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The End of the Sacraments – The End of All Things
Read more: The End of the Sacraments – The End of All ThingsThe holidays bring a bit of my family together – for fun and conversation and the joy of a feast. The conversations, however, can serve as a reminder of what I don’t know. Two of my adult children are deep into the world of computers: one is a software engineer, the other a web-designer (among […]
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The Final Destruction of Demons – Holy Baptism
Read more: The Final Destruction of Demons – Holy Baptism“Final” is not a word you often hear in Christian teaching. Most Christians leave the final things until, well, the End. But this is not the language of the fathers nor of the Church. A good illustration can be found in the Orthodox service of Holy Baptism. During the blessing of the waters the priest […]
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Providence – God in Extension
Read more: Providence – God in ExtensionThere are aspects of the Orthodox faith that require that we reach beyond what we think we know and dig more deeply into the writings of the Fathers. This is particularly the case when Orthodoxy uses similar language to Western theological models. We see a word (in this case, “providence,”) and think we know what […]
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The Gospel of Progress – and the New Jerusalem
Read more: The Gospel of Progress – and the New JerusalemAmerican fans of Monty Python will be familiar with the opening lines of William Blake’s poem, “Jerusalem” (and I apologize to my British readers for such an introduction). The poem was set to music in 1916 and became deeply popular in post-war Britain. The Labour Party adopted it as a theme for the election of […]
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A Virgin Gave Birth
Read more: A Virgin Gave BirthI was browsing through some online material recently and came across a conversation between a non-believing sceptic and a Christian apologist. The question was asked (right off the top): “Why a virgin birth?” The apologist did a decent job of responding, giving a fairly common explanation of “why Christ had to be born of a […]
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The Child Who Came Among Us
Read more: The Child Who Came Among UsFew things seem as confusing to our culture as the feast of Christmas. For many, it is the great feast of sentimentality. As such, it is our culture’s feast of feeling. We want to have the “spirit of Christmas.” It is identified with snow, with trees, with family, with giving and receiving of gifts. It […]
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Have a Dickens of a Christmas
Read more: Have a Dickens of a ChristmasIn the late 1600’s in colonial Boston, the celebration of Christmas was against the law. Indeed, anyone evidencing the “spirit of Christmas” could be fined five shillings. In the early 1800’s, Christmas was better known as a season for rioting in the streets and civil unrest. However, in the mid-1800’s some interesting things changed the […]
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The Christmas When Everybody Was There
Read more: The Christmas When Everybody Was ThereThe soldiers were scattered across Europe with the loneliness of war. The world was caught up in a total struggle. Women had gone to the factories; children were collecting scrap metal. The “war effort” was universal. In many places, food was rationed. The madhouse of consumption belonged only to the war; everything else could wait. […]
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The Heart’s True Home
Read more: The Heart’s True HomeI remember the first time I saw the Robert Heinlein title, Stranger in a Strange Land. Very few phrases captured my inner sense of self in such a way. I was a teenager at the time – thus, a fair amount of my commonality with the title has to be chalked up to “teenage […]
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The Mystery of Place
Read more: The Mystery of PlaceFeeling “out of place” is a strong feature of our modern existence. Comments on my recent post bear this out. The notion and experience of place, though, have a mystery at their very heart. A major aspect of the mystery is that we can never know or experience anything in general – only […]
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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.…
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Thank you so much Michael. May He also bless you with His Grace!