Category: Communion
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Only Love Knows Anything
Only Love Knows Anything There’s a part of us that is wired to be careful. It senses danger and hunkers down. It looks for danger. It can easily become the dominant mode of our life. Anxiety and depression, are among the most common noises of this internal warning system. When it comes to dominate,…
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The Path of the Good, the True, the Real
Imagine a character in a story who is wraith-like, barely existing. His every move threatens to draw him deeper into non-existence. As it stands, others around him are only able to see him moments at a time. He often disappears for whole days at a time as he lapses into such ghostly non-being that he…
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Asking the Right Questions
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.” (Matt. 7:7) I believe that among the most central things in our life are the…
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The God Who Sees Us
Recent days and thoughts have brought me to the conclusion that what we require is not so much to see God, as to be seen by God. The most frightful words in all of Scripture are, “Depart from me, I never knew you.” To not be known, it seems to me, is tantamount to having…
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The Communion of Tradition
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life–the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and…
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Mystical Theology and the Orthodox Faith
A turning point in my life took place in an unremarkable manner. In my college years, my best friend approached me in the university library and thrust a book into my hand. “Steve, read this!” He said. The book was Vladimir Lossky’s Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. The year was 1976. I did as…
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When Miracles Ceased
One of the stranger ideas that accompanied the Reformation, was the notion that miracles had ended at the time of the New Testament’s completion. Never stated as a doctrinal fact in the mainstream of Protestantism, it remained a quiet assumption, particularly when joined with an anti-Roman Catholicism in which the various visions, weeping statues, and…
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Do We Ever Get It Right?
In the film, Ground Hog Day, actor Bill Murray awakens each morning to the same day – February 2 – and does the same things over and over. At first it’s fun. Then it’s maddening. Indeed, a whole string of days finds him committing suicide in an attempt to stop the repetition, only to awaken…
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The Communion of Friends
You meet someone and like them. You slowly get to know them. Conversation and sharing, listening and learning, a picture or a reality begin to emerge. You think about them when they’re away. You’re aware that you matter to them as well. The thought of anything hurting them is painful. This is friendship. We easily reduce…
Family, Shared work as much as possible, Education, Parish, Monastery.