Category: Reflections
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The Ladder of Your Daily Life
Perhaps the most prominent ladder in our culture is the one associated with careers. It is an image of the American road to success. We begin at or near the bottom and, step by step, make our way towards the top. It is a metaphor that works well with our modern notions of hard work,…
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Hopko on the Cross of Christ
An excerpt from a commencement address at St. Vladimir’s Seminary in 2007, given by Fr. Thomas Hopko. It is deeply worthy of conversation. I first posted this back in June, 2007, when it was “new.” That which is true is always new and timeless. …I can tell you that being loved by God, and loving…
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Freedom and the Self
This past Sunday on the Orthodox Church commemorated St. Gregory Palamas – perhaps the most significant theologian and teacher of the late Byzantine period. He is particularly important when considering the nature of the Christian experience of God. Orthodoxy believes that it is truly possible to know God though He remains unknowable. The mystery of…
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St. Patrick’s Protection Against Secularism
The nature of secularism is the notion that anything at all exists apart from God – that is – that it has an independent existence. This is the very heart of modernity’s self-understanding: the world and all that is in it is self-existing and does not require God for its existence or well-being. This is…
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The Forgiveness of Children
I was sitting during our service of Forgiveness Vespers. I’m getting older and I was tired. The senior priest was leading the service and I was sitting quietly, steeling myself for the “Rite of Forgiveness” (where everyone forgives everyone) that was to follow. It takes time to do this when there are hundreds of people…
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A Modern Lent
Few things are as difficult in the modern world as fasting. It is not simply the action of changing our eating habits that we find problematic – it’s the whole concept of fasting and what it truly entails. It comes from another world. We understand dieting – changing how we eat in order to improve…
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Words as Icons
Creation has a sacramental purpose: it reveals God. For from the first making of the world, those things of God which the eye is unable to see, that is, his eternal power and existence, are fully made clear, he having given the knowledge of them through the things which he has made (Rom. 1:20) This…
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Taking My Mental Shoes Off
I approach spirituality as a social scientist who believes that whether or not God exists, spirituality is a deep part of human nature, shaped by natural selection and cultural evolution, and central to human flourishing and self-transcendence. – Jon Haidt The above quote is a sentiment that I see more and more often these days. It…
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Rest for Your Soul
If…then… Among the most alluring ideas in our lives are the notions of cause and effect, performance and award. Nothing seems more soothing than the simple promise that doing one thing leads to the reward of the other. It is predictable, subject to control, clearly delineates the rules of reward and punishment and makes obvious…
Holly, The lives of the great writers are often all over the map. Few writers have been as impactful in…