First a haiku: Scents of Ascension Incense, olive oil, beeswax caught up in my beard It probably isn’t quite the thing to say this, but I really love weekday liturgies. For one thing, we are almost always celebrating a weekday liturgy because it is a feast. And a feast means different hymns, probably different antiphons. [...]
The kids are listening to what’s being said/sung/read in church, so be careful where you take them! Paul (age 8 ) and I regularly go to vespers at least once per week (our parish has Daily Vespers on Wednesday evening and Great Vespers on Saturday evening.) As usual, Paul serves in the altar. Since he [...]
[I'm reading The Ladder of Divine Ascent over Great Lent and will share bits and thoughts as they occur.] Step 3 On Exile or Pilgrimage 9. Run from places of sin as from the plague. For when fruit is not present, we have no frequent desire to eat it. 10. Be on the lookout for [...]
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A conversation, well two actually, after Liturgy prompted me to write this post. First, I love reading lives of Saints. Whether as short pieces in a collection of lives or a full length work. I used to love reading theology. In a sense I still do, because the saints are living theology. There’s some good [...]
St Justin Popovic, via Hieromonk Damascene, on the Lives of Saints leads me to ponder: who am I?
More than half-way through my experiment and still going strongish, kinda…or not. So, checking in from the wild edges of my former internet worship, things are still going pretty well. I’ve softened slightly on my goal of staying away from certain blogs and forums, but my visits to those sites weren’t about random surfing, but [...]
[First a note: I meant to say yesterday that I am going to reevaluate all my web use in 30 days (Oct 15). Hopefully by then I will be over the withdrawal symptoms and be in a new habit of web usage. ] Since posting my manifesto yesterday, I’ve checked my email 4 times. Once [...]
Orthodox Ecclesiology is also very simple: The Church is a boat.
Surrounded by the sea of death, you can either be in the boat or not. Just because you’re not in the boat, doesn’t mean you’ll die. You may be able to stay afloat on a piece of flotsam, or tread water. But if you want assurance, you get in the boat.
The so-called tool box is not a collection of things to help me be more spiritual. No! these “things” are nothing less than the fullness of Faith in Christ. What I used to think of as “becoming more spiritual” (and tangential to the practice of my Orthodox faith) is at the very heart of what it means to believe in Christ.