Category: Orthodox Christianity
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Why Does God Sing?
A comment was posted this past weekend about prayer and singing (or “chanting”). This article represents some earlier thoughts I have written on the topic. Over the course of this next week I will be largely engaged in another writing task and will only be able to monitor the blog once or twice a day.…
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The Fox And Elder Paisios
Elder Paisios said: Often we see a person and we say a couple spiritual words to him and he converts. Later we say, “Ah, I saved someone.” I believe that the person who has the disposition and goodness within him, if he doesn’t convert from what we say, would convert from the sight of a…
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Private Prayer – Thoughts of Met. Anthony of Sourozh
The following is an excerpt from a posting on Orthodox World. It is from the late Met. Anthony Bloom (England). There are many articles of interest on this website. There was a time when I read with great faithfulness all the prayers which the Church offers us in the morning, in the evening and on…
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Candlewax and Hedgehogs – Groundhog Day
This article, from an earlier parish newsletter is posted here by request. Candlewax and Hedgehogs—a peculiar way to entitle an article, I’ll admit. But both have their associations with the second day of February. The first is more important so we’ll begin there. The second day of February is one of the 12 great feasts, and…
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Looking for the Self in All the Wrong Places
A few years ago, a major American magazine dubbed a particular age-group as the “me generation.” It would have been more accurate to describe the whole of modernity as a “me generation.” For it has been a hallmark of our age to fashion a particular understanding of what we mean when we say “me.” It…
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Living Simply to Simply Live
I attended a clergy retreat this week led by Archimandrite Meletios Webber, Abbot of the Monastery St. John of San Francisco in Manton, California. His first talk of the retreat was on the subject of monasticism in the contemporary Church. It was a very thoughtful meditation. I was struck particularly by his description of a monastery…
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Keeping It Simple
A comment yesterday asked for greater simplicity. I am entirely sympathetic to the concern expressed and offer here an earlier posting which draws our focus to simple things. I have written and posted numerous times that “I am an ignorant man,” which is to say that I do not consider myself a great source of…
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Mystical Theology
A question was posted recently about “mystical theology.” I offer a few thoughts (written in my hotel room) that might be of some use. My first exposure to Orthodox thought was reading Vladimir Lossky’s Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church when I was a college student. A friend gave me the book and urged me…
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A Nature That Is Less Than Obvious
In modern usage, the word “nature” generally refers to growing things – “the great outdoors.” Having been born in the ’50’s, I have been the veteran of several “back to nature” campaigns. There is a sense, at least as old as the Enlightenment, that if we could only get ourselves “back to nature,” things would…
Hi Fr. Stephen (and other friends), I stopped in here this evening after a long absence only to find the…