Category: Saints and Tradition

The Desert and the Struggle in a Flat Land

Originally posted in August of 2007 as part of the One-Storey Universe Series One of the best-known sayings to have come from the Desert Fathers is: “Stay in your cell and your cell will teach you everything.” To a large degree the saying extols the virtue of stability. Moving from place to place never removes…

February 3, 2009
The Forty Days of Christmas

My title is slightly misleading. There are not “forty days of Christmas” in the Orthodox Church – but there is a major feast that marks the fortieth after Christmas: the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, sometimes called the Feast of the Meeting (February 2). It occurs forty days after Christmas in accordance to the…

January 30, 2009
The God of the Old Testament

Old habits are hard to break. For years as an Anglican Christian, and a conservative, I battled with academics in the Anglican world whose primary agenda seemed to me (at the time) to be the destruction of Scripture. Their historical method generally resulted in students being told that this that and the other thing didn’t…

January 16, 2009
Living Saints in Romania

The video has English subtitles and is worth the patience to watch – particularly the interview at the end. Living saints are rare and a great blessing. It is one of the treasures of this ancient, Orthodox land.

January 3, 2009
Bowing in Bethlehem

Pardon a bit of history – then I’ll get to the point. St. Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine the Great (also a saint of the Church), was, according to British legend, the daughter of King Cole of Britain – indeed, the King Cole of the famous English nursery rhyme: Old King Cole was a…

December 25, 2008
The Meaning of Scripture

What is the meaning of Scripture? Where do we look for it and how is it found? It is interesting to listen to the disarray of voices on this subject. My early training, in college and later in a liberal protestant seminary, was to look, first, to “authorial intent” (to use a constitutional interpretive phrase),…

October 26, 2008
Cultures of Remembrance

I grew up in a “culture of remembrance.” By that, I mean that the history of the place in which I lived was far more a matter of discussion and meaning than the present or the future. That culture was the American South. Much of the remembrance we discussed was not true – just a…

October 14, 2008
Jerusalem – Heaven and Hell

I am taking the day off from the pilgrimage (my wife and others are in the vicinity of Jericho today). I have stayed behind to allow my back and some swollen feet to mend – they are already better after much needed sleep – and I wanted to use some free time to offer a…

September 11, 2008
Prayers By the Lake XCV – Children and Saints

XCV Children and saints cling to You, O Lord, the rest rebel against You. Children and saints are the boundary between the Kingdom of existence and the shadow of nonexistence.1 Guardians call themselves parents and cast Your children off crags into chasms. Guardians presume that they are parents, and so they…

September 1, 2008
Raising A Saint

Most of us would be satisfied to raise children who remain faithful believers. It is not always an easy thing and every parent who has such a child should rejoice constantly. There is no method to raise a child to be a saint, for God alone gives the grace that results in the mystery of…

August 31, 2008

Thank you, Dee. May the Lord’s blessing continue for you.

“Grace can enable us to discern the Cross in places where we least expect it. And, sometimes, grace can enable…

Also, I was looking through several prayers from the Antiochian Red Prayer Book that emphasize our heart’s proper orientation and…

Father, you are correct, of course. I did not mean to judge narcissism as I have my share of it.…

Matthew, “What does St. John mean by “love” is the obvious question, for sure. In that sense, Michael is on…