Blog — Page 42 of 65 — Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick

On Ecstasy and Laundry: Spiritual Experience in the Orthodox Church

October 19, 2014October 16, 2014 · Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost / Third Sunday of Luke, October 19, 2014 Rev. Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, one God. Amen. Fourteen years ago, an American convert to Buddhism named Dr. Jack Kornfield published a book entitled After the Ecstasy, the Laundry. Although a Buddhist himself, in the work he…

Is the Age of the Earth Important? A Footnote and a Response

October 15, 2014October 15, 2014 · Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick

On page 20 of An Introduction to God appears this footnote: Orthodoxy makes no definitive statement about exactly how God created the universe or in what amount of time. The important point is that He did create it ex nihilo, out of nothing. The footnote is connected with this text: “In the beginning, God created the universe, including mankind, whom He placed at the…

Suicide as “Death with Dignity”: The Power in Suffering at the End of Life

October 7, 2014October 26, 2021 · Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick

I recently came across this article, which tells the story of a 29-year-old young woman who has decided to end her life by her own hand rather than letting an aggressive brain tumor (the same kind that took my mother’s life) do its work. It’s suicide, but a lot of people in the Facebook comment thread where I encountered the article did not seem…

Did God Tell You to Tie Your Shoes this Morning? The Micromanaging God

October 4, 2014October 4, 2014 · Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick

God told me to get up and tie my shoes this morning.” With these words, my wife once described to me a kind of spirituality which baffled her. I must admit it baffles me, too, though I’ve had more exposure to it than she has. And what does it refer to? This 2008 post from fellow Antiochian priest Fr. Gregory Hallam in the UK (whom…

Is Your Name on Your Headstone? The Remembrance of Death

October 3, 2014 · Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick

Seeing my father’s name on this stone next to my recently departed mother’s reminds me that I used to be horrified at the morbid idea of having a tombstone with the name of a living person on it. It just didn’t seem right to be reminded of one’s death so baldly, literally to set up a monument to a future loss of life. But…

Is the Bible “above” the Church? A Chat with Moses

October 2, 2014October 2, 2014 · Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick

I recently engaged in a sort of thought experiment about what it would be like for someone who believes that the Bible is “above” the people who actually produced it to have a chat with the earliest name associated with the production of the Scriptures. Here’s the result: “Moses, Genesis is above you.” “Um, I wrote it.” “But it is above you.” “Yeah, well,…

Unifying the Orthodox Church in America

September 30, 2014 · Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick

I’ve got a new piece published today at First Things, where I discuss the problems and solutions of Orthodox Christian unity in America. Here’s an excerpt: Are you Greek?” This is the question I get asked the most when I tell someone that I am an Orthodox Christian. At first, this question rankled, because I am not Greek. (I am, among other things, Lithuanian.)…

I’ve got a new book (and other news)

September 22, 2014September 22, 2014 · Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick

If by some minor miracle you haven’t yet heard, I’ve got a new book out, An Introduction to God: Encountering the Divine in Orthodox Christianity, with a foreword graciously provided by my friend Jonathan Jackson. (It also includes a sneak preview of his forthcoming book, The Mystery of Art.) You can listen to an interview I did with Bobby Maddex about the book, read…