It’s mid May and I’m weeding my garden again. It is one of the most spiritually instructive physical activities of my year. My on-going battle with one weed in particular functions as a genuine icon of my inner life.  Generally speaking, my wife and I are laissez-faire gardeners. We have very few rows of anything, just areas where we plant one thing or another—often led by what volunteers in a given…
My soul’s dignity I have enslaved to the passions; I am become like the beasts, and have no power to lift mine eyes to Thee, O Most High. But with my head bowed like the Publican, I pray to Thee, O Christ, and cry aloud: God be merciful to me and save me. (Verse 10, Lord I have Called, Friday Presanctified Liturgy, fourth week of Lent) All of the great spiritual…
St. Isaac the Syrian in his twenty-fifth homily warns us: “Beware of despair. You do not serve a tyrant, but your service is to a kind Lord.” If, you may ask, we serve a kind Lord, then why is my experience in this world so despairing? We see the mess the world is in, we see the mess we have made of our own lives, we see the mess others are…
