Nearly Orthodox
family: mother...
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It’s a little embarrassing that I’m giddy about having ordered some icons. I feel as though I’m waiting for family to arrive from out of town. I’ll tell you that I ordered them from a bookshop I like a whole lot called Eighth Day Books because I’m all about supporting the independent spirit. The hard part is waiting. I’m so conditioned by my internet amazon.com addicition and big box store mentality that…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
A Song for Simeon
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A Song for Simeon Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and The winter sun creeps by the snow hills; The stubborn season has made stand. My life is light, waiting for the death wind, Like a feather on the back of my hand. Dust in sunlight and memory in corners Wait for the wind that chills towards the dead land. Grant us…
Glory to God for All Things
The Grace of Just Showing Up
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There has been a tendency in much teaching about the notion of salvation by grace to ground the image in a legal or forensic metaphor. Thus, we are saved by grace in the sense that someone else’s goodwill and kindness (God’s) has now freed us from the consequences of our actions. Thus we speak of grace as the “free gift” of God. There is no denying that grace is a free gift…
Praying in the Rain
Communities and Loneliness
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Communities: more than one. Most of us move in and out communities. The advent of modern transportation (beginning with the railway in the mid ninetieth century) first made it possible, then made it necessary, for people (in large numbers) to leave traditional communities and form new and increasingly temporary communities. The advent of the internet has made community something even more transient. We belong to many different communities–communities related to work, to…
Glory to God for All Things
Whose Feast Is It?
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Some years back I had opportunity to celebrate the feast of Our Lord’s Presentation in the Temple with His Eminence, Archbishop Dmitri of Dallas (retired). Afterwards, several of us were sitting around and Vladyka asked, “Whose feast are we celebrating? Is this a “feast of the Lord” or a “feast of the Theotokos?” This is a relatively technical question within Orthodox liturgics. None of us present were liturgical scholars and thus he…
Nearly Orthodox
joy...
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Joy comes in the morning, sometimes… I woke up in an oddly good mood. I don’t think it’s the addition of a new coffee maker but I won’t rule out that possibility.  It may be that I was up late last night. I sat in the quiet long after the kids were asleep and listened to the wind blowing. Dave is out of town this week. I miss him when he’s gone.…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Canticle for the Meeting of our Lord
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Canticle for the Meeting of Our Lord Long years ago I heard the Voice of God— foreshadowing to me the news of Christ, that death I would not see ’til I had seen th’awaited coming of the Son of Man. “Behold, the Virgin shall conceive,” I read, Isaiah’s vision did foretell the One to bring salvation to old Israel, His flesh and blood to…
Praying in the Rain
Community and Repentance
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[I have been asked to give a talk on “community” to a group of zealous, young, mostly Mennonite Christians who have been trying for a couple of years to form an intentional community. Below is an initial reflection.] If we look to the earliest Christians for a model of community, surely we must begin with Luke’s description of the first days of the church recorded in Acts 2:42: “And they continued steadfastly…
Nearly Orthodox
community...
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For whatever reason several of the local people I’ve approached about Orthodoxy have been less than accessible. I get it, I do. I’m busy too. I have not returned phone calls and emails because I’m overwhelmed. Overwhelmed is not my middle name…it’s my first name. Cranky is my middle name these days. Obviously I’m narcissistic enough to think it’s about me. I hope I grow out of this soon. I’m in my…
Nearly Orthodox
desperation...
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I prayed this morning with no lack of desperation. At first I stepped into my regular morning prayers from my prayerbook. I gripped the pages and felt the desperation whisper to me, “not now..” and “you’re busy…” and “do this later…” I nearly threw it to the ground. I was not angry. I don’t think I was angry. I was overwhelmed and I was tired and rushed but not angry. The prayerbook…
Glory to God for All Things
Candlewax and Hedgehogs - Groundhog Day
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This article, from an earlier parish newsletter is posted here by request. Candlewax and Hedgehogs—a peculiar way to entitle an article, I’ll admit. But both have their associations with the second day of February. The first is more important so we’ll begin there. The second day of February is one of the 12 great feasts, and is also celebrated by Christians in the West. The feast is the Presentation of Christ in the…
Praying in the Rain
Mercy and Grace
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Mercy and grace, in as much as we use these words to refer to God, can refer to the same thing. That is, both mercy and grace–and love and justice and truth and any other word that can rightly be used to refer to God–refer to God as God comes to us. I am tempted to say that they are attributes or characteristics of God, but that would not be quite right. …
Glory to God for All Things
The "Crisis" of Modernity
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What do you call a Christian whose mind is so constructed that belief in God is almost impossible? Answer: a modern man. I occasionally make allusions to the crisis of modernity (in one form or another), as in a recent post in which I made reference to Florovsky’s term, the tragedy of Western Christianity. The crisis is not financial, though financial stumbles do reveal some of the cultural weakness within modernity. In many…
Nearly Orthodox
anger...
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What rises up in me most these days after praying, surprisingly, is anger. When I asked my priest about this he told me that this is to be expected. When we get into a habit of prayer, a turning away from sin, this is all part of the process of cleaning the “nous” as it were. This ought to be comforting I suppose. It’s not comforting. I’m not comforted. It just makes…
Praying in the Rain
Who'll Tell Emma The Truth?
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I’m reading Jane Austen’s Emma again because of a sentence I read in Elder Porphyrios’ Wounded By Love. In a passage on the dangers of praising children too much, Elder Prophyrios makes the following statement: “You must tell the truth for a person to learn it. Otherwise, you sustain him in his ignorance.” When I read this, I immediately thought of the character Emma Woodhouse. Emma is a very good-hearted, intelligent, pretty…
Nearly Orthodox
surrender and the independent spirit...
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Dave and I had a short courtship and a short engagement. I knew when I met him that I should marry him. It wasn’t that I was head over heels…I mean, I was, of course. It was that I knew this is the one I needed to marry. It was as if God spoke it in my ear. My response to God was a stop sign palm. I really did NOT want…
Praying in the Rain
Forgiving the Unrepentant, Again and Again
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Forgiving, again, and again, and again. Forgive me if I carry on with this topic forgiveness, even if I get repetitive. When I was a kid (about 8), I scraped my knee pretty badly. I wasn’t in a context of close adult supervision, so the wound was never cleaned or bandaged. The scab was huge. I couldn’t leave it alone. I kept picking at it until it got infected. I would…
Glory to God for All Things
Risking Everything
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In the struggle to come to the wholeness of Personhood – to become the “true self” rather than to sink into the “false self” our very existence as spiritual beings is at stake. If you read across Orthodox books that center on the issue of Personhood – a common theme becomes visible. Our fall and our brokenness leave us vulnerable, even in our religious efforts, to the development of a “false self”…
Glory to God for All Things
Christianity in a One-Storey Universe
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Praying in the Rain
Forgiving the Unrepentant
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Ostensive Lyme asked whether Christians “need to” forgive the unrepentant. The short answer is yes. I can see why someone might say no if we think of sin and forgiveness in mere juridical terms. However, as Orthodox Christians, this is not how we understand sin and forgiveness. As Orthodox Christians we think of sin as wounding and alienation–from God, from others and within ourselves. So forgiveness has to do with reconciliation. …
Nearly Orthodox
words...
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After all the media frenzy and extended rhetoric about rhetoric from the last week I find myself moving away from all news sources. I get overwhelmed, saturated with opinion and fact checking and engagement. Even my spirit needs distance from all the voices. I found myself falling into the Jesus Prayer again last night. I have a retreat coming up this weekend which I am leading and am struggling with a few…
Glory to God for All Things
Living Orthodox in the Modern World
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We live in the modern world – a fact for which we have no antidote. It is the moment in history that is ours. Christians before us have lived in the Roman world, various pagan worlds, the Byzantine world, the world of “Holy Russia,” but we are tasked by Divine Providence to live as Orthodox Christians in the modern world. It is a setting that has its own unique challenges and its…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
New RSS feed URL
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This weblog is now accessible as roadsfromemmaus.org. Make sure you subscribe via the new feed URL.
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Choosing Orthodoxy
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There is a critique in Orthodox convert circles, especially in what one reads on the Internet, of the “problem” of converting to Orthodox Christianity. Part of the problem, the argument goes, with American culture is its emphasis on conscious choice, that is, consumerism. We are bombarded nearly non-stop by our advertisement culture to make various selections which will be sure to enrich our lives…
Praying in the Rain
Forgive Us Our Trespasses As...
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We forgive those who trespass against us, don’t we? I have been wondering about this as I have discussed the topic of church community life over the past few days with several people with similar frustrations but in different communities. Fr. Boris Bobrinskoy in his essay, “The Mystery of Forgiveness,” points out that in the Lord’s Prayer, Our Father’s forgiving us is contingent on our forgiving those who trespass against us. However…
Glory to God for All Things
Sloshing Our Way into the Kingdom
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A dear friend of mine serves as an Orthodox priest in one of our coastal cities. He told me about a visit to his port of a Russian “sailing ship.” It was a wonderful visit, as he related. The ship had a small chapel on board and a Russian Orthodox chaplain. Together they celebrated a small prayer service in the chapel, which was packed with visitors and sailors. The service including the…
Nearly Orthodox
watching...
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At this point when I attend services I sit in the back, next to  my favorite icon of the Theotokos and I watch, a lot. I love watching. It might be the writer in me or maybe it’s the introvert. Introverts and writers are watchers, after all. It’s fascinating the see the various levels of interaction and action. When entering,  some people move quickly to a seat, others make a quick run…
