Category: Union with God

  • The Tradition of Being Human

    Being human is a cultural event. No one is human by themselves and no one becomes human without the help of those around them. This is so obvious it should not need to be stated, but contemporary human beings often imagine themselves to be their own creation. The exercise of individual freedom is exalted as…

  • The Icon of Music

    Orthodox theology is a “seamless garment”: no part of Orthodox doctrine, worship, prayer or life stands in a category of its own. Everything refers and reveals the one thing in Christ – our salvation. Even the doctrine of the Trinity, as utterly sublime as it is, remains a matter revealed for our salvation. Because this…

  • And They Disappeared – Extreme Humility

    Sometime in the year 421 or 530, an utterly obscure woman from Egypt fell asleep in the desert of the Holy Land. Her burial place was intentionally unmarked and remains unknown. However, every year in the Orthodox Church, she is remembered by the name of Mary of Egypt and her life (written by St. Sophronios…

  • Things I Learned in a Mirror

    In my morning mirror, my father’s face stares back at me. As a child, people would say, “You look like your father.” I couldn’t see it, except that my ears were shaped like his. I had no idea that the ears whispered my destiny. The notion that there is something within us that sets the…

  • An Illegal Christmas

    The great advantage to thinking about God in legal terms, is that nothing has to change. If what happens between us and God is entirely external, a matter of arranging things such as the avoidance of eternal punishment or the enjoyment of eternal reward, then the world can go on as it is. In the…

  • God’s Tattoos

    Call me a Boomer. Among the more surprising developments across my nearly seven decades of life is the now widespread practice of tattooing. As a child in the 50’s, the only tattoos I ever saw were on the occasional sailor, and we rarely saw many of them. Indeed, I don’t think there was a tattoo…

  • The Way of Shame and the Way of Thanksgiving

    The language of “self-emptying” can have a sort of Buddhist ring. It sounds as we are referencing a move towards becoming a vessel without content – the non-self. Given our multicultural world, such a reference is understandable. It is, however, unfortunate and requires that we visit the true nature of Christian self-emptying. Our self-emptying is…

  • The Sacrament of Humility – Part One

    Some things are so obvious that you cannot see them. Their powers of invisibility do not lie so much within themselves as within those who cannot see them. We are hard-wired for danger, our eyes attuned to threats. We overlook the power of weakness and the vulnerability of humility – the queen and fount of…

  • What To Do When God Is Everywhere

    If there is no such thing as “secularism” (see my previous article), then how are we to live? If God is “everywhere present and filling all things,” how are we to spend our time in the day? It is possible to be distracted by such questions, to wonder whether Christians need to construct an alternative…

  • Providence, Freedom, and Love

    I was married at age 22 (my bride was 21). Both of us were believers and sought to ground our lives in the life of God. I remember that my wife was quite clear that “God had brought us together.” For a variety of reasons at the time, I chafed at the expression. I had…


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Latest Comments

  1. Byron, I sometimes think the same thing. I sincerely believe that there are surprises involved – that the things we…

  2. we should long for the judgment of God that we might be freed from the hay, wood, and stubble that…

  3. Jacob, Sub-creation. That’s an interesting question. I don’t recall reading any patristic content on the topic (which is not to…

  4. Christ is Risen, your blessing dear Father, this was my favourite article of yours, I loved reading about the South…


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