Nearly Orthodox
free to be you and me...
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“We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.” ― Carlos Castaneda “That is what the torment of hell is in my opinion: remorse. But love inebriates the souls of the sons and daughters of heaven by its delectability.” -St Isaac of Assyria I have considered the possibility that all religion is just smoke and mirrors. I have considered the thought, too, that the concept…
Nearly Orthodox
Being outside Holy Week...
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It isn’t Holy Week for me, not yet. It won’t be Easter this year, it will be Pascha and it will be a week later than most of my friends and all of my family celebrate the Resurrection. It’s a strange feeling, this not being Holy Week and yet seeing “holy week” and “end of Lent” and “Easter is coming” all over the internet and the grocery store aisles. I feel like…
Nearly Orthodox
tree of life...
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Blessed are those who find wisdom, those who gain understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are pleasant ways, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who take…
Nearly Orthodox
not my river, not my stream...
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A new friend and I were talking about the Great Fast this week. Her mother in law is Orthodox and an immigrant from Russia. Her approach to the Fast varies a bit from that of my friend. Where Susan is strict in following the guidelines of the OCA, her mother in law, a life long Russian Orthodox Christian works according to her own heritage, her own rhythm. When Susan questions her about…
Nearly Orthodox
the eternal story...
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In the movie, “The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus” there is scene in which the Dr and the Devil meet in an enormous snow covered cavern. Inside, there are monks, some speaking, some praying, some waiting. The Devil, played by Tom Waits, asks Dr Parnassus, himself a monk, what they do there. He answers that they tell the eternal story. The eternal story is the story “without which there is nothing.” The devil,…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
The Annunciation and the Absence of God
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Annunciation of the Theotokos, 2012 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, who was the Orthodox Church of Russia’s bishop in London from 1957 to 2003, in the opening paragraphs of his book Beginning to Pray, directly addresses what is perhaps the most central struggle and disappointment of anyone who…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Evangelicals at the Eucharist
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I was fascinated today to run across this call to the Eucharist, written from a Reformed perspective, by Peter J. Leithart, pastor of Trinity Reformed Church in Moscow, Idaho, and an eminent Evangelical theologian. (Seeing this, along with my recent posts on Evangelicals observing Lent, I’ve decided to create a new category for posts on this weblog: Evangelical Appropriation of Tradition.) This is a…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Things to Listen to
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It is Lent, and therefore many things have been happening. We hardly get much of a chance to catch our breath during Lent (despite a number of us being quite full of hot air). Somehow, though, in the midst of all this, there has been some recording going on here, and of course there are bits that have been recorded that had not been…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Una Sancta: Fundamentalism, Ecumenism and the One True Church
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I believe that the church in which I was baptized and brought up ‘is’ in very truth ‘the Church’, i.e. ‘the true’ Church and the ‘only’ true Church . . . I am therefore compelled to regard all other Christian churches as deficient, and in many cases can identify these deficiencies accurately enough. Therefore, for me, Christian reunion is simply universal conversion to Orthodoxy.…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
On the Altar of the Cross
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Sunday of the Adoration of the Holy Cross, 2012 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. In today’s reading from St. Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews, we read his further elaboration of the dominant theme of the work, namely, the priesthood of Christ. The book, being written to the Hebrew people, that is,…
Nearly Orthodox
never ready...
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Having successfully secured a sponsor into the Orthodox faith I had planned to meet with Fr J. next to figure out if I’m ready for Chrismation. I feel ready. I feel I’ve been ready for a long time. I would have entered in the first month after beginning Orthodoxy 101 classes if all things had fallen into place like dominos. Sadly, the meticulous process of setting up the dominos to fall was…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
A Man Fully Alive
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Sunday of St. Gregory Palamas, 2012 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Every single person, whether a man, a woman, or a child, has been given by God a deep, primal longing for Him. We generally go through our days thinking of our desires for other things: I want breakfast. I want…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Superior Vegetarian Chili Recipe (hyper-annotated)
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Rejoice, nerds and ascetics alike (and you know who you are), for your humble servant, the Irrev. Fr. Andrew, is passing on to you in tradition this, the recipe for the finest vegetarian chili you will ever eat. (If it is not, then that means you’re doing it wrong.) This recipe originally started with a certain Mr. Gorski with whom I shared living space…
Nearly Orthodox
marked...
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On Tuesday I will be meeting with a woman who will most likely be inking my last tattoo. I’ve been pondering the design for another tattoo for a couple of years now. My first tattoo was designed by me with a few alterations and clean ups from my graphic designer sister-in-law. I don’t exaggerate when I say that I prayed about getting that first tattoo for more than 10 years. For me…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
FB/G+/TWT
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If you can make any sense out of the headline for this post, You Might Be a Digital Native. In any event, this is merely a reminder that, now with the addition of a Twitter account, I’ve completely signed on to the Great Trifecta of Social Media. (Hm. Now the phrase social medium occurs to me, and I am left with an image of…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
From General Hospital to the Hospital of Souls: Interview with Jonathan Jackson
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This morning, after Matins, I high-tailed it across New Jersey over to Newark Liberty International Airport, pulled up to the Departures area at Terminal A, and picked up a man holding a tray of coffee. We drove to the airport parking, picked a spot, and proceeded to chat for about ninety minutes, about sixty of which I caught on tape. The man was (as…
Nearly Orthodox
rooms of regret...
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Because I’m a parent of small children it follows that I live in a house with a constant chorus of “sorry.” It comes in various tones ranging from the toss off “sorry” swinging to the resentful “sorry” to the weepy “sorry.” I can read a sincere “sorry” though, the “sorry” that starts in the eyes, when one kid sees that whatever he or she did caused hurt. The sincere “sorry” isn’t clouded…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Evangelical Lent Redux
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In my previous post, a comment from a Protestant challenged me to argue for Lent purely from Scripture, also saying that his own experience of Lent, like Mark Galli’s, was pretty miserable. That led me to consider that I actually had left several important things out in the previous post, most especially touching upon the question of the dualism of Evangelicals and what that…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
"Giving Up Something" for Lent
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Update: This post is now available as an audio recording at Ancient Faith Radio. Mark Galli recently posted an article entitled Giving Up Self-Discipline for Lent which is actually a fairly fascinating look into what Lenten ascetical effort looks like from within a Pietist tradition. Pietism is, in brief, the belief that the private relationship with God is paramount and that doctrine and shared…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
The Transfiguration of Place: An Orthodox Christian Vision of Localism
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Both parts of my talk, The Transfiguration of Place: An Orthodox Christian Vision of Localism, are now available via Ancient Faith Radio. Get them here: Part 1, Part 2 I have to say that this is one of my favorites among the things I’ve written. A number of folks have actually asked me to expand this into a book, but I don’t think I…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Interview with Theron Mathis on "Sword in the Fire"
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Theron Mathis, author of The Rest of the Bible: A Guide to the Old Testament of the Early Church, has graciously conducted a brief interview with me regarding Orthodoxy and Heterodoxy and other matters on his weblog Sword in the Fire. Excerpt from the introduction: Fr. Andrew does the seemingly impossible in a mere 224 pages. He gives a broad scope of Orthodox belief,…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
The Eminem Ethic
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I spotted this image on Facebook today, and it puts forth a commonly accepted ethic, which I’ve dubbed here the Eminem Ethic. Essentially, various categories of race, sexual desire, physical appearance, and economic status don’t matter when it comes to winning his kindness. What matters is that “you’re nice to me.” This sounds pretty good. This is a morality bandwagon that probably most folks…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
The Return to God
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Sunday of the Prodigal Son, 2012 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. One of the principal themes that we meditate upon during these weeks that precede Great Lent and during the Fast itself is forgiveness. And it’s no wonder, because the Christian Church is really the only place in which forgiveness makes…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
The Wise Men of Silesia
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Throughout much of January and often into February, I spend close to 20-30 hours every week visiting the homes of parishioners and blessing them as part of the annual Theophany celebrations. I put several hundred miles on my car’s odometer during this time. Aside from the extra workload and of course the joy of visiting parishioners in their homes, I also particularly enjoy driving…
Nearly Orthodox
on transition...
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My daughter began her High School work this year. She’s still homeschooled but now she has a fixed curriculum and reports to a teacher for each subject. We figured this was the best way to build her transcript and hopefully her study habits for college. I knew it would be a bit rough at the start, she’s been fairly on her own where things are concerned for the last 8 years more…
Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
Lecture at Cornell University, Feb. 14
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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…
