I cannot be the only one who has had the experience of visiting a non-Orthodox church service and finding it stunningly empty and plain.  After long familiarity with Orthodox worship with its icons, incense, candles, vestments, Gospel books, and crosses, attending such services produces a kind of sensory deprivation, rather like sensory overload in reverse.  Entering those churches and experiencing their services left me looking around almost madly for something focus and…

Recently I heard a very dark and serious song about the judgment of God and His wrath against sinners.  It was the folk song “Great God Almighty’s Gonna Cut You Down” (accessed here).  I was not aware of the song before; apparently it is an American folk song.  The oracular Wikipedia informs me that it was first recorded by the Golden Gate Quartet in 1946 and issued in 1947 by the Jubalairies,…

I would like you all to meet a young woman, raised a devout Roman Catholic, who converted to Islam.  Her online story reads in part as follows: “I’m one of the many western converts out there…I grew up in a very traditional orthodox Christian household.  My family was going to church and respecting all traditions, but it was mostly something they did out of habit, not something they actually felt…I could never…

One sometimes hears of Orthodox Christians converting to Roman Catholicism.  In my experience, they usually do not leave Orthodoxy for Roman Catholicism because of their delight in the Novus Ordo post-Vatican II Mass, nor out of infatuation with the current Pope Francis, who has proved such a problem for RC traditionalists that they seem to employ an army of spin doctors to photoshop his comments, such as those about homosexuality when he…

I know a man in Christ who prays for Marilyn Monroe every day as a part of his prayers for all the departed.  He doesn’t pray for her under her stage-name of “Marilyn” though.  He prays for her under her real name of “Norma Jeane”, the name given her by her mother and under which she was once baptized by (of all people) the evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson while under the foster…

Many people from around the world have kindly contributed to my parish of St. Herman of Alaska in Langley, B.C., helping us and saving us from financial catastrophe as we struggled to build a new church temple on our property, striving to overcome many unforeseen obstacles and problems.  Recently we reached another architectural milestone, in that we finally, after many, many delays, crowned the building with a large cupola.  The cupola weighed…