with power. Men are proud in themselves; love for mankind fills them with humility. Love for man comes from love for God. Humility comes from a sense of divine power. All love for men without love for God is false, and…
Glory to God for All Things
You Never Pray Alone
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Forgive me if this offers any offense. There is a conception of what it means to be human, rooted in Medieval thought and refined in the furnace of modernity. This conception views each person as a “free moral agent.” Each of us is a unique individual. Our choices are our own and set our path for good or ill. Moral decisions may be submitted to varying forms of ethical tests. The choices…
Praying in the Rain
Susanna
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In the biblical story of Susanna as recorded in the Septuagint version of Daniel, the virtuous Susanna is falsely accused by two elders who had hoped to coerce her into immoral relations with them. The description of the fall of these two men is quite helpful in that it describes the two stages that most people pass though as they fall into temptation. The first stage of the elders’ fall is the…
Glory to God for All Things
Prayer and Communion
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Having posted on the topic of prayer – I thought that reposting this earlier piece on the mystery of prayer as communion would be helpful. In particular it should be helpful for understanding the larger life of prayer – which includes our communion with the saints. +++ Now it came to pass in those days that He went out to the mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God…
Praying in the Rain
Megamind
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What happens when bad becomes boring? This is one of many questions related to good and evil raised in DreamWorks animated movie Megamind. The tagline gives the viewer fair warning: “A superhero movie with a mind of its own.” Without telling you any more than is revealed in the trailer, the movie is about an evil villain with a large mind and “the hue of a popular primary color.” Megamind is bad,…
Glory to God for All Things
Pray About It
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I readily acknowledge that some of what I write on this topic may be offensive to some. I ask that you read it carefully and reflectively before reacting. I will offer a scene that is common enough across America (and perhaps elsewhere), leaving the identifications blank (though they may be inferred by the reader). A young couple is greeted at their door by two young men, well-dressed and well-spoken. They ask permission…
Nearly Orthodox
acedia...
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I’m struggling with motivation to be consistent in practice quite a bit now.  It’s odd considering that we’re entering the season of Advent…a time to reflect, prepare the way, listen, wait in hope.  Maybe it’s the waiting part that is kicking up my struggle.  I find I am visited more and more with this old feeling of acedia. I truly wish the “noonday demon” would contain itself to appearing at noon.  As…
Glory to God for All Things
Waking Up
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The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 111:10). This fear descends on us from on High. It is a spiritual feeling, firstly of God and then of us ourselves. We live in a state of awe by virtue of the presence of the Living God together with awareness of our own impurity. This fear places us before the Face of God to be judged by Him. We have…
Praying in the Rain
On Judging Pharisees
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“He who searches the heart knows what the mind of the Spirit is.” There is a tension in the life of the Christian between law and Spirit, and often it is a very uncomfortable tension. Those of us who have tried to take St. Paul’s advice and live by the Spirit, as in “walk in the Spirit and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh,” have quickly discovered that without…
Praying in the Rain
Something To Be Thankful For
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Some days I am more thankful for being an Orthodox Christian than others. This morning I was more thankful. I was thankful that I didn’t have to create the words for my prayers. My mind was hard to control this morning. Thoughts were leading me this way and that. Nothing particularly evil. Just a constant barrage of strong impressions, ideas, thoughts, and moments of disconnected pseudo insight. (By pseudo insight I mean…
Glory to God for All Things
The Life of Thanksgiving
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This year I will make the annual pilgrimage back to South Carolina to be with family for the (American) Thanksgiving holiday. Fewer of my children will be there – a mark of the maturing of their own families and the difficulty of travel at this time of year. The year is different as well for it will be another Thanksgiving holiday without my mother’s presence (may her memory be eternal). With years,…
Praying in the Rain
Facing Myself
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I wonder if most of us have had this experience. You sin against and/or with someone and soon afterward feel regret. In fact, you feel so much regret that you admit to yourself and to God that you have sinned. And your conscience still bothering you, you set out to do what you can to make the matter right. However, to make the matter right, or at least as right as possible,…
Nearly Orthodox
Momentum
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Like every other new thing I attempt I find that I am prone to lose momentum after a few months. This is part of the reason I have tried to be vocal about my journey into orthodoxy. I want to be seen, asked, held accountable. What I want to avoid in this is pride, boasting. I don’t want to appear that I’m doing something to draw attention to myself. So it’s a…
Praying in the Rain
Ezekiel's Temple and the Human Psyche
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St. Gregory the Great comments that the heavenly temple described by Ezekiel (chs.40-48) is a type of the soul. Because this part of Ezekiel and much of the rest of the book are apocalyptic in nature, we must realize that these images refer to spiritual realities that cannot be nailed down in tight correlations such as X only and always represents Y. Nevertheless, within the Church certain interpretations of apocalyptic images have…
Glory to God for All Things
The Doors of the Heart
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In the summer of 1952, an obscure event took place in London that would have a profound impact on the future of Orthodox Christianity in the English-speaking world. A seventeen year-old English lad walked through the doors of St. Philip’s Russian Orthodox Church on Buckingham Palace Road (the Church has long since been torn down). Today he is known as Metropolitan Kallistos Ware, one of the most important figures in the contemporary…
Nearly Orthodox
gabriel...
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Praying in the Rain
Riu Riu Chiu
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My favourite Christmas song is Riu Riu Chiu (and this version includes some percussion, which I enjoy, but the voices don’t seem as polished). It is a late Mideaval Spanish Christmas song with an enchanting rhythm and beautiful, Christ-centered lyrics. I also like Silent Night, Away in a Manger, and Good King Wenceslas and all of the Bing Crosby Christmas songs, but they are all somewhat elevator appropriate for me after all these years. Riu Riu…
Praying in the Rain
Does God Punish?
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Thomas Hardy says of the main character in The Mayor of Casterbridge, Michael Henchard, that “misery taught him nothing more than the defiant endurance of it.” What does misery teach us? What can it teach us? Can it teach us more than just the fact that we must endure it? This is a tricky topic, for suffering is a mystery–a mystery in the deepest sense of the word. We all suffer,…
Nearly Orthodox
growing up catholic...
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When I left the Catholic church, as I said earlier, it was not because I was protesting it’s doctrine or because I felt misused by it.  I did not leave under duress but more as a kind of meandering I guess I’d say.  I wandered away from Catholicism and it was not hard to wander away. My family was “devout” in that we held to the basic rule of  making sure our…
Nearly Orthodox
sacrifice...
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Choosing Orthodoxy is sacrifice for me.  I’ve already seen and felt that.  I think we tend to be taught in our current culture that we can and should have everything…that we can and should feel “good” in that process.  For that reason when I explain to some friends this idea that to choose this tradition feels sacrificial to me they give me odd looks. I know that as I explain it to…
Praying in the Rain
Bagging Experiences
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I was speaking to an eighteen year old recently who told me about her bucket list: things she wanted to do before she dies. At the time, I didn’t think much about it. In fact, it seemed rather mature of her to have such specific goals. However, as I have thought about it, I’ve begun to suspect that having a bucket list is a symptom of a particular disease in our culture.…
Glory to God for All Things
The First Kathisma - Sunday Vigil - St. Vladimir's
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Glory to God for All Things
The Nativity Fast - Why We Fast
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November 15, marks the beginning of the Nativity Fast (40 days before Christmas). The following article offers some thoughts on the purpose of fasting. +++ Fasting is not very alive and well in the Christian world. Much of that world has long lost any living connection with the historical memory of Christian fasting. Without the guidance of Tradition, many modern Christians either do not fast, or constantly seek to re-invent the practice,…
Nearly Orthodox
philokalia...
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I’ve been reading today about the Philokalia. The Philokalia is a gathering of spiritual writings which lend insights to the Bible. It is not “commentary” but more than that. I view commentary as it pertains to Scripture to be more a play by play on the Word whereas the Philokalia is not that mechanical. It’s not about understanding with our heads but with our heart.  It is not a dissection of the…
Glory to God for All Things
The Texture of Life and the Kingdom
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There is a “texture of life” that cannot be reduced. It has a richness that rational descriptions cannot capture. Though we battle with powerful forces that draw us towards the destructiveness of sin – there is written deep within us a hunger for wholeness and the capacity for God. In the words of St. John, “Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world” (1 John 4:4).…
Glory to God for All Things
Eastern Christian New Media Awards
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Nearly Orthodox
poetry among friends...
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This is cross-posted at Mrs Metaphor today…just so’s you know. vespers the light surprised me I thought it would be dark murky and mysterious but the sky was open wide and airy the scent was as I had expected heady and sweet I closed my eyes the priest walked down the aisles with soft footsteps garments rustling censer clinking and I took it all into me If only I could photograph…
