Driver's view from a moving car
03 Aug 2022

What the Eastern Church Does Best

In a previous article, I admitted the tension of experiencing unanswered prayers for my own chronic condition, all the while rejoicing in the fact that the Church heals souls; “…for what does it profit a man if he gains his whole life while destroying his soul?” There I made the claim that God primarily heals the outer human in order to prove that He can heal the inner human, because physical healing offers little benefit

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12 Jul 2021

Orthodox Pastoral Care and Psychotherapy

If there is any subject bound to divide members within the Orthodox Church today, it is the relationship between Orthodoxy and psychotherapy. Indeed, a line could be drawn down the middle of any Church nave with members on each side intent on coming to blows. One side is bound to consist of ROCOR1 priests and laity, enthusiastic converts, and the boomer faithful; on the other stand dual vocation priest-therapists, intellectuals, and younger, seasoned faithful. Each

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17 Mar 2020

Round Table: Do Animals Have Souls?

In Genesis 1, God creates the animals of the sea and sky on the fifth day and subsequently creates land animals on the sixth. On this same day God also forms a certain kind of land animal in God’s own image and likeness—humankind (Gen 1:26-27). As with the animals of land, sea, and sky, humans are told to “be fruitful and multiply,” but then receive a unique set of instructions from God: “Fill the earth

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18 Oct 2019

How to Become a Friend of God

The Scriptures are clear: “Abraham was called the friend of God” (James 2:23) … A Sunday School teacher told me once that we should read the Bible every day, and I was an intense, introverted child: I followed her advice, opening my third-grade presentation edition after my evening shower, my hair dripping dimples onto the onionskin pages. Jesus, on the cusp of his crucifixion, called the disciples friends, not servants (John 15:15). I was raised

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02 Sep 2019

Round Table: The Knowability of God

The Scriptures are somewhat ambiguous about how fully God can be known by human beings. On the one hand, the Son has revealed God to be our Father and has pioneered the path of faith—offering unprecedented access through grace. Jesus teaches that the pure in heart “will see God” (Matt 5:8). Likewise in the first Johannine epistle: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do

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21 Mar 2018

The Mystery of Honesty and Truth

“I hate going to Confession,” I told my father-confessor recently. “As long as you keep on going,” he responded. Then he added, “Of course you do. It’s not easy admitting to failure.” I grew up in a dysfunctional household where disapproval reigned. Expecting chastisement or even condemnation is a hard habit to unlearn. I’d been anxious enough about making my first Confession that I had postponed my Chrismation and entry into the Orthodox Church for

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14 Feb 2018

The Fast Before the Feast

The Lenten fast is often neglected or misunderstood. But this season offers the time and place to make us freer and stronger.   There’s a reason why fasting sounds exhausting. There’s a reason why people feel uncomfortable just envisioning a forty-day stretch of abstaining from certain foods or activities. The Lenten season is, after all, a long and tiring period for its participants. It’s hard. That becomes clear in the last days of Lent—the days

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22 Dec 2017

Advent Euphemisms and the Assault on Language

The commercialization of Christmas is hardly news. Proclaiming a so-called “War on Christmas” is not enough for some, who ante up their virtue-signaling and cultural critique into announcing a “War on Advent.” In 2012, theologian Diana Butler Bass argued, specifically against Fox News, that the shopping frenzy before Christmas degraded Christ’s Nativity more than a cultural shift away from well-wishing “Merry Christmas” toward a more general “Happy Holidays.”  Father Bill Olnhausen, a retired Orthodox pastor,

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29 Jun 2017

Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make me a Match…: St. Phanourios and the long wished for Husband

This is the continuation of my essay series on St. Phanourios.  You can read part 1 here 1 and part 2 here 2. Last time, I wrote about how St. Phanourios helped me through a series of personal crises that, as they often do, all spilled out at once. I was jobless, looking for work, had run out of money, and my health was crumbling, with a 50/50 chance of having cancer.  St. Phanourios’ prayers

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http://store.ancientfaith.com/we-pray/
14 Jun 2017

We Pray (Book Review)

We Pray is a new children’s book from Ancient Faith Publishing. Authored by Daniel Opperwall, a Canadian theology professor, and illustrated by the Serbian husband and wife team Jelena and Marko Grbic, We Pray is a beautiful introduction to the concepts of Orthodox prayer. Wholeheartedly Eastern Orthodox in its approach, each page explores a single concept of prayer, beginning with the Trinity and ending with evangelism. Along the way, we come to understand the purpose

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31 May 2017

To Those in Darkness

Spirits crying in the darkness that Salvation is at hand Proclaiming to the captives The day of the Lord Songs in the night cause Doors to open Chains to fall off Veils to tear down Foundations to be shaken And earthquakes Prisoners are set free And escape by Staying put and Singing along- Where else to go? There was the word of life They could not save themselves In death’s despair One calls for enlightenment

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17 May 2017

String Theory

Everything is connected at the sub- atomic particle level in a way that I just do not understand, everything crossing and pointing and looping around but I do know the nexus, the crux, the beginning and end of every string. It’s something even the angels understand, although they have no idea why God had to be strung up for those like me all at loose ends, but he felt himself tied by apron strings to

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03 May 2017

Artificial Intelligence

Let’s face it, most of us live some sort of life online. I’ve been part of the Facebook social community for a long time, and, despite my recent lack of involvement comparatively, it’s still a major feature in my interpersonal connections. But even though people aren’t always there when they are here, sometimes they’re still here well after thay’re gone. But when Facebook reminds you to wish a happy birthday to somebody not there to

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19 Apr 2017

Reasonable Worship

I know I’m a sinner, of that I am sure I am sick to the death and I need a cure In fact I am dead and must be called forth Totally bankrupt, of less than no worth If there is no savior especially for me If there was no battle to let me go free If there was no righteousness traded for sin There would be no life I could enter in But how

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05 Apr 2017

Open Your Tab and I Will Fill It

From the same screen come blessings and cursing Like our mouths, they are backlit by hell-fire And fueled by a tube of passion that colors everything We like to look at the likenesses but not be the likeness And we try not to see the prototype looking back at us As we gaze deeply into flesh lit by flames of passion Do your kids really watch Veggietales on that thing? Do you message your mother

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22 Mar 2017

According to the Preacher

According to the preacher We spend our lives chasing the wind The circle of life is not The strong devouring the weak It’s each of us devouring himself Never getting full But getting ever emptier We spend our lives becoming Enormous windbags Work, it does a body good Building it up so there’s More to rot away after Our balloon has popped The wind knocked out of us Without empty chests We could have no

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08 Mar 2017

Fit for a Cassock

Today we’ll see if I measure up, Or maybe it’s more fitting to say I’ll be fitted, But I have a feeling it’ll feel like fig leaves covering up the things that ought to be laid on the altar and burned instead of covered in black lamb’s wool. There’s nobody more fitting to do the fitting for a new skin than the one who made my first birthday suit, and was part of the pattern

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16 Feb 2017

Round Table: The Purpose of the Local Church

Living in a post-Christian culture appears to be taking its toll on the local church. We no longer reside in small towns where people work together through the week and walk to church together on Sundays. We get in our separate cars from our separate neighbourhoods and homes, convene for an hour or two, and go home. Does this hour of the week change who we are? Does it connect us with the body of Christ?

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10 Feb 2017

Modern Witness

“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13).1 One of my favorite operas is called the Dialogues of the Carmelites, which was composed by Francis Poulenc. The opera is an adaptation of a true life story of the Martyrs of Compiègne, members of a Roman Catholic order of nuns who were killed during the French Revolution of the late 18th Century. The story follows a young

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08 Feb 2017

Chronicles of the King

It starts with the king Calling for a return to The God who chose the people And not the God chosen By the people for the people It is a call the people Rarely listen to and often Reject over and over Since they hear it so Infrequently, the king Usually being anti- Christ and usually Being so again. But the priests must Listen and begin to Cleanse themselves No longer pleasing the People or

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