Category: Culture
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Orthodox Serbian Monasteries in Kosovo
This is a beautiful sharing from the heart of the earliest Serbian Orthodox homeland.
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The Truth of Ourselves
Abba Poemen believed that the only time you could observe a person’s true character was when that person was tempted. From the Sayings of the Desert Fathers There is obvious wisdom in the saying about Abba Poemen: it is not our strengths that best define us, but our weaknesses. In our culture, where virtual reality…
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Is a Relationship with God What We Want?
An excellent question was raised in the comments of my previous post – the question being about the nature of relationship. It is commonplace in our modern parlance to speak of a “personal relationship” which is either redundant, or a way of weakening the true meaning of “personal.” I suspect that the modern meaning of…
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The Depths of the Personal
I have written on modern distortions of “personal relationship” in which “private” relationship is one of its corrupted meanings. I have also noted that, properly understood, “personal” always carries a meaning of “corporate” as well. To be in personal relationship with Christ necessarily means that I am in relationship with His Body, the Church. There…
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Grace and “the Inverted Pyramid”
Fr. Sophrony [Sakharov], in his book on St. Silouan, presents this theory of the “inverted pyramid.” He says that the empirical cosmic being is like a pyramid: at the top sit the powerful of the earth, who exercise dominion over the nations (cf. Matt. 20:25), and at the bottom stand the masses. But the spirit…
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Silent Sentinels and the Saints among Us
I originally ran this post last December. I have watched the film mentioned in it many times. The thoughts in the post came back to me again today. Like many, I recall my highschool years somewhat vividly. Our school was of moderate size with a personal history for most students that increased its impact. It…
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You Can’t Pray Too Much
Some years ago I stood by the bed of an elderly Pentecostal woman in mountains of East Tennessee. She was dying from respiratory complications – I was visiting her as a Hospice chaplain. We chatted about many things – mostly the things of God. She showed me a well-worn Bible she had owned for most…
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A Dowry Much Finer Than Gold
I have wrtten before of my Father-in-law. Regular readers of this blog will know that he was a man of great faith whom I never knew to be less than thankful to God. The goodness of God was doubtless his greatest joy and favorite topic of conversation. He was also a man of great prayer.…
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Literally Wrong
I have written on a number of occasions about the interpretation of the Scriptures and particularly about the problems of Biblical literalism. I have also, on occasion, made a link between Biblical literalism and a sort of “literalism” about the world and the universe about us. I believe that both are deeply connected and share…
It was a wonderful day. Although I was not able to attend the evening-into-the-early-morning Pascha service at our Greek Orthodox…