Category: Reflections
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Behold Your Mother
Christ’s words from the Cross to St. John, “Behold your mother,” are both an intimate whisper of a son’s care for his most beloved as well as a cosmic directive to the whole of humanity and creation. This woman is Woman – and her significance abides and will not fade. She points us towards the…
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The One Thing Progress Cannot Do
It is common among Orthodox teachers to identify prayer with the “one thing necessary” that Christ speaks of in John 11. This emphasizes prayer as communion with God – for communion with God is the very source of our life. I will expand this meaning of the “one thing necessary” to include the very “mind”…
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Blood Brothers of the Incarnation
My childhood in the 1950’s had the innocence of the time, fed by stories of our elders and the clumsy movies. We played soldiers (everyone’s father had been in the Second World War) and “Cowboys and Indians.” Despite the clear bias of the movies and the slanted propaganda that passed for history, almost everyone wanted…
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Love and Being
Perhaps the most intriguing statement in the New Testament is St. John’s simple, “God is love.” As mysterious and awesome as the revelation of the Divine Name (“I am that I am”) to Moses might be, St. John’s statement gives a content that echoes and infolds the death and resurrection of Christ itself. Indeed, any…
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blog test – thank you for your patience
We’re trying to correct some server errors on the blog (Glory to God for All Things). Thank you for your patience. This post is a test.
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The Space Between
Is there a God “out there”? God is “everywhere present and filling all things,” we say in our Orthodox prayers, but is He “out there?” For what it’s worth, I want to suggest for a moment that He is not. Largely, what I am describing is what takes place in our imagination – that is,…
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Nostalgia for Paradise
This is an excerpt from the small book, Nostalgia for Paradise, by Dr. Alexander Kalomiros. It’s good for the soul. When the ascetical life of a Christian and the privations that he imposes upon himself are beyond the measure of grace that he has been given, a void is created in his soul. Either it…
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Is Heaven a Long Church Service?
My parents enjoyed farming. They both grew up on farms. Both did hard work in the cotton fields of the South. I never heard them complain about that. We had a small home in a 50’s subdivision. My Dad had a garage built in the backyard. Behind the garage, he put in a garden. It…
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St. Olga of Alaska, Pray for Us!
It is difficult to describe culture of saints within the life of Orthodoxy. When speaking to Christians who are strangers to such devotions, it is like trying to describe a flavor that is unlike anything else (try describing salt without using the word, “salty”). My family’s direct experience of Orthodoxy began in the early 1990’s.…
Sorry … Fr. Anatoly, not Anatoly. Not sure how I missed that! Thanks so much for the comprehensive explanation Fr.…