Category: Reflections
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Following a Conversation with a Tree
“Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which…
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The God Claws – The Therapeutic Work of the Holy Spirit
In a graphic scene of redemption, CS Lewis depicts a young boy who has unfortunately been turned into a dragon. The boy (Eustace) is largely at fault in this transformation – something which brings his life to a miserable and seemingly unsolvable conclusion. He is, however, confronted by God in the figure of Aslan, the…
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The Sweetest Name of Jesus
Some years back, I was given instruction on saying the “Jesus Prayer” by Archimandrite Zacharias of Essex. We spoke about the form of the prayer, and the pace it should be prayed. But it was his final instruction that touched my heart: “Pay particular attention to the Name when you pray it.” It is, after…
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The Sweet Smoke of Prayer
Let my prayer arise in Your sight as incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice. Psalm 141 My parish has a fairly steady stream of visitors from outside the Orthodox experience. Among their first questions are ones concerning the use of incense. There is virtually no Orthodox service that does not…
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What Do We Need? Love Amidst the Clutter
I’ve been slowly making my way through the book, An Empire of Things. It’s subtitle, How We Became a World of Consumers from the Fifteenth to the Twenty-first Centuries, describes the fascinating journey outlined in the text. It tracks the gradual evolution of the modern world as seen in our acquisition of stuff. The average…
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Mary as the “Secret Joy” of the Church
Fr. Alexander Schmemann wrote: …When investigating the history of Mariological piety, one discovers that it is rooted not in any special revelation but, primarily, in the experience of liturgical worship. In other terms, it is not a theological reflection on Mary that gave birth to her veneration: it is the liturgy as the experience of…
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Love Has No History
St. Nikolai Velimirovich’s Prayers by the Lake are a theological feast. St. Gregory the Theologian wrote wonderful theological poems – it is a form deeply suited to theology but too little used. I first heard this poem on a broadcast from Ancient Faith Radio – it came at a very timely moment and allowed me…
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To Guard One’s Heart
The heart is a precious thing. The term can sometimes be confusing for people reading Orthodox writings. On occasion it almost sounds synonomous with the soul. At other times, it is identified with the nous, that organ of perception by which we know God. The Scriptures use the term (especially in the Old Testament) but…
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Only Love Knows Anything
Only Love Knows Anything There’s a part of us that is wired to be careful. It senses danger and hunkers down. It looks for danger. It can easily become the dominant mode of our life. Anxiety and depression, are among the most common noises of this internal warning system. When it comes to dominate,…
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The Mother of Us All
A young friend recently lost his mother. It has been an occasion of reflection for me, thinking about the emptiness created by such a loss. Despite all of the confusion and conundrums in our contemporary culture surrounding gender issues – they only serve to underscore the fact that male-and-female, on the most fundamental level…
I have worked with children (K-12) for five decades. The have caused me to ponder what kind of adult I…