Category: Union with God
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Living a One Storey Life
I have chosen to use language of the “first and second storey” to describe the kind of bifurcation that the modern world has experienced over the past several centuries. Its results have been to smash the religious world into “sacred” and “secular” and to make believing both harder and disbelief more natural. Thus, to many…
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Christ Crucified
Writing to the Corinthians, St. Paul makes one his most famous statements: “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified (1Cor. 2:2). It is among the clearest definitions of the apostolic preaching to be found anywhere in the New Testament, or perhaps I should say, “everywhere in the New…
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Leaving the Secular Life – Part 2
It is one thing to describe the cultural mix in which we swim and quite another to swim in an opposite direction. One of my favorite icons is a Theophany icon (Christ’s Baptism). In it you can see fish swimming in the water. All of the fish are swimming downstream except one. A single fish,…
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Godly Counsel from a Holy Elder
I am sharing here a few sayings from the Elder Amphilochios of Patmos, someone whose life and teachings I have heard spoken of before by Metropolitian Kallistos of Diocleia (Kallistos Ware). They are worth savoring. The quotes come from the volume Precious Vessels of the Holy Spirit. I am especially fond of his attitude to…
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Orthodoxy and the Christ-Haunted Culture of the South
One of my favorite priests in the Diocese of the South is Fr. Paul Yerger who serves Holy Resurrection Orthodox Church in Clinton, Mississippi. His gentle demeanor and kind words are what I have always associated with the South, though it is rarely witnessed today. I had a chance to visit with him this week…
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The Boundary of Death
This was posted originally last Spring. I have posted again for re-reading and for its assurance that Christ is the only guarantee of our dignity. Having spent two-and-a-half years as a Hospice Chaplain, I had opportunity to be present to over 200 deaths (that does not include the many I have witnessed in my years…
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Christ the Only Assurance of the Dignity of Man
I am in Miami attending the annual Diocesan Assembly for the South. This first evening was primarily time with with our Archbishop DMITRI, and my brother clergy in the Diocese. I have known His Eminence since around 1994 and have, on occasion, spent a extended periods with him. I have heard him speak at…
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The Fire of Pentecost in Orthodoxy
No one, of course, can describe the fire that fell on the Apostles at Holy Pentecost. At most we are told that the Spirit appeared “like tongues of flame lighting upon the heads of the Apostles.” Not much a description. Other times in Scripture we are told of a Pillar of Fire and of the…
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Fools for Christ – Remembering What Matters
I have been viewing the movie, Ostrov, which I reviewed here, simply because watching it feeds me where watching something else would not. I think I have been particularly fed by mediatating on the actions of the character of Fr. Anatoly, who is something of a “fool for Christ.” He is not the most learned…
I also remind folks of laughter. Let us laugh so our communities will not be broken