Category: Orthodox Christianity
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The Disappointment of Religion
Reading the lives of the saints often raises our expectations. We read of someone transfigured with light, or of someone who is present in two places at once. We read beautiful descriptions of the inner life, of an awareness of our union with God or clarity with regard to the nature of all things. In…
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To Believe and Not to Believe
I have written extensively about the “two-storey universe.” In short, this is a description of how many modern Christians see the world. There is the first floor – the natural world which operates according to naturalist, “secular” rules, and the second floor – the world of God, heaven, hell, angels, etc. The spiritual crisis of modern man…
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To Bethink in Wonder
There are many cliches describing our cultural failure to be “present to the moment.” We do not “stop and smell the roses.” We do not “let go and let God.” There is a momentum to life that carries us along. Our jobs, our families, our habits – all conspire to make us oblivious to the…
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All Dogs Go to Heaven
The fathers do not agree utterly on the question of animals and eternal life – so the question of their eternal disposition is never answered in a manner that satisfies. But there are a few things worth pondering about the lives of animals (of which I have chosen dogs as representatives). Animals, like all creation,…
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The Language of Silence
The language of the heart is silence—not a bleak, empty silence, but a profound and meaningful silence that ceaselessly sings the glory of God. Archimandrite Meletios Webber +++ The language…is silence. I will violate this wonderful oxymoron by speaking about the silence. It is the inherent problem with all theology. We use words to speak…
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The Mystery, Upborne, Fulfilled
Orthodoxy has a number of “favorite” words – all of which fall outside the bounds of normal speech. Though we commonly use the word “mystery” (for example), popular speech never uses it in the manner of the Church. I cannot remember using the word “fullness,” or even “fulfilled,” in normal speech. More contemporary words have…
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The Presence in the Absence
Since I’ve started the topic of mystical knowledge of God, I thought to repost this from 2010. I was reminded of it by a wonderful reflection by Jan Bear on OCN – an enjoyable read. There is a strange aspect to the presence of God in the world around us. That aspect is His apparent…
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To Know What You Cannot Know
You cannot know God – but you have to know Him to know that. – Fr. Thomas Hopko +++ This small quote from Fr. Thomas has stayed with me since I first heard it. It says so much by saying so little. I find two groups of people increasingly common in my conversations – those…
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A Letter from Butyrskaya Prison – Pascha, 1928
Serge Schmemann, son of Fr. Alexander Schmemann, in his wonderful little book, Echoes of a Native Land, records a letter written from one of his family members of an earlier generation, who spent several years in the prisons of the Soviets and died there. The letter, written on the night of Pascha in 1928 is to…
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Christos Voskrese! Christ is Risen!
Pascha has begun (though about 12 hours away here in the Eastern United States). But if you listen carefully, you can begin to hear the bells sounding from the East. Christ is risen! This delightful youtube video is a favorite of mine. One of our readers and occasional commenter, Dejan, (without a doubt my favorite…
Thanks to you as well Michael. Be blessed.