Category: Worship

Religion, Rules and Reality

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
One of the unfortunate aspects of Internet converse that I’ve noticed during my nearly twenty years online is that often interlocutors write as though they assume that what they see in front of them is in fact the only thing that a poster has ever written on a subject. I think this comes of living in a sound-byte world, in which it is proposed…

The Road to Emmaus, Pennsylvania (The Transfiguration of Place, Part VI)

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
The following is Part VI (the conclusion) of a talk I gave on April 2nd at the St. Emmelia Orthodox Homeschooling Conference at the Antiochian Village. The full talk is entitled “The Transfiguration of Place: An Orthodox Christian Vision of Localism.” Read Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV and Part V. There are six parts in all. I live in a place…

Thin Places (The Transfiguration of Place, Part IV)

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
The following is Part IV of a talk I gave on April 2nd at the St. Emmelia Orthodox Homeschooling Conference at the Antiochian Village. The full talk is entitled “The Transfiguration of Place: An Orthodox Christian Vision of Localism.” Read Part I, Part II and Part III. There are six parts in all. In the British Isles, the ancient Celtic Christians spoke curiously of…

“Spiritual But Not Religious” and the Path to God

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
I sometimes encounter folks who tell me that they are “spiritual but not religious” (SBNR). I wish I asked more often what exactly that is supposed to mean, though I am usually held back from asking by a strong suspicion that such a statement is not meant to undergo any sort of scrutiny. But what does it mean, anyway? This post is a reflection…

The Worship of Fire

· Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick
While I was in Toronto a few weeks ago for an educational event, I had the delight to spend many hours with a good friend from my seminary days. He turned out to be a fine guide to introducing an American to Toronto. One of the many places we stopped was a place of some religious curiosity that he’d apparently always wanted to look…