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The Sweet Smoke of Prayer
Read more: The Sweet Smoke of PrayerLet 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 Happens When We Play (Pray)
Read more: What Happens When We Play (Pray)In my previous article I compared children’s use of play to the place of ritual words and actions in the life of the Church. I absolutely did not mean to imply that one thing is like the other. I mean to say clearly that they are very much the same thing. And I say this […]
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Playing with God
Read more: Playing with GodThere are things that children understand instinctively. And the things that children know and understand are worth consideration. They have much to teach us. Among the most natural things children do is play. Depending on how you define play, it is among the first activities in which we engage. It comes to dominate the lives […]
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What Do We Need? Love Amidst the Clutter
Read more: What Do We Need? Love Amidst the ClutterI’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
Read more: Mary as the “Secret Joy” of the ChurchFr. 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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Are We Connected?
Read more: Are We Connected?How connected are we? Do your actions, thoughts, feelings, have an effect on me even if I am unaware (or on the other side of the world)? Is my existence bound within the existence of other human beings, or are we simply sharing the same planet for a period of time? Connections between people, particularly […]
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Love Has No History
Read more: Love Has No HistorySt. 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
Read more: To Guard One’s HeartThe 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
Read more: Only Love Knows AnythingOnly 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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This is a most powerful mediation. Reason is the ageless Greek culprit that has imprisoned the soul of man and…
Beautiful, yes. This is the kind of writing that brought me back to Christianity after years of searching other pathways.…
Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up;* 5…
I am grateful for this reminder of what the scandal of the Cross looks like. It’s hard to truly accept…
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XB! So well said, Father Stephen, and timely for me. A few monbths ago a woman asked to stay a…