Praying in the Rain
Letter to a Protestant Inquirer
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Letter to a Protestant Inquirer You are right. It is difficult to be an Orthodox Christian, because Orthodoxy requires that one be a Christian. However, the difficult part is not what you think. The fasting, long services, and prayers are tools. The real struggle is to repent. Repentance is not something one did in the past, repentance is an attitude toward life. One must be constantly turning away from self-centered and sinful…
Glory to God for All Things
The Truth as it is in Christ
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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…
Praying in the Rain
The Application of Holy Words
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[At Pittsburg Airport] When we speak of spiritual matters, we like to quote the fathers who have been helpful to us. We like these fathers because the way they talk about their inner life helps us identify what seems to be going on in our own inner life. For most of us, these fathers are not men whom we know personally; that is they are not spiritual fathers or confessors to whom…
Glory to God for All Things
Everywhere Present
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Everything you do, all your work, can contribute towards your salvation. It depends on you, on the way you do it. History is replete with monks who became great saints while working in the kitchen or washing sheets. The way of salvation consists in working without passion, in prayer…. May God give you the strength to keep your spirit, your mind, and your heart in the spirit of Christ. Then everything that…
Praying in the Rain
Boring Icons
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[From the Antiochian Village in Pensylvania after a glorious game of soccer that was worth the pain] All that the Church does is iconic. In fact, all of creation is iconic, and the Church functions as our teacher helping us learn how to read with the inner eye the Word of God that surrounds us. This reading with the inner eye is commonly called contemplation. The Fathers of the Church teach us…
Praying in the Rain
It's Just Not Fair
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[From Pennsylvania] Last night at dinner, one of the priests around the table had written an essay, originally for publication in a U.S. journal, in which he suggested the following: Since it is claimed that the Angel Gabriel is the one who appeared and spoke to Mohammed telling him that God had no son, and since the Gospels asserts that it was the Angel Gabriel who appeared to the Virgin Mary telling…
Glory to God for All Things
You Are Not a TV Show
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The modern world, with the advent of technologies such as the internet and other instantaneous forms of digital creation, has created what is easily described as a virtual world. In digital comprehension, a virtual world is not a real world, but increasingly feels like one and, to some extent, can be experienced like one. Doubtless, human experience has known a variety of experiential worlds, but this latest, the virtual world, stands perhaps…
Praying in the Rain
The Loving Act of Saying No
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Love has boundaries. Sometimes we have to say no to those we love because to say yes would create a condition in which we are no longer ourselves and no longer able to love. Most of us have experienced the pain of having to say no to someone we love. As young adults, many people who love and respect their parents beyond words have to suffer through the anxiety and sometimes misunderstanding…
Praying in the Rain
Two Women Who Made A Difference
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There are two more people I remember from my days as a “disturbed” child, both women. The first woman is Mrs. Srpage (one of the very few names I remember). She was the morning staff person responsible for getting the boys in my wing of the dorm up and dressed and out to breakfast most mornings. She was also responsible for washing our clothes. Washing and cleaning was a gift of love…
Praying in the Rain
Counsellors And A "Disturbed" Boy
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Thinking about my past has opened a floodgate. I hope you don’t mind. It feels good for me to write these things down. Perhaps it will help someone. In the institution for “disturbed” children there were, as far as I could make out, two kinds of staff: counsellors and high-level counsellors. I say “high level” because these were the ones you very seldom saw except by appointment (these were probably the staff…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Behind the Barricades
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A somewhat bizarre and truly sad story has unfolded here in Emmaus. It seems that the president of the Emmaus Historical Society recently became embroiled in controversy within the society, and finally stepped down as president yesterday, just before the election for the presidency scheduled for this evening, leaving his opponent in the election uncontested. Today, the former president barricaded himself into a barn…
Glory to God for All Things
The Mystery of Goodness
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Beloved, follow not that which is evil, but that which is good. He that doeth good is of God: but he that doeth evil hath not seen God (3John 1:11). One of the most common affirmations in Orthodox services is the goodness of God. Many services conclude with the blessing: “For He is a good God and loves mankind.” The goodness of God is utterly foundational to our faith – and yet…
Praying in the Rain
Me and God and the Bible
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“Trust not in princes or the sons of men….The Lord makes wise the blind…. He will adopt for himself the orphan and widow….” In my last blog, I revealed a little about my childhood and my rough start in life. I’ve often wondered not just why God saved me from a life of drugs, crime and institutionalization–a trajectory that I avoided by a mere hair’s breadth on a couple of occasions–but I…
Glory to God for All Things
The Sacrament of the Present Moment
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There is a wonderful translation of Jean-Pierre De Caussade’s  Self-Abandonment to Divine Providence, which bears the same title as this post. I am borrowing the phrase, not to comment on the volume (though I highly recommend it), but to bring into focus something of at least equal importance. It is the reality of our moment by moment encounter with God. We confess that God is everywhere present and fills all things, but we still…
Praying in the Rain
Unresolved Grief and Forgiving Again
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Occasionally, when I am with my spiritual father and the topic of my childhood comes up, he suggests that I am unaware of how much my childhood experiences affect me. He never pushes me, and I usually say nothing. I don’t know what to say. I can talk about my childhood without feeling anything in particular. It is to me as though it were someone else’s childhood. I seldom think about it.…
Glory to God for All Things
Giving Thanks as a Way of Life
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The act of giving thanks is among the most fundamental acts of love. It lies at the very heart of worship – in which, in the words of Archimandrite Zacharias of Essex, there is an exchange. In giving thanks we make an offering which itself is always inferior to what we have received – but which is itself an enlargement of the human heart. To live rightly in the presence and communion of…
Praying in the Rain
War and Peace and Suffering
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“The wondrous love of God toward man is recognized when man is in misfortunes that are destroying his hope. Here God manifests His power for man’s salvation. For man never recognizes the power of God in tranquility and freedom.” — St. Isaac the Syrian I have almost finished War and Peace–300 pages to go is almost finished.  When asked to summarize the novel, my first response was that it is about a few…
Praying in the Rain
The Marriage Icon
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In the Orthodox wedding icon, the icon of the wedding in Cana of Galilee, Christ is not at the center. Christ is in the icon, in the foreground and in an exalted position, but not the center. In the center of the wedding icon is the bride. The bride is both at the center of the icon, and she is also the only one who is crowned–the groom is not crowned. In…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Scripture and Tradition
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Ancient Faith Radio now has both parts of my talk “Scripture and Tradition” available for download here and here as part of the Roads From Emmaus podcast. This talk is the second installment in the four-part Foundations of the Orthodox Faith series and was originally delivered on May 23, 2010. Those interested in a particular aspect of this talk, namely, the formation of the…
Glory to God for All Things
Mind and Heart
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I write frequently about what I term the Religion of the Heart. Archimandrite Meletios Webber has a short piece on what can be called the Religion of the Mind. The distinction between mind and heart is not a distinction between thought and feeling. Rather it is a distinction between the mind (seat of thoughts and feelings) and the heart (the seat of a deeper awareness – sometimes called the nous in Orthodox writing).…
Praying in the Rain
Sinner Versus Sinning
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St. Theophan the Recluse said (roughly) that it is a small thing to acknowledge that you have sinned, but it takes enlightenment to acknowledge that you are a sinner. In confession, penitents often asked why they always seem to have the same sins to confess. Sometimes I think the answer to this question is that the penitent has not yet begun to see him or herself as a sinner. They still think…
Praying in the Rain
One Orthodox Church in Canada
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Fr. Michael reports from the Parish Life Conference–at 35,000 feet. The biggest news from the PLC is that there is indeed a move by the Ecumenical Patriarch and all of the Autocephalous churches to create a single Orthodox jurisdiction in each country or region of the world that has a significant Orthodox presence. It looks like it will be happening much more quickly than anyone would have imagined even one year ago.…
Glory to God for All Things
To Guard the Heart
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I often think about the admonition of the fathers to “guard your heart.” It seems so obvious to me that the disposition of my heart has everything to do with how I will perceive and react to everything around me. An anxious heart perceives everything as a threat – a disaster or vexation in the making. An angry heart perceives the slightest hindrance as a great provocation. A sad heart can have…
Praying in the Rain
Are You Saved?
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In the western Christian world, “saved” is a static concept. One either is or isn’t saved. The only difference among the various heterodox Christian confessions is how one acquires this state of salvation. For the Orthodox Christian, salvation is not something static. Salvation is iconic. A person is saved, ultimately and fully, when he or she is conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. That is, salvation is to be an icon…
Praying in the Rain
Education
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Praying in the Rain
26 Minute Friendship
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[At Seattle Airport] Bonnie has this amazing ability to make friends with people on airplanes. On the 26 minute flight from Vancouver to Seattle she had such an intimate conversation with the Pakistani woman sitting next to her that they exchanged phone numbers on landing in Seattle and the woman was earnestly inviting Bonnie to visit her home in Surrey. The Moslem woman kept talking about what the Koran says about Mary…
Glory to God for All Things
Envy and the Fullness of God
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In the Praises for Matins of Holy Wednesday, we read: Oh, the wretchedness of Judas! He saw the harlot kiss the footsteps of Christ, but deceitfully he contemplated the kiss of betrayal. She loosed her hair while he bound himself with wrath. He offered the stench of wickedness instead of myrrh, for envy cannot distinguish value. Oh, the wretchedness of Judas! Deliver our souls from this, O God. We are also told in Scripture…
