The “hot family topic” in our American culture is about people going “no contact” with family. The volume of articles would lead one to believe the baseline of familial relationships these days is abuse, narcissistic manipulation, control, exploitation and neglect. Some people think it is the fruit of our “therapy culture”, American individualism, and the fragility (or rigidity) of Gen-whatever’s psychological frameworks. Perhaps it is forward because it’s just clickbait that feeds our “Jerry Springer/Reality TV” appetites for watching relational train wrecks. As a former therapist, residential treatment director, foster parent to over 50 boys, watching my “ex” go no contact with her mother and eventually me going no contact with her because wellll… it wasn’t just her mother who “had issues”…. So, God knows I know it’s a legitimate boundary that should or even MUST be set sometimes. But social media makes it appear that “sometimes” seems to have moved from “not often” to “more often than not”. So, maybe it’s just normal stuff that’s become click bait, or maybe not.

But…

The other thing that has come forward in the past six or seven years is families having to decide to go “full contact”: Adult children living in the basement, aging parents on the path to medical bankruptcy or even homelessness, married families with kids that can no longer afford rent and groceries. Regardless of who you think started it, created it, tried to correct it, failed, ignored it, profited from it, or whatever… here we are.

But, sure… how we got “here” has been an Uber ride with a chatty driver that smells like cheap vodka sweat and Pall Mall, drives too close to the rear license plate of other cars and straddles the center lane while looking at you in his rear-view mirror. But is where “here we are” what social media (and our own psyche) makes it to appear to be?

A couple decades ago we moved my wife’s dad in with us while he died slowly of a Parkinsons’-like disease. A few years later we moved my parents in with us to caregive them until they died, my dad of heart disease and my mom of dementia. We were very aware that it was very hard for them as “The Greatest Generation” to be dependent on and a burden to their children. To move in with us was basically like retreating on the Normandy Beach of their generation’s identity. It was admitting personal defeat. We talked for years about moving closer. The long, difficult, repetitive conversations went nowhere until it became an unavoidable crisis decision for them to move (that really was not a decision but more the last resort except for dying alone and broke in a nursing home).

Parenting parents and being parented by your children is a hard role transition for everyone, not to mention the synchronization of decades of drumbeats of two adult households’ daily routines and home environmental expectations. It was hard.

After my mom died (during the last year of the COVID crisis) we were clearing out their side of our house, doing repairs, re-painting, and thinking about what to do with the apartment. We need an income stream because our retirement income falls about three grand short of living expenses (I was not very wise with my self-employment finances). We were thinking Airbnb, visiting nurses, college student…

One evening our daughter and son-in-law came over for supper.

“Ummmm… have you decided what to do with the apartment yet?”

“No, not really….”

“Well, we both got laid off at work and our lease is up. The landlord is raising the rent 500.00 a month. Can we use it for about four or five months until we get new jobs and get a little ahead for deposits and stuff on a new place?”

“Sure.” (Of course.)

It wasn’t too difficult a transition, even with the grand-daughter. We’d been half-raising her while her mom was working since she was born anyway. When my parents moved in with us she was glued to my dad. I always had to be kind of more a “father figure” for her because she spent so much time with us, but he could be pure “grandpa” with an ice-cream scoop and nothing but time to spend with her.

This is an irreplaceable benefit of a multi-generational home.

She’s 13 now, and I see her social skills and intellectual development and I wonder if our American culture is substituting “education”, ie., pre-school, kindergarten, for what would come naturally with interaction with grandparents and great grandparents, aunts and uncles, etc. who are integrally involved in the life and development of a child. She was the light in my dad’s eyes for five years and, I think, helped keep him alive.

She was almost seven when he died, two weeks shy of her birthday. This photo of her third birthday present always comes up in my Facebook Memories as an annual reminder of why we endured the difficulties of care giving parents and helped raise grand-children. I don’t know how much she will consciously remember of him, but I know the relationship is indelible.

Anyway, it’s been about sixty months since that conversation. They still live in the apartment, our grand-daughter is now in 8th grade and has the spare bedroom on “our side of the house”. They could be “on their feet”, but like every young married family it would be a struggle to get by even with their good jobs. So, their feet are planted at “home” now. And there’s really no plan to uproot and transplant again (at least until Nellie graduates from high school in five years, but everyone with kids uses high school graduation as a life changing pivot point in adulthood… yeahhhhhh). Over the years the conversations about living together have changed, mostly because we’ve all changed. Not in ways we could have imagined, nor easily, quickly or without some hard re-orientations and self-realizations.

So, what has changed?

I think the fundamental major change was not financial, pragmatic or relational. I believe the change is that we all have consciously made a cultural shift, to one that my mom’s Chinese family (and most other cultures) naturally have: We have all embraced the idea that a multi-generational home is not a financial “last resort”, a rescue operation, a pit stop to self-sufficiency, or an end game for losers. It is how families normally (should) exist. A multi-generational household is a world-wide cultural norm, a given, not an embarrassing alternative lifestyle choice, pragmatic financial arrangement (nor even an admirable “noble sacrifice”) that says to the world “we cannot afford to sustain our nuclear, self-sufficient family or pay our medical bills”. In short, we all understand that living together as adults with kids is “normal”… even when it is difficult. None of us see ourselves as the recipients of some mercy, condescension, assistance, or being given a “loan” that will come due in some future emotional hostage taking family battle.

None of the perspective shifts happened quickly, some were forced upon us or blind-sided us, or were the results of conflicts, negotiations, selfishness, insensitivity and just plain “oh, duh…” moments.

But it’s not all conceptual. The pragmatic stuff IS the stuff of living together and a source of a lot of conflict and change. That’s reality even if you’re just roommates. But, intentional full contact has required full re-orientation. One example is very simple but has been very hard: the house has become “OUR” house, not “our house” with renters. There’s ownership of upkeep, maintenance, utilities, and major changes to it aren’t made unilaterally. Even so, the idea is completely opposite of everything we default to about ownership, control, relationships, roles and responsibilities when an issue even as simple as what and how to plant something in the garden comes up between my wife and our daughter.

Another big adjustment has been that we don’t live independent, parallel lives. Our schedules are now made together. Vacations, nights out, work, doctors, the grand-daughter’s school schedule (weekly and annual), are all coordinated. Sometimes our “retirement” schedule doesn’t dovetail with their work and child-rearing schedule. We each may sacrifice a few days here or there but the pragmatic benefit is, we don’t have to work out finding and pay someone for stuff like boarding the dogs, getting the mail, mowing the yard, watering plants. We don’t have to work around Nellie’s school schedule and her transportation to school and activities when they or we are out of town. The mundane simple stuff is big stuff when you have to figure it out how to do it alone.

Then there’s the more difficult stuff (that can end up being “no contact stuff” for some families): How to co-parent as live-in grand-parents, how much to say (or not say) about lifestyle (they’ve brought issues about ours to us… it works both ways), how to navigate ideological differences, how to not default to parent/landlord mode in a conflict, how to let them have their own “space” and marriage, how to backtrack on something and how to apologize.

It’s uncomfortable for a lot of families, but we have open discussions about the BIG picture stuff: what happens when we become “concerning”, in need of supervision, or incapacitated and in need of in home care or worse. Our wills, advance directives, and general financials are freely discussed and all questions answered. There will be no surprises if we died suddenly or slowly.

We’ve spent nearly twenty years living in a multi-generational household (almost two-thirds of our marriage). Every situation has had its own unique challenges and has demanded levels of endurance, wisdom, compassion, humility, forgiveness, love, sacrifice and strength that we did not know existed within us by the grace of God. We’ve not been perfect, not even always faithful, but Jesus promised, “he who endures to the end will be saved.” (Greek: sõzõ = healed) Healing our broken humanity sometimes requires painful therapy.

The healing of the human person comes only through learning love through doing the hard work of incarnational relationships, both with Christ and other people. “Love God, and your neighbor as yourself”.

Your closest neighbors are your family.

If you are able, start there.

So, I know this will land as a “guilt trip” or “shame on you” on some readers. It is not intended as a scolding for your circumstances. You’re right… No, I don’t know your parents or your children. I don’t know your family history. I don’t know your financial situation or how many rooms you have in your house. I don’t know what hardships you already are dealing with. I don’t know how hard you’ve tried to make it happen but been refused. This is not about all that. It is about re-thinking our whole culture’s love affair with the nuclear family structure as the ideal and goal of marriage and children, and the cultural shame and guilt for not attaining it. What the consequences of COVID and political policy has shown us is, even on a purely pragmatic level, the multi-generational household makes better economic and “family structure” sense. And it is not just a stop-gap until we pay off the national debt or elect a new POTUS and can afford rent and beef again.

And yes, I’ve seen the dysfunctions of my mom’s Chinese culture at work in her family. The multi-generational structure has broken human beings in it too. It has its own guilt and shame games. It has its own control mechanisms, potential abusive relationships, psychological landmines, restrictions, limitations, and financial constraints. But we have to exist “in family relationship”, and no matter how much contact you choose, it’s all hard work. Make it count for something good for your future generation.

If you want to try full contact, it would take a lot of resources to build a “family compound”, and it might be virtually impossible when everyone in a family is struggling. But all it takes is one generation to embrace the vision and instead of going “nuclear”, invest in the infrastructure of a multi-generational household, and do the hard relational work, raising their children to witness the work and the blessings, and be the beginning of the blueprint for their future generations.

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It was late in the evening. The mortuary sent a polite, appropriately subdued young man to pick up Mom’s body. I wondered how someone so young got into the funeral industry. I noticed that he wore a beaded wood bracelet with a cross in it.

I helped him wrap her up and move her onto the narrow gurney from the hospital bed. His expression said he was not used to being assisted. I told him I’ve helped move several bodies before. He half-smiled and nodded.

We arranged Mom’s body and he wrapped her up. When he was done, he moved the sheet back carefully, arranging it around her face as if folding an origami table napkin for a five star restaurant. He stepped back and bowed his head. He kept his head down and let us say our goodbyes.

I touched my Mom’s face, kissed her on the forehead, said “Goodnight Mom...” and nodded to the young man. He gently covered her face and pulled the body bag over the gurney.

It was raining, just as it was the night my Dad died one year before. The monsoon season was in full force in Phoenix. I helped him navigate the gurney under the porch and awning I had built and down the sidewalk I put in after my Dad died. It was an undignified bitch to stand in rain pouring off the roof and trying to not tip over the narrow gurney on the drop off out the door, and then push it through the four inches of a wet gravel landscape to the van. I spent part of our inheritance planning for making my Mom’s death less indecorous.

The young man gently closed the doors of the van. I briefly contemplated the closed doors, turned and walked slowly back to the house, stinging rain pelting my head and neck. I didn’t instinctively cower or cover my head. There was no shrinking back from the full force of nature.

I stood in the empty room, water draining from my shirt and pants.

It was silent. There was no rhythmic PSHHHHH! and low hum of the oxygen generator. There was no barely audible “whoosh” or the off balance tap-tap-tap of the ceiling fan.

I almost expected to hear my Dad’s voice. He was still there, Mom’s daytime caregiver experienced his presence physically and undeniably.

I stared at the empty hospital bed. For three years it had been Mom’s therapy, her residence, her easy chair, her dining room table, her bathtub, her bathroom, her bed, her cocoon, now her death bed.

For three years she has stared at the same walls and ceiling, and because we had to move her from side to side because of bed sores, the left and right rails of the bed. If she didn’t have dementia she could probably tell you the number of rivets, bars, nicks and dings on the rails of her bed and all the shapes she saw in the texture of the ceiling.

The bed has been our prison, our teacher, our test, our ministry, our obligation, our sacrifice, our resentment, and our love. It is empty now and we will spend, I’m sure, a while figuring out what in us has been transformed, filled, and what has been given and taken away by it.

I spoke into the shadows, “I kept my promise, Dad. You can go now. I’ll see you and Mom later. Thank you for all you did for us.”

The shadows did not answer.

But having no regrets is answer enough for now.

I can live with that.

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In my 74 years this hand has learned to print and write cursive, bathe a dead man, build an iconostasis, a mansion and a bird house, wipe a tear and create one, change the diapers of a child and a parent, pour a beer (both into a glass and down the drain), dig a ditch and a grave, craft a casket, color inside and outside the lines, knead a loaf of bread dough, pound a pulpit and overturn tables, write a computer program, a Master’s thesis, a love letter, a book, and an insult, sign a marriage and a death certificate, put a Band-aid on a boo-boo and duct tape on a bleeding gash, cook for dozens and for one, turn the page of a book and a life decision, pull the trigger on a gun and an idea, pull a tooth and stop a nosebleed, bait a hook, gut a deer and a friendship, clean an altar and a toilet, hitch-hike and drive a stick shift, pet a mean dog, sew a button, take a blessing and give freely, mic a crankshaft, point in the wrong direction, draw a portrait and a cartoon, give a thumbs up and a middle finger, demolish a house and a marriage, shake hands and hug desperately, break boards and promises, beat an adversary and caress a lover, change an ostomy bag, dress a bishop, anoint the dead, wave hello and goodbye, build a motorcycle and twist its throttle, make a bar-chord and play the blues, throw a pot in anger and on a wheel, torque a bolt, develop a photograph, cleanse a chalice and a mess-kit, handle a snake, cradle a dying dog…,

hang on too long,

…and let go too soon.

As a young man I saw the parochial consequences of the work of my hands and judged my life by my constricted view. As I’ve aged I’ve seen beyond my own house, to a new generation, to my children’s children and to generations of people I have never met incarnationally. I’ve come to realize that Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are correct: our life and the history of the world is in our hands. Today. In this present moment.

Elder Zosima (The Brothers Karamazov) says, ”You strike a blow in one place, and it echoes at the other end of the world.” Everything we touch changes us and is felt by the entire world and reverberates through all history.

Such a responsibility is a harrowing realization, a terrifying conferring of influence and power we did not know we have, that should fill our soul with dreadful caution. Left to ourselves it may become prelest or paralysis. The only way to be at peace with this knowledge is through humility.

Solomon says, “Whatsoever thine hand shall find to do, do with all thy might” (Ecclesiastes 9:10). St. Peter instructs us how to do this in the way of peace, “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt you at the proper time, having cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares about you.” (I Peter 5:6-7)

He cares for you and He cares for the entire creation which our hands have shaped. In the end all things we have done will be redeemed, forgiven and all things in the heavens and things of the earth will be united in Christ. (Ephesians 1, Romans 8)

God has our hands in His hands.

Go. Do things. Be humble. Be bold.

Your hands will do bad things.

Repent when they do. But know this: You will be repenting your whole life. When you look back on your life the goal is not “no regrets” but “no anxiety”. Because whatever your hands have done that has humbled you will be made beautiful in the fulfillment of the mystery of God’s merciful providence in Christ.

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But, I had what I had voluntarily signed up for before becoming Orthodox, so between my “now” and my hopeful “then”, I tried to think of ways to monasticize my family life. I even went through times I thought I could be like some of the monastic married saints who lived as brother and sister with their spouses… yeah that is a thing in Orthodoxy, a very rare one, but it’s there. That idea usually only lasted a few days at a time (and yes, has gone away) however, and as St. Paul says, there are TWO people in a marriage and the one who has spiritual delusions has to come to a mutually acceptable spiritual marital responsibilities with the other.

Anyway, about three years after I became Orthodox I got involved in doing construction at monasteries here in Arizona, and then in California and New Mexico. I learned a lot about the monastic life by working with, talking to, and praying alongside monks and nuns in the trenches of their daily lives for days. I have relationships that have lasted years. I got to hang out, walk with, sit at a table over tea or Slivovitz and have more “real”, relaxed, familiar, non-”purpose driven” conversations with monks, abbots and abbesses. We discussed our lives and the difficulties of “parenthood”, relationships, and being the “economos” of our households, … and even the temptations to abandon our vocations in our mutual settings. One of my sons entered a monastery almost twenty years ago and is now a schema-monk. Over the years he has been a monastic we’ve talked a lot about the struggles and realities of the monastic life. I have friends and know people who have attempted the monastic life, sometimes for years, and decided it wasn’t for them. Most married and have children now.

Looking back, I now know that my initial ideas about monasticism were based on books, exotic photos, and short pilgrimages. Weekend retreats were kind of a “spiritual vacation” from my worldly drudgery. It was “real” for what it really was for me, but it was not “the reality of the monastic life”. Basically, to be honest, my temptation by and fantasies of the monastic life were indeed partly spiritual, but mostly it was a desire to escape my middle class rat-race life and the responsibilities of owning a construction business, pleasing a wife, an ex, raising six kids, and trying to figure out how to fit the constant press to attend even MORE church services and keep all the ascetical practices and prayer rules that (I thought) the church demanded of me. I was ruminating over all that with a monk one day and he said, “You know… I get up early and pray, I eat breakfast, I take a nap, I get up and work in the garden or my assigned chores for a few hours, I pray, I eat supper, I pray, and then I go to bed. I don’t have to worry about bills, rent, food, kids, jobs, or a spouse. What’s not to love about it? There is no way I could do what you do. I have it a lot easier than you do.” Of course there’s more to the monastic life than alarm clocks, services, chores, (and yes, navigating hormones), just as there’s more to marriage than that. So, what is the “more to it than that” of monasticism and marriage?

So, let’s start with, “what is a monastery?” The term “monastic” comes from “monos” meaning alone. But a monk in the Orthodox tradition is not “alone”, they live in community (yes, there are exceptions, just like everything else in Orthodoxy has an “exception”). As God said in the beginning, “It is not good for man to be alone”, and that applies both to the married and the unmarried. We are created in the image of the Trinity, therefore we are communal in our created essence and so by our dogma one cannot become a monk in order to escape from having to deal with other people. Hermits? In order to become a hermit in our tradition, someone must first be perfected in love for other human beings through living in community. THEN they get a blessing from their superior to be alone to commune only with God. But once that happens usually they are called back to lead a community (I saw that happen), or have people seeking them out 24/7. So a monastery is not really a place of aloneness but a place of communion and relationships. And it is only in and through relationships (whether fellow monks, or a spouse and kids, or a parish/friends/co-workers,BFF) that a person faces and has to deal with their failures as a human being, their pride, their delusions, their lack of love, their impatience, laziness, arrogance, un-forgiveness, judgementalism… well, you get it. To use our desire for a better “spiritual life” to escape from human interaction is to sin against our created being. We learn who God is by learning to see His image within each person we encounter no matter where or who that person is. They who learn to love know God, as St. John says (I John 4:8). Those who learn humility before human beings will be humble before God and God is abundantly gracious to the humble, as St. James says.

So, in a real sense, just as every individual monastery is a place where a group of people have committed to live together in order to be perfected in Christ, so every individual marriage and family is a “domestic monastery”. They are BOTH communities of imperfect people who come to it with different issues, sins, inclinations, failures, and dispositions chosen, forced, habitual, and genetic. The community is joined and established by free will and within that community we learn to be like Christ. It is also a place to learn how to give up your self will and sacrifice your desires for the sake of love for others. It is where we learn to man our post in spite of…. It is the place we ultimately learn the humility of the Trinity: the laying down of my individuality for the sake of my fulfilling my created personhood. It is the cross on which our self dies and our humanity is raised transfigured.

Monks are often presented to us as the “spiritual elite” and are the representatives of the angelic life to we who are trapped in the “fleshly life” of the world. And yet God established marriage “in the beginning”, not “monos”, and marriage is the spiritual analogy of Christ and the Church, not “the bodiless angels”. We are not called to an “angelic life” but to the same life that Christ lived in human flesh in relationship to human beings in the context of a family and had to struggle to find time and places to keep communion with His Father. Sometimes our fast is a missed meal to get your son to soccer practice. Sometimes our prayer rule is one “Lord have mercy” before we punch in at our mind numbing job. Sometimes our liturgy is repeating the same bedtime story 40 times. Sometimes our sacrament is on our own table, transformed by a hasty blessing between a one yer old’s babbling. Sometimes life is our church, our prayer, our fast, our vigil, our sacrament.

If anything, the chaotic, maddening, wearisome, disrupted, rote, distressed spirituality of the married is the representative of Christ and the Church to the monastics in THEIR struggles to live an orderly, focused, quiet, intentional angelic life. Regarding being the “Special Forces” (as I’ve heard), many monastic Fathers have said, “We do not become monks because we are strong, we become monks because we are weak.” To flee the world because you cannot pray in the world may be necessary for some, but the Fathers do not represent it as “elite spirituality” (in spite of our envy and admiration of them for it). That is why we pray for them and they pray for us.

So marriage and monasticism are not competing spiritual lifestyles in the life of the Church. There is no holy one-upmanship. They are one path: communal, to the same place: humility and repentance. They are both communal, the God ordained relational antidote to the poison of pride and ego. One is not a scenic route and the other a freeway. One is not more glamorous or inherently spiritual. One is not more difficult or more holy. Monasticism isn’t “better” because it clears your table of responsibilities, distractions, people, jobs, and kids so you can go to more church services and say more Jesus Prayers. Frankly, the Church just doesn’t talk much about married saints as much as it does monastics. We don’t have much “wisdom literature” written by or passed down from married saints. (There’s theories about why). But, St. Anthony the Great (and others) were sent to ordinary people in the world to meet their spiritual superiors. St. John Chrysostom said it is possible for us, by becoming good husbands and wives, to surpass all others. Why? Because everything one can learn in a monastery that is spiritually essential: humility, servanthood, mercy, forgiveness, patience, self-control, graciousness, kindness, compassion, peace and repentance can be learned in marriage and family. And I would add, possibly faster, more deeply and profoundly than in a monastery if we paid attention instead of looking elsewhere for wisdom. There is no monastic “saying”, or wisdom, or level of spiritual life that cannot be found in marriage, and as St. John says, to a greater degree than in a monastery. And, if you throw in raising a two year old without losing your religion, the possibilities of spiritual attainment are endless. (My 4 year old grand daughter melted down once when visiting our son’s monastery, and the abbot said, “it is incredible that a four year old girl could hold an entire monastery of grown men hostage for two hours. I don’t know how you do that…”)

So, the domestic monastery provides both the communal experience of Eden and the existential desert of inner contemplation. In marriage we are “physically” not alone, though there can be loneliness. In marriage we find glimpses of true communion, but the curse of the ground, the fallen world, the fear of death, and the desires of the flesh are a constant warfare against the fullness of a union in Christ. You can be very alone in a house filled with spouse and children. The assault of responsibilities and the demands on your peace is relentless. Your soul can be empty amidst a “full life”. These are symptoms of our ego being broken down, of our self being crucified. The waterless land is within you. The water of life is in Christ who is everywhere present, even in your parched life. Marriage (like monasticism) gives us the opportunity to deeply contemplate our disunion and failure to be in the image of Christ and to find Him within us.

The reality is, in some ways, the domestic monastery is more difficult than the monastic monastery. In the domestic monastery, unlike a monastery, finding (or scheduling) time to pray, to be alone, to work without distraction, to sleep without interruption, to eat at regular times, to have a life that is predictable and structured by one person who has a vow of obedience from his “family members”, instead of by eight competing schedules, events, institutions, voices, and responsibilities is a very real challenge. Devoting one’s life to prayer within a community dedicated to and structured around prayer may be the angelic life, but the domestic life is closer akin to the life of Christ in the world who lived in our same chaos, demands, distractions, responsibilities, familial relationships, and irregularity.

It is within that chaos, and irregularity, and demands, and quest for time for prayer that Christ manifested God to us. Not from within a cave in a mountainside. In the domestic monastery we navigate many roles and responsibilities to a lot of different people (some of whom have a degree of control over our life but are not “family”, like jobs). And so our challenge is to embrace the fullness of the life of Christ within the fullness of the life of our domestic monastery and all of its demands. Our spiritual life is a moment by moment encounter with everything the world brings to bear on the family. And if we stay in the present moment, pay attention, look inwardly, and contemplate our inner (and outer) reaction to each moment (and repent if necessary) we will find Christ in us, the hope of glory. Within the family we do not flee from the world but encounter it fully and head on, taking up the cross of Christ and dying to self, then marriage becomes the icon of Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5).

An abbot once told me, “A bad married man will make a bad monk. A good married man and father would make a better monk than a good monk might make a good married man.” So, if you need spiritual direction, are married and desiring to be a monastic, you don’t need to go to a “holy mountain”, just ask your spouse and kids if they think you’d make a good monk and why (or not). I’m sure there were times when my family could have rightly pointed out that I was not even capable of being in community of all spiritually minded grown ups with a common vision and vow of obedience.

In the end, our created ontological goal is to ascend to God, whether we are married, single in the world (your communities are different, but still a community), or a monk. Blessed Augustine wrote: “Think of the burden of Christ as being like the burden of wings for birds. As long as a bird is burdened by wings, it can fly. Without wings it is trapped on earth. The wings carrying us to Christ are the commandments to love God above all and our neighbor as ourself. To the extent that you use these wings, you will lift up your heart.”

If we are married, our closest neighbors are our spouse and children. Go, be present for them. Carry them. Serve them. Sacrifice for them. Strive to do this without resentment or envy of another life. Embrace your life, the one you chose.

Love them. They are your salvation.

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He sat and watched the setting sun cast a spindly, delicate shadow of the pile of hair across the table, lengthen into a gray, murky pool then disappear in the darkness.

The dog lay beside his chair, snore-barking in a dream sleep.

He picked up the tuft of hair, cupped it in his hands, leaned into it and breathed.

It smelled like dust.

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Tip Jar and Alms

I was raised going to parochial school and hearing Biblical stories of miracles and I never doubted their authenticity or reality. I still don’t. I never bought into the Jesus Seminar deconstruction of the Gospel miracles, like the multiplication of the loaves and fishes was the crowd being shamed (or encouraged) by the young boy offering to share his lunch so everyone pulled out their hidden food and shared it. I didn’t need a meteorlogical explanation of high wind and low tide to believe the Red Sea parted for Moses. The rationalistic and scientific explanations of miracles always seemed more contrived and fantasmagorical to me than the original story as it is told in Scripture.

So, in 1969 when I was seventeen, I converted from Catholicism to the Jesus Movement where miracles abounded. Shortly after that I got involved in the churches of Christ which is a cessationist tradition. They believe that the power to perform miracles through human agency ceased when the last Apostle died, though God is still capable of effecting one directly. No one was ever really able to tell me the difference between God answering my prayer miraculously and God healing someone by the laying on of my hands, both human agencies. But, I digress.

Back to the Jesus Movement. I always felt like an outsider among my fellow Jesus Freaks. All my friends spoke in tongues. They told me to pray for the gift. I prayed. Nope. “You have to just start and the Spirit will move your speech.” And they would give me “starter syllables” (more than one “Jesus Person” has noted they sounded a lot like “Sallyrodeahonda”. Google will reveal lists of “tongues syllables”.) But, I wasn’t willing to fake it. So, I never spoke in tongues.

I remember sitting on the green shag carpet in a crowded living room as a long haired, glassy eyed Bible study leader talked about audibly hearing the voice of God that lead him to do this or that, reveal things to him to prophecy to the group like, “Walk with the Lord” or “Jesus wants to live in your heart”. Everyone would close their eyes and raise a palm toward heaven mumbling “Thank you Jesus, praise Jesus, thank you Lord”. Even though I also had long hair, John Lennon glasses and was a “Jesus Person” like him, I felt faithless and like a judgmental jerk because, as he was speaking, I was sitting there thinking, “C’mon people, this guy has dropped more acid than a pool cleaning service. He’s so fried he wouldn’t know the voice of God from a K-mart blue light special announcement.”

And there was always “sharing” whenever Jesus People got together. I remember one story in particular about a church picnic football game where someone knew a friend who was at the game where someone got tackled and suffered a compound fracture of his leg. “The bone was STICKING OUT!” The players gathered around, laid hands on him and prayed, and the bone WENT BACK IN! AND THEN he got up and played the rest of the game with no ill effects! I never asked why 90% of the miracles happened to people who knew someone who was “there” when it happened. But the person who was “there” was seldom, if ever “here”. Not that I thought they were consciously lying (after all, why would they lie?), but I just couldn’t bring myself to believe the second (or third, or… well, ad infinitum) hand stories for some reason. In the church of Christ if you witnessed or experienced a miracle you didn’t share it openly because it might lead to speaking in tongues.

So, over the years, even as a cessationist, I felt guilty and even a little ashamed for being so unbelieving and skeptical. Now and then I prayed for an undeniable miracle to happen before my eyes so I would not be so doubting and perhaps even deemed faithless. By the time I became an Episcopalian at about age 40, I had heard dozens of second hand and a few firsthand accounts of miracles but still had not personally witnessed or experienced anything that was undeniably a divine intervention like a polio victim being straightened or a blind man seeing instantaneously. I’d heard lots of the more garden variety of miracles like cancer mysteriously disappearing between PET scans, people getting “premonitions”, survival stories, and “wild coincidences”, all attributed to divine intervention. But the problem for me was that most “garden variety miracles” were things that happen even to unbelievers. It always seemed to me to be somewhat triumphalistic to claim it was our faith in God when atheists experienced spontaneous remission of cancer, unexplainable recoveries, and wild coincidences too. Over the years I could not force myself to manufacture belief in an undeniable miracle out of an unexplainable event, or some “normal” anamoly of science, or medical mystery that happens to people regardless of religious affiliation or even belief in God or a god.

So I had left the rationalistic churches of Christ and became Episcopalian. Part of moving on from the David Hume inspired rationalism of the churches of Christ was because I had begun reading the great Mystics of the Church. I was more open to the possibility of divine intervention than ever in my life. The Episcopal Church my wife and I joined had a priest who was into the Protestant charismatic healing movement. He was big on the Vineyard Movement and Francis MacNutt, a Roman Catholic faith healer. One weekend we had a “healing event” which featured Francis MacNutt, and a local Vineyard pastor. Our parish’s charismatic “healing ministry team” was part of the healing services. A couple hundred people showed up for the mini-Benny Hinn experience.

During the course of the night people spoke in tongues, lined up to get whacked on the forehead, were slain in the spirit, fell down, cried and laughed uncontrollably… all the usual things you see on TV. It seemed like it was almost scripted it was so “usual”. Several people in our parish came and they were “healed” of the afflictions our members all knew about. A child’s leg grew before their eyes. A man’s club foot “felt like it was getting better”. Various diagnosed and undiagnosed illnesses were healed. Emotional traumas were removed.

A middle aged man in shorts and a short sleeved shirt came forward. He twitched uncontrollably and his head spun around the room as if he was surrounded by Ninja assassins. He had a red, scabby skin condition, perhaps a case of severe eczema, as close to looking like a leper as you could imagine. The healing team sat him in a chair up on the altar area. They all gathered around him and laid hands on him (on his clothing, actually. There were no latex gloves for faith healers). One woman on the team stood behind him. She was short so her ummmm… ample breasts sat on top of his head as she laid her hands on his chest from behind the chair. She had her eyes closed, her face raised to heaven and spoke in tongues with the rest of the team. Every once in a while someone on the healing team would ask him, “Do you feel the Spirit moving?” The man would say, “Yes….., yes…” then timidly, “…I think so.”

My skeptical unbeliever friend Joe, who was looking for his own personal miracle too, leaned over and hissed loud enough for half a pew all around us to hear, “Of course he does, I’d feel the spirit too if her ***** were on my head.” The man walked off the stage, still twitching, still scabby and we never saw him again. Four weeks after the healings no one talked about our members who were “healed”… the still clubbed foot, nor the surgery to correct the child’s still short leg, nor the ongoing medical treatments for various ailments, and therapies for traumas.

So, my six years of Vineyard and Francis MacNutt ministry experiences in the Episcopal Church only reinforced my skepticism. I still felt faithless and like a wet blanket on the tongues of fire of the Holy Spirit. And I felt smugly superior to the “healers” that I perceived as sincere but deluded, or egoists, or marginalized outcasts who were just trying to fit into an elite club in the parish.

Then I became Orthodox. And I found out the Orthodox Church believes in miracles.

I mean, it REALLY believes in them. The Church has “wonder-working” saints, holy oil dripping icons and relics that heal, holy Elders that can levitate and be in two places at once… I could go on and on. The Holy Spirit is alive and well in the Church. So “BAM!” my issues with the miraculous just got kicked up several notches. It seemed I had to buy into all kinds of miraculous occurrences that I’d never heard of in my Protestant experiences: icons that weep myrrh, dead people that don’t rot and smell like roses, dead saints that wear out the shoes put on their feet, holy fire that spontaneously appears and lights thousands of candles on Pascha night in the Holy Sepulchre. And, again… I heard the stories and I know just about everyone believes them because well… just about everyone believes them. Why would people lie about miraculous events? If someone doesn’t believe in them, they sure don’t speak up, at least not in public.

But like before, I’ve never seen any of it with my own eyes. And my feeling of being a fringe dweller and a curmudgeonly faithless jerk yet again kicked up several notches. It was like being in the Jesus Movement or in the pew watching Francis MacNutt and feeling like, to be accepted, I had to play “pious” and mumble “Glory to God”, which seemed to me to be the Orthodox cultural version of the lifted palm to heaven and whispering, “Thank you Jesus” while feeling unholy.

It took me a lot of years, but I finally figured out the real issue for me. It was not that I disbelieve the possibility of miracles, it was that I doubt the judgment and discernment of the people who claim they saw or experienced one, or second hand reported them. How DO we know we should be thanking Jesus or God for what we think we saw or experienced? Just because it was “miraculous” doesn’t make it “from God”. St. Paul and Jesus himself say Satan and false christs and prophets can work lying wonders that will deceive believers. (2 Thess. 2:9, Matt. 24:24), But even with that clearly in the Scriptures, I had never seen anyone in 55 years of Church experience question whether something miraculous was of God or Satan.

But, when I delved further into the miraculous in Orthodoxy, I discovered something refreshing that my skeptical self really likes about Orthodoxy: The Church actually encourages us to view the miraculous with caution even if pious individual Orthodox people don’t. It teaches us to be skeptical and to be discerning of alleged miracles because it takes seriously the warnings of Christ and the apostles of the possibility of demonic delusion and “lying wonders”.

My best friend (who is also a former church of Christ miracle skeptic) was at an Orthodox youth summer camp where icons started weeping. Even though he called me the night it happened, the news of it didn’t spread like the spiritual wildfire one would think would happen. When the priest in charge of the camp was asked about what it meant he just said, “We don’t know what it means, we’ll see what fruit it bears” and just went on with camp. I liked that a lot. Of course “fruit bearing” can also be a tough thing to discern too. It assumes the spiritual qualifications to judge fruit. Years ago I heard of a “monastery” in Texas that had a phony “weeping icon” that drew thousands of pilgrims (clergy and laity) and helped them raise hundreds of thousands of dollars and it basically funded their monastic pedophilia ring. I wondered how thousands of pious people and even clergy could be duped over a period of years? If you express skepticism (or even just being un-impressed) you might get the holy side-eye. Sometimes it seems, in some circles, that gullibility is a fruit of the Spirit.

A few years ago in my area it was announced that there was a traveling priest with a gold reliquary cross that contained a piece of the “True Cross” with the blood of Christ on it. He was from Cyprus (or several other places depending on who I talked to). He was appearing at a local monastery and then at a local parish doing healing services with it. (I didn’t go, it sounded too much like Steve Martin’s traveling miracle sideshow in “Leap of Faith” the way it was promoted. A very good movie, by the way). The story was, he was given the relic by a woman who handed it to him and told him God told her to give it to him. But…another story is that his mother gave it to him. Both stories are from people who claimed to have talked to him personally. I think this is how some hagiography gets written… Anyway, he somehow discovered its healing powers and began traveling doing healings.

The relic is embedded in a heavy, large gold cross and when he puts it on people’s bodies it “sticks” to the places that need healing. He can remove his hand from it and it stays put, defying gravity. Hundreds of people flocked to the monastery and then to the parish for healing. There were “miraculous” things that I was told that sent my skeptic meter into the red zone. One thing was that he seemed to “know” things. But according to the Desert Fathers, “knowing things” isn’t always a good thing.

I met someone who “knew things” about 35 years ago. On our Sunday night hang out on Mill Avenue near Arizona State University, a group of buddies and I paid five bucks to have our Tarot read by a street gypsy… just for grins. As she turned over card after card, she revealed my life… waaaay too specifically to be mere “astrology or Fortune Teller cold reading coincidences”. The rest of the guys will attest. They knew what was going on too.

I didn’t know how she did that until I became Orthodox years later. It was a “miracle”, but a demonic one. You see, the Fathers teach that demons know what “is”. They cannot tell the future (but are good at guessing after tempting humans since creation), but they can reveal real events that HAVE happened to people and what they are doing NOW. She clearly knew what I was doing. In the writings of the desert Fathers, there are stories of monastics who were drawn into prelest and delusion because they thought they were clairvoyant, but in reality they were being fed information by the demons so they would fall through pride and their desire for followers and admiration. The stories usually go that they and everyone around them was fooled by the miracle and drawn away from the faith by the deception… except for one person (usually a holy elder) who saw the imperceptible signs of delusion and demonic captivity. So as St. Ignatius Brianchaninov warns, not even clairvoyance whether it is a gypsy or a monastic elder is a sure sign of godliness. It can be demonic manipulation.

Anyway, back to the gold cross… those who attended the “True Cross” healing sessions said they were moved. They were amazed. They were uplifted. They “felt the grace”. OK, my skeptic self thought, so you felt something you thought was “grace”. So does that make it of God because you felt it and thought it? No. It just means that’s how you perceived it. Am I willing to accept the witness of someone “feeling the grace” as affirmation of the presence of the Holy Spirit? Frankly, (as you probably gathered by now): No. (And as an aside, I would not even accept MY OWN feelings as affirmation of the presence of the Holy Spirit. I’ve felt a lot of things in my life that turned out to be passions rather than piety. I’ve had plenty of spiritual feelings and leadings in my life and after living the with consequences of acting on them, I hope to never have one again.) The Scriptures and the Fathers say that Satan sends a strong delusion into the Church to lead people astray. Of course the “most convincing demonic miracles” would happen in the Church. Satan appears as an angel of light, not like Batman. Why send a strong delusion to unbelievers when a weak delusion will do the trick? Save the real hard work for those who have faith.

So, as for me, I’m perfectly content to not praise God immediately regarding a miracle. I’m perfectly OK with sitting back and waiting twenty or thirty years to see what kind of fruit some miracle brings forth. In the meantime if God wants to kick the skepticism out of me, I’m sure He knows where to kick me and how hard. The thing is, I don’t feel deprived of any “spiritual joy” nor do I believe the Gospel any less because I am skeptical of miracles, even ones affirmed by thousands of pious people across church history. I am content to believe if God did a miracle in someone’s life it doesn’t matter if I believe it or not. It is what it is and it is between that person and God. We’ll see what fruit it bears in the long run. Miracles don’t make me any more in awe of God or any more or less faithful one way or the other. As Christ said to Peter when he questioned the miracle of John not suffering death, “What is that to you, you follow Me”. Other people’s miracles are not my business.

However, even if they are not my business, they are because they happen. So, I do know that when it comes to miracles, there is safety in caution and dire consequences for gullibility. There is a big difference between attributing everything to God, or everything to Satan, and being unwilling to make pronouncements one way or the other because I don’t trust my own judgment nor the judgment of other people to discern the difference. Of course I realize that I could be completely wrong about all this miracle stuff and its my own fault if I am missing out on a blessing because of my skepticism. But, I’ve never been one to go out of my way to seek out or pray for special or extraordinary “blessings”. I, for some reason, have always just believed mine come in my day to day walk with God. All I have to do to be blessed extraordinarily is pay closer attention.

So, you may say “But miracles are part of the Church! They are important! How can you be truly spiritual and not believe them?”

I’ve always liked G.K. Chesterton’s take on miracles*. He sums up my thoughts very nicely. He says:

No religion that thinks itself true bothers about the miracles of another religion. It denies the doctrines of the religion; it denies its morals; but it never thinks it worth while to deny its signs and wonders.

And why not? Because these things some men have always thought possible. Because any wandering gypsy may have psychical powers. Because the general existence of a world of spirits and of strange mental powers is a part of the common sense of all mankind. The Pharisees did not dispute the miracles of Christ; they said they were worked by devilry. The Christians did not dispute the miracles of Mahomed. They said they were worked by devilry. The Roman world did not deny the possibility that Christ was a God. It was far too enlightened for that.

In so far as the Church did (chiefly during the corrupt and skeptical eighteenth century) urge miracles as a reason for belief, her fault is evident…. It is not that she asked men to believe anything so incredible; it is that she asked men to be converted by anything so commonplace. What matters about a religion is not whether it can work marvels like any ragged Indian conjurer, but whether it has a true philosophy of the Universe. The Romans were quite willing to admit that Christ was a god. What they denied was the He was the God - the highest truth of the cosmos. And this is the only point worth discussing about Christianity.

And I thank God nothing more or less than this is required of me to be truly Orthodox.

*The Religious Doubts of Democracy (1904) and “The Blatchford Controversies” (in The Collected Works of G.K. Chesterton, Vol. 1).

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One of the first books I read when I discovered Orthodoxy 33 years ago was Benedicta Ward’s “The Sayings of the Desert Fathers”. The short stories and sayings captured my heart in a way that Vladimir Lossky’s “Mystical Theology” missed. The only thing the Sayings “confront” is the human heart and its self-awareness of its darkness and its longing for light.

I picked several that I love and have begun illustrating them in “zine” form (they have appeared in this blog over the months). This is the cover of the new zine.

I have five done and printed. The photos show the printed layout. When folded they turn into an 8 page booklet like this.

Here are the five “Sayings”:

“Abba Isaac the Judge”

"The Abbot Carried a Woman”

“Dead to the World”

”The Woman in the Skete”

”The Pilgrimage”

And I have St. Lawrence the “Bad Ass” (or “Heroic”) Saint… your choice of two covers available for PG-13 or G-rated audiences.

And… G-rated

.The interior:

I’m offering these as a “package deal”: All six zines for 25.00 (postage is included).

Discounts for multiple sets:

2-10 copies: 17.50/set

11-40 copies: 13.50/set

41+ copies: 12.50/set

I can also do individual copies of all the zines if you’re interested.

Click the “Message Steve Robinson” button and I will give you payment options and pricing.

Thank you for your support!

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1. Most Blues begin, “Woke up this morning...”

It’s not Blues if you mention a snooze alarm, a neighbor’s leaf blower, having an early Zoom Meeting with clients on Eastern Standard Time, or smelling coffee.

2. Blues cars: Chevys, Fords, Cadillacs and broken-down trucks. An EV or hybrid version of any of them is out. Blues don’t travel in Subaru Outbacks, BMWs, Hyundai’s, or mini-vans. The best Blues transportation is a Greyhound bus to nowhere or a southbound train. Jet aircraft, Uber, and ride-share ain’t even in the running. Walkin’ plays a major part in goin’ places after midnight. So does fixin’ to die.

3. The structure of a Blues song is simple. Once you get the first line right, repeat it after a filler phrase like “Yeah” “No” “Ain’t got no...”. The last line should elucidate the first two and rhyme... sort of: “Got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Yeah, I got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Got teeth like Mike Tyson, and she weigh fi-hunna pound.”

4. The Blues is not about having a choice. No matter what the situation is, who you’re with, how miserable you are, how long it’s been since... there ain’t no way out.

6. Teenagers can’t sing the Blues. They still think there’s ways out and they ain’t fixin’ to die yet. Some adults can sing the Blues. In Blues, “adulthood” means being old enough to get the electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis, or you go to the county jail because you was so broke you had a Public Defender.

7. Blues can take place in New York City, Dallas (but only if you shoot a man while passing through on a Greyhound bus, but not if you shoot him in Six Flags Over Texas), but not in Honolulu or any place in Canada. Hard times in Panama City, San Jose, or Portland is probably just clinical depression. Chicago, St. Louis, Memphis, and Kansas City are still the best places to have the Blues. You cannot have the blues in any place that don’t get cold rain.

8. It ain’t the Blues if you’re a man with male pattern baldness, ED, Low T, an enlarged prostate, or doing looksmaxxing. A man with one eye because a copperhead bit the other one out is. Breaking your leg cause you were skiing in Telluride is not the Blues. Breaking your leg ‘cause you tripped on an empty Natural Light runnin’ out the back door is.

9. You can’t have no Blues in a high rise office, a shopping mall, or waiting for yo’ woman in the lobby of a Hilton Hotel. The lighting is all wrong. You gotta go outside to the parking lot and sit in your broken down Cadillac, or lean on a dumpster in a cold, dark rain.

10. Good places for the Blues:

a. Highway

b. Jailhouse

c. An empty bed

d. A bus station

d. Bottom of a whiskey glass.

e. A back door.

11. Bad places for the Blues:

a. Nordstrom’s (unless you’re there to shoot your cheating wife).

b. Gallery openings

c. Scientology meetings

d. Olive Garden or Panera Bread

d. Golf courses

e. Trader Joe’s

12. No one will believe you got the Blues if you wear an Apple Watch, noise cancelling ear buds, Birkenstocks, or a cable knit sweater. You can, however, wear a Rolex. It’s even better if you took it off the guy you shot in Memphis.

13. You have the right to sing the Blues if:

a. You got no place to go while riding in a Greyhound.

b. You blind

c. You shot a man in Memphis

d. You can’t be satisfied

e. You can see the bottom of your whiskey bottle.

14. You don’t have the right to sing the Blues if:

a. You have all your teeth

b. You were once blind but now can see

c. The man in Memphis lived

d. You lead an AA group.

e. You have a 401-K

f. You drink mixed cocktails.

15. The Blues is not a matter of color. It’s a matter of bad luck and circumstances no matter what color you are. Tiger Woods cannot sing the blues. White people who missing teeth, blind in one eye, shot a man in Memphis (but not in Reno), got a wife with a mean face and teeth like Mike Tyson possibly got a leg up on singin’ the Blues.

16. Acceptable Blues beverages are:

a. Cheap wine

b. Whiskey or bourbon

c. Muddy water

d. Cold, nasty black coffee (but not Starbucks, Peet’s, Kurig, or anything fair trade).

18. The following are NOT Blues beverages:

a. Perrier

b. Chardonnay

c. Sunny-D or Capri Sun

d. Slim Fast

e. Monster Energy Drink

19. If death occurs in a cheap motel or a shotgun shack, it’s a Blues death. Stabbed in the back by a jealous lover or shot by her husband in a bar in Memphis are other good Blues ways to die. So is the electric chair, or dying alone in the hotel bed where you spent your honeymoon. You can’t have a Blues death if you die during a tennis match (as a player or spectator), while scuba diving in the Bahamas, while getting liposuction, an allergic reaction to aromatherapy, or overdose on testosterone boosters.

20. Some Blues names for women:

a. Sadie

b. Big Mama

c. Bessie

d. Fat River Dumpling

21. Some Blues names for men:

a. Joe

b. Willie

c. Little Willie

d. Big Willie

e. Lightnin’

22. Persons with names like Blaine, Chad, Liam, Jaydon, Barsanuphius, or Paisios can’t sing the Blues no matter how many men they shoot in Memphis.

23. Make your own Blues name Starter Kit:

a. Name of physical infirmity (Blind, Cripple, Lame, etc.)

b. First name (except see above) plus name of a fruit (Lemon, Lime, Melon, Kiwi, etc.)

c. Last name of a dead President (Jefferson, Johnson, Fillmore, etc.) For example: Blind Melon Jefferson, Pegleg Lemon Johnson, or Cripple Kiwi Fillmore, etc. (Well, maybe not “Kiwi.”)

24. Cuts from a knife fight, being shot in Memphis or while robbing a liquor store, or a busted jaw from a prison fight are Blues scars. Scars from cosmetic surgery, looksmaxxing, man-scaping, or falling off the treadmill at the gym are not.

25. I don’t care how tragic your life: if you own an iPhone, a Peloton or yoga mat, a gun safe, a Tesla, or a subscription to a home delivery meal plan you cannot sing the Blues.

*(I adapted and update this every year, from something I found years and years ago somewhere on the internet... Tell me how you do the Blues!)

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I also wanted to do a zine series with a theme, like the “Sayings”, but would have more ehhhhh…. action. I remembered the impact DC Talk’s “Jesus Freaks”, stories of martyrs from the First Century to the 21st, had on a generation in the 1990’s (which included my kids). I remember being inspired by the heroic lives (and deaths) of saints I’d never heard of in the “Prologue from Ochrid”. So I chose the theme “Bad Ass Saints”- stories of courageous acts and heroic martyrdoms, and hopefully introduce readers to some saints in a graphic “comic book” form rather than just words.

This is a short “trailer” of the finished first edition: St. Lawrence.

I realize that the title is kind of a PG-13 thing, so I made an alternate G-rated cover “Heroic Saints” that can be handed to your first grader or be stocked in a church bookstore out in the open instead of behind the cash register. The interior is the same.

I have the St. Lawrence zine PLUS five “Sayings of the Desert Fathers” zines all in a bundle for 25.00 (postage is included!) If you order more than one set:

2-10 copies: 17.50/set.

11-40 copies: 13.50/set.

41+ copies: 12.50/set.

If you want to purchase copies individually here’s the prices (you can mix the cover quantities). All prices include postage/shipping:

1 copy: 5.00

2-10 copies: 3.50 each

11-40 copies: 2.50 each

41+ copies: 2.00 each

Click the message link to send me your order and I will give you payment and shipping information. Thanks!

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Nothing is behind a paywall here, everyone gets the full enchilada, chips and salsa. I appreciate that you stopped by here, of all the other places you could have been.

If you can’t or don’t wish to $ub$cribe but like my stuff, you can buy me a Circle K hot dog. I appreciate it!

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When a condemned thief asked a dying stranger to remember him, he ended up in Paradise.

When an unclean woman anonymously crawled on the ground, underfoot of a crowd of true believers just to touch the dirty hem of His garment, she was healed.

When a blind man yelled loud and long enough and was annoying the security guards and gate-keepers of healing, he got his sight.

When the whore crashed the “Members Only” dinner reception for the Celebrity Prophet, and instead of making a show of kissing his a** in public, she kissed his feet, she was moved to the head of the table.

Salvation was as simple as that.

The Gospels show that God looks upon great desperation as great faith. Salvation is as simple… and as difficult as that.

The Good Thief had the “luxury” of meeting Jesus on his deathbed/cross.

St. Dismas

But the reality is, most of us don’t have a life and death encounter with God while sitting in an electric chair confronting the consequences and spiritual reality of our personal “death sentence sin”, throw a Hail Mary prayer six feet to our left, and then die without having to live the rest of our lives making amends, bearing the guilt and shame, and living under scrutiny and rejection.

For most of us a more fitting metaphor for our “salvation” is found in our commonplace, ordinary existence: We live a middle class life and grow up committing venial, middle-class, cowardly, playground sins. We grow up and discover God and we date Jesus. We get engaged, married, have kids, a career and when the marriage and job gets old and tough, we’re tempted to bail out. But we hang on to our spiritual ideals and we try our moral damndest to be just mid-life crisis emotional flirts, not completely give up on church and Jesus, and not end up being spiritual adulterers or divorced total failures. We tough out the years of empty drudgery because it’s the right thing to do.

So, the metaphorical reality of salvation for most of us is more like the work of preserving a 50 year marriage relationship than casting a last ditch, desperate prayer toward the ceiling on your deathbed because you have no other hope or alternative... and you wake up and discover that by the grace of God, He heard it.

In the Gospels both the long marriage and the “Hail Mary” are honored by God. But, as an “all day from the first hour in the heat of the day laborer” I gotta say, sometimes I tend to be jealous of the last ditch death bed conversion and them getting the full day’s pay for the least amount of work done in the cool of the evening hour. (Which is probably why Jesus told that parable.)

In the end salvation is as simple (and as hard) as this: Learning the humility to accept the love of God as a gift whether it takes 50 years of tedious, monotonous, repetitive, uninspiring existence or a dramatic, revelatory, tragic moment of desperation.

And if we learn true humility perhaps we will see both as a unique grace and give glory to God for both our own salvation and the salvation of ALL whom He accepts whether or not I can, or do.

“Help me to see my own sins and not to judge my brother” is just the “on-ramp” to gratitude and the joy of our salvation. This is what Lent is preparing us for: to understand Holy Friday, that “through the Cross joy has come to all the world”.

For all.

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It is the mid-Lent “Sunday of the Cross” as I’m editing this. We’ve had enough Lent to know what miserable failures we are, not just at avoiding food, but also avoiding thinking of it (and other tempting stuff).

The Sunday of the Cross is intended to comfort and encourage us to “finish the race” no matter how miserably we started it. I spent my first few Lents thinking the message was “Jesus died because you ate a Quarter Pounder with Cheese meal (not literally, but as an object lesson that you don’t resist your other more sinful stuff).” I kind of felt like the magnifying glass of Lent on my weaknesses was supposed to make me feel guilty enough for “crucifying Christ anew” with my sinfulness that I would love God even more for Good Friday and the Resurrection. I know… it sounds pretty screwed up, doesn’t it? But when you come from a juridical, pen-sub tradition it’s tough to figure out what else it could possibly mean because everything about God, sin, Jesus, and the Cross is interpreted through a juridical/accounting/transactional lens.

It's amazing how a pre-conceived "framework" constrains how you understand a piece of text (not just Bible verses). For example, 2x4 is either 8 or a piece of lumber depending on whether you are a mathematician or a carpenter. If you tell someone to “dust” something, a house cleaner removes particles, a baker adds particles. We always come to text with a framework which is sometimes not found in the text itself.

So, the "juridical/accounting/transactional" framework that I was taught always told me that when St. Paul said “the wages of sin is death”, it meant "If we sin, God in His righteousness and holiness, has paid us death for our sins.” Debt, wages, debtor and banker all gets kind of jumbled as a transactional theological metaphor, but the bottom line is, as the hymn says, “I owed a debt I could not pay” (which kinda sounds similar to a Gospel parable interpreted by the same framework). Hence, by that framework, the Sunday of the Cross tells us no matter how deep we dive into our shameful weaknesses during our Lenten introspection and how guilty we feel about that, the coming message is that Jesus suffered the wrathful penalty of God's justice and paid the death debt we owed to God for our sins. God sent His Son to zero out our “in the red” balance of God’s ledger by virtue of His death on the cross and this was our free gift from God through Christ. All we need to do is transfer our over-drawn balance (or our maxed out, over-charged credit card) by faith to the Bank of God who pays off and closes our accounts with the Bank of Satan, Sin, Death and Debt.

It kind of made sense…. Until it didn’t. Over the years I struggled with the "substitutionary" framework (as it is usually preached, and yes, I know there are nuanced versions of it). As I read the Gospels more and more it made less and less sense as "the Gospel" when I started paying attention to what Jesus taught about God in His preaching of the Gospel. In His Parables Jesus told stories about a Master, Lord, King, Landowner who forgave the debts of his crappy householders, borrowers, scammer employees, negligent subjects, and even his children… not by pay-offs, but “with a Word”. In the stories the One Who Held the Ledger Books NEVER extracted the due debt from an innocent third party and then offer the zero-sum, paid off balance sheet to the debtors as a “gift” that an innocent third party person paid for in their behalf to the Bookkeeping Master. He just….. said it: Your debt is forgiven you. And the debt went away… or more precisely He absorbed it into Himself.

As I read about God in the Gospels my transactional framework began to fall apart. One day I read the Romans 6:23 text exactly as it is written: “The wages of sin is death”. Ah, but how you translate those danged prepositions according to your assumptions actually means something. It is more accurately: “The wages FROM sin is death.” It says “SIN pays the wage of death.” Not God. God doesn’t kill us because we sin. We serve sin instead of God, sin gives us the paycheck it promises and it is cashed in the Bank of Death. Sin is transactional. God is not. Sin writes checks, God gives gifts for free. Gifts don’t require a bank account because well… they are free, not a purchase that requires someone to write a check for them.

So, when we question the assumptions and framework and step away from the transactional/juridical metaphors, the question is not “who writes the check to balance the books between the Bank of Death and the Bank of God”. The question is “Does God even have a bank and and a checkbook that needs to be balanced?” Romans 6 says the answer is “NO”. Sin writes checks. God gives free gifts, not a paycheck deposited in an account or a balance transfer from one bank to another. A gift is not a gift if it requires someone to write a check for it and a ledger that has to be reconciled and balanced for the cost of the gift. That’s a transaction or a purchase.

God offers Himself, Life, not “wages”. When we have the “gift of God”, the gift is not something He created or purchased, nor pieces or parts of Himself. God is not a “Ying and Yang”, “Light Force and Dark Force”, a “Credit and Debit Spreadsheet”. There is no duality, so there cannot be exchanges or opposing natures or parts that need to be reconciled. Our God is One, in whom there is no shadow of turning. It is just Him. The free gift is HIM, fully, completely and He is not diminished by giving Himself, nor is there a part of Him or something created by Him from which gifts are doled out. There is no exchange of currency, direct deposits, Zelle, or Venmo transfer… because there is no “Bank of Life” that God manages. Life is not a reward, a wage, a check, a dividend, because there is no Excel spreadsheet or check ledger to balance out. Eternal life is a free gift because life is God Himself who is free from any requirements and definitions of “transactions”. The “gift” not a spiritual check representing His life. All of those involve dualities or created things that are not God. God Himself is Life. There is no death in God. Death is only in us.

So then, what IS the Gospel? It is that we die. We are created for union with God but death cannot co-exist with or in God. We cannot “un-die” by our own will or human powers. We cannot unite ourselves to God because we have death in us. Life is not a “thing” God gives us, life is God Himself. So God must unite Himself to humanity… ALL of Himself, not just things about Himself or parts of Himself. But to do that He must unite all of Himself to all of everything about our humanity. EVERYTHING. Even the fallen stuff. And that is the Incarnation: God becoming fully human, uniting Himself (fully God) to everything about us taking on our soul, spirit, mind, will and flesh that dies (fully man).

St. Gregory (and St. Athanasius) said, “What is not assumed is not healed.” That is The Gospel in seven words. When Jesus died in His human flesh He assumed ALL that is within us, our nature, our limitations, our will, our mortal flesh and ultimately even our death and united it ALL to God. Anything about us that was not taken into God Himself in Christ is still dead and apart from God and we do not fulfill our created purpose.

On the Cross God in Christ absorbs death, the wages of sin, into Himself because God is Life and not even our “last enemy” (I Cor. 15:26), invincible death can prevail before and within God. As Solomon said, “Love is stronger than death...”

So, God didn't “kill Jesus instead of us” to balance the Life/Death justice ledger (John MacArthur's take on Good Friday). Christ, being fully human, and assuming ALL of our humanity, accepted sin’s “wage” even though He didn’t earn it by sinning. He accepted the wages from sin (not from God the Father), didn’t cash the check, and then nailed the W-2 to the cross (Colossians 2:14). Sin’s bank cannot write any more death checks. The IRS is abolished. In Christ we have no fear of a future surprise audit, no taxes due, no penalties for non-payment of our back taxes. It has ALL been assumed into Christ and destroyed. The entire banking system has been burned to the ground in fires of Hades along with death and sin. By taking death into Himself as God who is life, He killed death by dying in His human flesh. He “trampled down death by death and upon those in the tombs bestowed life.” Death no long reigns, eternal Life does.

On the Cross Christ was assuming the last horror of our fallen human existence and taking it all into Himself. St. Paul says, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself" at the Cross. (2 Cor. 5:19) He was not vicariously punishing Christ, exacting a penalty, or substituting Him for us in some cosmic juridical execution of a guilty evil-doer. THIS is why we celebrate "The Feast of The Precious and Life-giving Cross" and not “The Celebration of the Horror of the Penalty God Demanded in His Righteousness” because death is slain and we have life in God through the power of love.

The Gospel is not about wages, ledger books to be balanced, cosmic justice and penalties to be paid to a God who must pay Himself off via His Son to satisfy His need for a balanced ledger or the guilty punished. The Gospel is about a benevolent King who just forgives with “A Word” (become flesh) because that is who He is: an unconstrained, non-dual, free God who is Love. And because of that He takes into Himself all the crap and debt and even death that sin can deal out. And He does it for our sake's just because He loves us, because that is His nature.

The longer I live the Incarnation and the Cross and Pascha makes more and more sense to me. It takes a long time to tear down an old frame and build a new one around something so big. But, all that said, regardless of what theological framework we bring to it, we all look upon the Cross as our salvation, and we are all grateful for it.

As if we can make sense of God become flesh and the horror of the Cross.

As if we can make sense of human, much less, divine Love.

“Corpus Hypercubus” by Salvador Dali

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The contexts of the readings are Jesus speaking to seriously religious people, people who were seriously concerned about salvation, much like people who seriously participate in Lent. So the Church gets right up into our Lenten business: “You think doing all your pious church stuff to the max and by the letter of the Canons correctly is what gets you spiritual? There was a Pharisee who thought so too….” The Pharisee judged himself “in” and the Publican “out”. And the Publican judged himself and agreed with him, “Yeah, I’m out…”.

The next Sunday the Church says, “You think being a member of the 20% faithful, hard working, there every time the door is open and staying until after it is closed, bringing a main dish to every Agape Meal, chanter, flower committee member, priest’s right hand man, parish council member that keeps the church running for the benefit of the nominal, uncommitted, Christmas and Pascha, once in a while candle lighters is a feather in your salvation cap (or a jewel in your crown, as we used to say in my Protestant church)? Welllll… when that “Pascha Person” shows up after the Rush Service to get a candle, the glory of the fullness of the Feast of Feasts is thrown for him too, without reservations, without one restriction just because he showed up, even empty handed and stinking of the world.”

If we’ve been paying attention we should have gotten the idea the Church is telling us to be very, very careful how and who we judge, even ourselves. Now that we have THAT clear, we can talk about the Real Deal: The Last Judgment, the one everyone fears and is preparing for by trying to “get it right”. The Parable that Jesus tells affirms what some people believe (and many people fear): there’s going to be people who are going to be in and some who will be out. Which, of course, now returns us to the question that was answered in the previous two Sundays: How do I be sure I’m doing what it takes to be “in” or, what’s the stuff that’s going to keep me out, even if I was down the wrong religiosity rabbit hole there for a while.

Unfortunately, even though the prior two Sundays were meant to be a comfort to us by telling us “rightness is not necessarily righteousness”, God’s not looking at the same stuff we are in others or ourselves, and God’s not out to scare the hell out of us as much as He’s trying to instill His love and mercy into us, we still take this Sunday as the Church’s last warning to “scare the hell out of us” and motivate us to “do Lent right or else”, which scrupulously includes judging ourselves whether or not we got rightly humbled enough by doing it wrong so we can be a Publican or Returning Prodigal. Sigh.

Anyway…, back to the fear of judgment and hell which, I think, this parable is NOT about. Fear drives a BIG bus full of a LOT of people. But if the parable is not intended to sell us a ticket to get ON that bus by telling us about Sheep and Goats and eternal pastures or damnation, then why is it here so near the beginning of the most demanding of all seasons of the Church and what is it trying to say to us that is an encouragement to engage the disciplines rather than a threat of damnation if we don’t?

Before we talk about “The Message” I think there’s a couple things we need to understand about the parables in general that frames the message of The Sheep and the Goats. This parable begins like all the other parables: The default status of everyone at the start of all the parables is that they are “included”. The Publican and Pharisee were both in the Temple praying before God. The Elder Brother and Younger Brother were both sons of the Father in His household. The wheat and the tares grew up together in one field. “All manner of things” were drawn up from one lake in the Fisherman’s net. The wise and un-wise virgins were both invited to the wedding feast. The faithful and bad stewards were all in the household of the Master and all were given gifts. The King’s friends and strangers and outcast beggars were all invited to the great banquet. The loitering, lazy, and diligent were all given jobs in the field and all were paid the same. The renters of the vineyard had complete control and access to the Landowner’s fields and property. ALL were “included” in whatever place the parables took place prior to the surprise separations at the ends of the parables.

So we see this parable is like all the others: The Sheep and the Goats were one flock: both shepherded by the same Good Shepherd. They both heard His voice and knew His face, and Jesus explains the meaning: “all the nations were brought before the King”. ALL the nations were under one King and citizens of one Kingdom just as there was one Shepherd and one flock.

So, of course your mind jumps immediately to “The Separation”… who gets booted and why?! But wait! Come to a FULL STOP before turning down that street! Before we can know that, we HAVE to understand what Jesus is telling us about God: The default is, He includes EVERYONE. You are simply IN because you are God’s beloved creation.

Did you catch that? EVERYONE IS IN! Inclusion was NOT BASED ON GOODNESS AND RIGHTEOUSNESS AND CORRECTNESS. You weren’t “out” and then got in because He thought you were finally worthy somehow by your goodness, performance, or even your great humility and repentance. You are “in” simply because Christ “drew all men to Himself” as He promised he would. There are no qualifications to be included except that you exist as a beloved child of God to be embraced by Him, just as both Brothers were sons even though both of them had a wrong-headed understanding of being a son and who their Father was. (An important corollary to this is the intrinsic goodness of creation. ALL things are good, evil has no objective substance but is the deprivation and disfigurement of the good, but that’s another blog post.)

So… now that we have that down, here comes the Judgment. If inclusion is the default and EVERYONE is already “IN”, how and why does someone get excluded and what does that mean?

In the Parables, exclusion is based on “non-comformity” to being “IN”. You are not included because you KNOW you are in by some measure of doing the stuff that you think it takes to GET IN. The Wheat and Tares were both in the field and both did what came naturally: They grew in the same sunshine, rain and soil. The “stuff” was caught up in the big net all swam and floated in the same lake. ALL were “in the wedding parties”. ALL could eat freely to their fill from the King’s banquet table. All were hired regardless of qualifications and all were given equal wages regardless of performance.

Special knowledge or performance was not required be INCLUDED in the first place. But the kicker of the Sheep and the Goats is this: “knowledge” was not the basis of being EXCLUDED. The Sheep were clueless about being “righteous” or doing righteous things (“when did we see you…?”). But so were the Goats (“when did we see you…?”). Neither were asked to hand in a time-card of services attended, a spreadsheet of prayer rules kept, nor were subjected to a dogmatic exam to test the precision of their theological knowledge. SURPRISE!!! There was one question on the final exam. No one prepared for it because they weren’t really paying attention during the Teacher’s lectures nor had they read the textbook carefully. They didn’t even read the synopsis of the entire course: Love God. Love your neighbor.

The “exclusion” in judgment, it turns out, isn’t getting an “F” on the dogmatics final: describe and identify your Teacher. Exclusion is a lack of similarity to and identification WITH the Teacher. The “test” of the goodness of a creation is, “does it look like and reflect its Creator?” The test of the Parables is: Do you act like a citizen of the King? Which servant acts like the Generous Master? Which flock follows the voice of the Shepherd? Which plant actually becomes the Wheat/Bread of Life? What is a real, live Fish and not just a piece of dead, rotting flotsam in the lake? Who does “naturally” what one does in a flock, in a field, in a lake, in a wedding party, at a banquet, as son? There is no “merit” or qualification for reward for just growing if you’re a plant, swimming if you’re a fish, rejoicing if you’re at a wedding, eating and drinking if you’re a guest at a banquet. You’re just “being” as you were created to be in the world created for you.

So, the separation is based on this: Who was paying attention to life itself? Who sees God in everything (after all, He is everywhere present and fills all things), including all your fellow human beings? Who was just “being human” and lived intuitively in the image of God in which they are created (even if they don’t know His real name): You know… that “God” who visits the prisoner, heals the sick, feeds the hungry, and clothes the naked, is kind to strangers, not because they were instructed by a law handed down from on high, but were merely living by the intuitive goodness of their created nature?

For back-to-back Sundays we heard Gospel stories of two visions of God. The Pharisee “knew” God as a judge who rewards correct devotion. The Elder Brother knew the Father as an employer who rewards hard work and duty. The irony is, the Publican and The Prodigal Son knew the same things: But the Publican is driven to humility by his failure to live up to the Law adequately, and the hungry Prodigal makes his father an employment offer He can’t refuse to get a meal because he “knew” his Father just might sign the contract and take him up on it. But the Publican and the Prodigal found a God they didn’t know, and so did the Pharisee and the Elder Brother. God did not include any of them for their service, attitude, devotion, morality, piety or knowledge. They were all “one” in Him by virtue of who HE is. The divisions among them were not of His work but by the lack of theirs whether they were in the House, the Temple, the narthex or the Far Country.

So, you ask… who then is the “goat”? It is interesting that St. John Chrysostom notes that the word for “goats” indicates they were “kids”, young goats: not fully matured, like children who are easily distracted and inattentive. The Sheep and the Goats both lived in the same flock, the same fields, just as we all live on the same earth in the same Kingdom. Both encountered the sick, the naked, the hungry, the poor, the imprisoned. The Sheep saw them. The Goats? Well… Perhaps they saw, but not with the eyes of the Shepherd/King. The Sheep saw what the King saw: “If you did this to the least of these, my brethren, you did it to Me.” They were all related. Brothers bear the likeness to one another because they have the same Father. As St. John and the Fathers say, “if we see our brother clearly, we see God.” And the God we see is one who bore all the infirmities, imprisonment, nakedness and hunger of His brethren, and so the Sheep do likewise.

But we can miss all that if we don’t pay attention. The Goats were distracted, inattentive, immature. They paid attention to all the “stuff” that Jesus preached about in His other parables: Legal exactitude, fastidious ritualism, scrupulous correctness, perfect performance: religiosity that mercilessly obscured the outrageous un-naturalness of human suffering, failure and need. They were distracted by everything that was “shiny” in the carnival of religion and paid attention to “the carney” who said the cheap rewards were easily attainable and they bought the tickets to play a rigged ring toss. In their immaturity they loved the lights and sounds and smells (and even the rigors, deprivations, hardships, and fasts). They admired the reflection of themselves in the mirror of “religiousness” instead of the holy image that exists in themselves and their brothers, the very image of their Shepherd and King and God.

The moral of the pre-Lenten Gospels (and all the Parables) is: We indeed have a Father and a Judge, but mercy triumphs over judgment. Listen to the still small voice in you that is your Shepherd speaking to your Goat-self. Pay attention! Don’t get distracted! Don’t go running after self-affirming damnation!

Look. See. Act. And when we stand in judgment with love on our hands and not blood, even if we are ignorant of the Name of the one whose we bear, we will be told of, and then know, our original inclusion in Him… even if we counted ourselves as excluded, because we included His brothers and comforted them.

I pray that I will stand before God in judgment, not in expectation of, but in surprise at my salvation.

╬ ╬ ╬ ╬ ╬ ╬

So, now… of course our mind goes down this rabbit hole so I may as well tack this on here and now: What does all this have to do with the hope for or possibility of universal salvation?

Let’s being with universal inclusion. That is God’s default setting. And let’s also begin with judgment, because all the Parables and doctrines of the Second Coming and the Kingdom to come DO say there will be a separation, an accounting for, or revelation of our sins before the judgment seat of Christ. The issue is not whether there is inclusion or separation, there will be one. The issue in a nutshell is this: Is the separation a willful, calculated torment by God as a retributive punishment on the sinner for his offenses, and is it eternal?

First, I would like to take “eternity” off the table before I address my specific issues with Matthew 25 and judgment. I will only say that the translation of “aiónios” as “eternal” is an interpretation, not necessarily a translation in certain contexts. It CAN refer to eternity, but it can also mean a specific period of time that is finite. I will simply give this link to Al Kimel’s excellent article HERE that covers that issue very well.

So what about the Judgment scene in Matthew 25? God condemns those who did not visit the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the captives or give drink to the thirsty because “if you did it to the least of these, my brethren, you did it to Me.” God eternally, infinitely and intimately, to the point of the Incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection identifies with “the least of these”. It is impossible for God to turn His back on or NOT identify with them. God cannot be separated from the sick, needy, hungry, naked and imprisoned.

Here is my question and issue: Are we to believe that God sends sick people into fiery captivity, stripped of their wedding garment, who will hunger and thirst after His righteousness eternally, and then He willfully does NOT, as punishment, ever visit them in prison, clothe them in His wedding garment, give them the Bread and Water of Life, and heal their infirmity and restore them to their original created health and wholeness? Am I to believe God is capable of doing that as God after He sends people TO hell for NOT doing those things in His image and Name to “the least of these”? If so, then it seems to me that God expects human beings to be a better God than He is capable of being.

So that’s my issue in a sentence. It’s not proof of the possibility of universal salvation, but if I have to choose between a hope for eternal hell for “the least of these” and the hope that God will eventually do what He demands of even us imperfect sinners to be saved, I’ll choose the latter.

And in the end (literally and figuratively) I suppose I have all eternity to hash that out with Him whether I end up in the eternal Sheep or Goat pen, and He has all eternity to make good on being the God who says He truly loves the least of these more than He demands that I do.

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By the time Lent comes around we should know that the Gospels tell us that mercy is a King, a Master, a Father who forgives a debt, a grievous offense, a sly deception, a willful moral failure, a blindness to what is right and good, shooting for the moon or for a good ‘nuff showing and coming up short, and restores the offender. He saves simply because He wants to and because He can. He saves because of who HE is, not in response to what the offender offers up to attain reconciliation with Him. He reconciles Himself to us, we embrace that reconciliation.

In offering mercy, He never draws up a contract for a deferred re-payment plan with penalties and interest if not repaid in full by a deadline. He does not exact retribution, take vengeance, or require satisfactory compensation from an innocent third party on behalf of the offender in order to appease Himself, balance His books, or assuage His anger at the transgressor whom He loves.

During the rigors of ascetical disciplines and intensified focus on being pious during Lent it is easy to forget that God has mercy on screwed up humans, not because of our sobbing repentance, great (or even mediocre) acts of pious penance, recitation of long contrite self-deprecating prayers, our ability to FEEEEL penitential (as if His mercy is measured out by the intensity of our “spiritual” feelings), making Him a promise of future holiness He cannot refuse, nor a carefully fabricated deal that we know is a low-ball scam we’re incapable of pulling off even now, much less in the long run after Pascha/Easter.

The “great faith that saves” is defined in the Gospels inside and outside of Lent: It is being un-cool and un-cooly climbing a tree to catch a glimpse of what all the cool kids are talking about. It is being outcast lepers or someone blind to the real world and wanting to get healed so badly you yell at God to get his attention so loud his apostolic bodyguards tell you to STFU because you’re disturbing the sanctity of the procession and you’re bugging their Holy Master.

It is walking toward home in bad need of a bath, your stomach growling, and rehearsing a calculated elevator speech crafted for your Father that neither you nor your older brother understand. It is crawling on the ground getting stepped on just to secretly touch a dirty string of the hem of a garment. It is crashing a dinner party of notoriously pious influencers who all know you’re a social media click bait whore to pour Clive Christian No. 1 Passant Guardant on the popular viral guy they’re all envious of. It is sneaking around in the dark back alleys to find truth because you fear the consequences of losing your current status in your community.

The Gospels tell us that “great faith” isn’t so much boldness, emotional piety, intense performance of prescribed rituals, or even our anticipation of a response or result if we do a particular thing we THINK is spiritually efficacious. Faith that saves is more like a last ditch, grasping at straws, shooting in the dark, absolute desperation. We’re saved when there’s nothing to lose if we become a fool, offend properly religious folks, go for broke and risk annoying or hit up a guy who said he is God for a favor because well…, you just never know. What’s to lose either way in our hopeless situation, right?

If we think we did Lent good and are impressed that we did it (partly, more, mostly) right we got it wrong. If we did Lent right, we know we did it wrong. St. John Chrysostom’s Paschal Homily ends up telling us that the correct answer to the question of the entire Triodion is: We ALL fall under God’s mercy and He meets all of us sinners where we are and how we are, no matter how screwed up, devout, impious, fervent, lazy, gung-ho, doubtful, faithful, inconsistent, dutiful, inattentive, or intentional we are. Publican, Pharisee, Elder Brother, Prodigal, Sheep, Goats, Wise or Foolish Virgins, Pilate, Barabbas, Fickle Crowds, Soldiers, Dismas, Judas, Peter, John…, that’s us in need of mercy.

Pascha is ultimately about God who is in the business of healing and saving His creation, not sending it to hell if it can be avoided at any cost..., including the life of His Son.

He loves us to death.

Which gives us a clue about how serious He is about the whole mercy thing.

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There are several versions of this story. This is adapted from a story of Abba Macarius of Egypt (4th century), in “Give Me a Word”, Popular Patristic Series, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2014, p.186.

Previous “Illustrated Sayings” can be found in my blog:

#1 The Weight of Judgment

#2 The Pilgrimage

#3 The Monk Who Kept a Woman in His Cell

#4 You Will Be Like God

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One of my resolutions is to do more writing, drawing, and podcasting. As I was working on this Orthograph I noticed my hand was noticeably less steady than it was even a couple years ago. I inherited my Dad’s essential tremors and I noticed mine beginning about six years ago. So, I need to get to my illustration projects before my essential tremors progress much more.

So, may you muddle through 2026 relatively unscathed by economics, plagues, relationships, and ill-advised decisions. And heck, why not… maybe even be happier, stronger, wiser, contented, healthier and centered. I’ve heard that can happen, even in these times.

A blessed 2026 to all my wonderful subscribers!

Let’s do this!

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(It seems the doors to the Church are always half-open and half-closed depending on who is in charge of gate-keeping.)

When the priest at the church tour said “the Orthodox church is the one true church” my friend and I elbowed each other, smirked, and said, “Yeah… right….” I was raised Catholic and even though I’d never been in an Orthodox church before that tour, I figured the Greek Orthodox church was just Catholicism on steriods even though I didn’t know if Greeks had mean nuns or played bingo. Their gyros and loukoumades were much better than the Knights of Columbus’ fish frys and Shrove Tuesday pancake breakfasts.

My second real life encounter was serendipitous (God’s “harder to spell without googling it” way of doing things). I used to do construction work in a mid-rise office building in downtown Phoenix on a main street. There was an accident at the main street exit so I took the alley and went down a side residential street. I drove by a house with a big cross on the roof. There was a yard sale in the front yard and an old man in a black robe and two women in Renaissance Festival peasant-farmer’s wife garments. I stopped for the yard sale mostly, and curiosity partly. It turned out to be an Orthodox monastery. I talked to the “monk” for a couple hours. He showed me his chapel in process he was building in his garage. He was oddly pleasant. I had no reference for what an Orthodox monk was supposed to be like so I chalked it up to my ignorance. It would be 20 years later I’d discover he was “non-canonical”, a little bit (actually, a lot) culty, and had, ummmm… “allegations”.

My three random dalliances over a twenty year span with Orthodoxy eventually became purposeful and I was received in real life in 1999. By that time there were Yahoo chat rooms where I was evangelizing and confounding heretics even before becoming truly Orthodox sacramentally.

A year after being received I was a “the story of my journey to Orthodoxy” interview guest on “Come Receive the Light”, a local radio show hosted by Fr. Andrew Barakos, a Greek priest. Short story, he liked my “radio presence” and asked me to fill in for him the next week. I, and my friend Allan Boyd (now Fr. Allan), ended up doing the show for him for the next year. He eventually just handed it over to me. Allan went to seminary and I brought Bill Gould on as the co-host. The recordings of our live broadcast became “Our Life in Christ”, the first podcast on the beginnings of Ancient Faith Radio (and maybe the first Orthodox podcast on earth before they were called podcasts). Since then I’ve been a blogger, pod-caster, author, commenter on Facebook, and a catechist/evangelist, and involved in helping establish mission parishes. All of this was before “Influencer” was an ordained position on the internet. I was just having fun and enjoying the new internet horizon of having connections to people all over the world. And I still am…

So all of that is to say, I was “net-o-dox” before I was Orthodox. I was part of a group that started an Orthodox Mission Parish before we were Orthodox (it was “with a blessing… kind of” but that’s another story). I was a public Orthodox evangelist before, as they say, the baptismal garments came out of the dryer and the fragrance of the chrism dissipated. Over my thirty three years of Orthodox involvement in parish life, diocesan life, in personal relationships, in private logismoi, theologically, and all over the internet, I believe I have both done and seen virtually every “crazy convert”, zealous, sincere, immature, overboard, fearful, hesitant, and confused thing that people think and do when coming into the church and navigating the dissonance of its lived reality versus our internet curated expectations. My “Orthographs” are kind of an autobiography of “my Orthodox life in Christ”.

With that kinda “been there, done that” personal history I’m now observing the current tidal wave of inquirers flowing into and over-flowing parishes. I am currently in a parish that is averaging 70+ catechumens at any one time. I know this phenomenon has already and will continue to increasingly challenge the abilities and resources (pragmatic, spiritual and emotional) of the bishops, priests, dioceses, and parish church communities. It is an unprecedented issue to figure out how to adopt so many people at once into a parish family and help them manage their expectations and reactions to the encountered realities of American Orthodox church life. Way back when the Evangelical Orthodox and Christ the Savior Brotherhood came in by the hundreds, they were already established “communities” and churches for the most part so assimilation into a new parish was not “the issue” (but, there were issues, just not THIS issue…).

So, like many of the current “inquirers” who walk through the doors of the church, I had been “catechized” already on the internet. When I finally showed up for my first Vespers service at the “food festival” Greek Cathedral parish, I was already intellectually converted and was “evangelizing” online even though I’d only been in a church once for a tour and had never attended a church service.

However, the internet completely, utterly failed to prepare me for what I encountered at my first liturgical service. There was a chanter, one person in the “congregation”, and the priest… and the three of us visitors sitting in a pew toward the back of the chapel. It turned out it was the chanter and his girlfriend, the assistant priest, and us who showed up for Vespers. I had no clue that my confusion, bewilderment, disappointment and yes, judgment and yes, more than a bit of condemnation at the lack of attendance at a service for an 800 family parish. In the church of Christ at least half the congregation was at weekday services. So, this would essentially be what I would be dealing with both in my personal life and with inquirers to Orthodoxy for the next twenty six years.

Like everyone else who comes to the church “already catechized” I did not know that internet Orthodoxy is like reading an online dating profile and looking at carefully chosen, Photo-shopped pictures. The personality, habits, disposition, attractiveness, and compatibility of my new theological lover were just fantasies that I’d constructed. Of course they were… I had never talked to her, gone out on a date, and encountered her in person. I had never shared a meal with her, known her relatives (often from a foreign country), dealt with cultural shock, accommodated her idiosyncrasies, hung out with her raucous family at holidays, met her drunk uncle, learned her language, or sat in prolonged silence with her. Everything I knew about her was second hand hearsay by other people who had never been out on a date with her either, but had opinions about her personality filtered through their own “personal research” online.

When I showed up at vespers unannounced, I caught the reality of Orthodoxy in its tattered bathrobe and house slippers, no make-up, smoking an unfiltered Camel with a mason jar of cheap chardonnay in her hand. (Actually, one of my catechetical experiences was helping with a Mission parish where the priest would go outside during the long chanter’s parts of Orthros/Matins and smoke in the parking lot.) I repressed my disappointment with what I found, because there IS an ineffable, irresistible, unexpected beauty when you meet her face to face that no description, dogma, testimonial or digital experience can give you.

So, like many who come to the Church via the internet, I had found the Church and became Orthodox for the beauty it promised. And, yes the beauty existed as advertised. As did the mind-boggling theological nuances, the profound spiritual direction, and rich liturgical depth. But, unlike the internet, real people with real spiritual lives and real issues also existed in it, and I could not delete, unfriend, or fire a condescending, insulting comment over their digital heads and go to bed checking how many “likes” it got, and smirk at my correctness and cleverness. When you sit across from someone at coffee hour the rules of the game are incarnational, not digital and far more complicated.

The reason you can’t just show up unannounced and then expect to be assimilated quickly and easily according to your personal wishes is complicated. Wellll… not complicated, it’s simple: because the Church is made up of people. Lots of them. Each one of them is in “the hospital for sinners” with pre-existing conditions. I hoped for saints but over the years I found the church of Corinthian libertines and Cretan gluttons. I hoped for one uniform understanding of the Gospel of mercy, but found legalistic fundamentalist Galatians who viewed the Gospel as “law”. I hoped for the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace but found Timothean contentious schismatics who wrangled over words and created factions in the church. I hoped for humble pious clergy but found 3rd John clerics who loved their pre-eminence and respectful greetings in the marketplace (and the internet). I hoped for the un-spotted bride of Christ but found the seven churches of Revelation: Ephesians who had left their first love, pagan Pergamites, lukewarm Laodiceans. I hoped for a church with one mind but found nit-picking Pharisees and savvy Sadducees. I hoped for speaking the truth in love but found arrogant, angry, condescending apologists. I hoped for a purer Christianity and found synchretistic and superstitious Colossians.

I expected to find charismatic, pastoral, monastic bishops that “rightly divided the word of truth” but found flawed men in gold robes that often did not divide it according to “the truth” as I understood it from You-tubers, Orthodox websites and discussion forums. I found that my bishops’ decisions trump “Influencer”™ interpretations of the Canons and even the interpretations of the Canons by bishops in other jurisdictions…and heck, even in the same jurisdiction!

I hoped to find the Bishops’ and Synod’s administration of the Church to be like how I managed my own business: with transparency, timely decisiveness, sensibility, with no respect of persons, and clarity in communication. But…, well…..

I hoped to find clerics and a parish culture that fit my understanding of competent, pastoral, wise church leadership and ministry, but it never occurred to me that my expectations of what that looks like were filtered through my American democratic, fundamentalist, congregationalist Bible Church culture and experience. I soon found I had to figure out how to live in a clerical leadership paradigm of a Middle Eastern culture that was explained to me as “God is an Arab sheik and the priests are his princes…” And it was not received well when I asked, “where is this in Scripture?”

Well… you get it. In short, in spite of six years of reading books, surfing the web, and chatting online, I didn’t get it. At all. I was a spiritual adolescent raised by the wolves of the internet (and in many things was still an infant). I thought I was more mature than I was, and thought I knew more than I did. I knew SOME stuff, but not enough stuff, nor the right stuff. I knew how to live in the small world I made up in my head but not how to live in a big, real world I’d never had to actually navigate and not just pontificate about. I “knew” almost everything, judged almost everyone, and understood almost nothing. I knew book and internet intellectual Orthodoxy. I had no clue about how 2000 years of culturally informed, persecuted, martyred, and Old Country theocratically and oppressed “lived Orthodoxy” looked and lived.

Once I was “in”, I soon found that my bishop, priest, cradle and mature (and immature) parishoners, (or the Church in general) didn’t care about my (nor my internet friends’) opinions, prognostications, interpretations of the Canons, or follow the same “Holy Fathers”™ I did. No one ever asked me who should be ordained, defrocked, commemorated or regarded as a saint or a heretic. They were less impressed with my keeping the visible spiritual disciplines as I was about their slackness in keeping them.

So, intellectually I understood the Church was still in existence dogmatically and practically. And I kind of knew that the Church of Acts 28 was not identical to the Church of Acts 2, nor is the Church of 2025 identical to the Church of Acts 28. To be Orthodox one must accept that the Holy Spirit has guided the changes in the Church (from structure, to liturgy, to Canons, to vestments, to clerical offices, to non-dogmatic doctrines, prayers, fasting rules, etc.) from Acts 2 to the present day. Even through the really messy parts of the story. And when you really understand Church history you know there’s about as much messiness as there is holiness. Contrary to my old Bible church’s teachings, New Testament Christianity didn’t have to be re-discovered, recovered, or restored to its minimalistic First Century purity, it has always existed both in maximalist dysfunction and piety.

So I eventually came to accept that the Church has both an unbroken apostolic succession and an unbroken succession of broken sinners... both within the clergy and laity. And just as the presence of Christ Himself in the flesh and His twelve first-hand witnesses and seventy disciples empowered by the Holy Spirit couldn’t give us a prettier picture of the Church in the New Testament, so 2,000 years of tradition can not either. Church history only affirms and puts an exclamation point on the picture of the Church we see in the Epistles.

In actuality, that is good news and bad news, but not really bad news, just real news.

What does all this mean for the new inquirer, catechumen and convert? And perhaps more importantly, what does this mean for a priest and his parish family, because no one becomes Orthodox on the internet, only in your living room. Just as watching weddings on the internet does not make you married nor a spouse to anyone, so the internet cannot make one Orthodox. That only happens in real life with real people in real relationships. And it’s hard. For everyone.

For the inquirers and catechumens I think this message is clear: the Church will not be what you expect. You WILL be both astounded and disappointed at what you find. The more you think you know, the more you don’t. And you will have trouble letting your “stuff” go and engaging what is real that is in front of you. Find someone who doesn’t speak in memes and platitudes about the Church and what it means to “be really Orthodox” to talk to. It may not be someone in a black robe. Find someone old who has been there for decades, not a few (under ten) years, and has won wisdom the hard way not just from books. Be a part of the family. Do chores. Cook supper. Work and put money in the jar. Pray at the festal holiday dinner table with even the uncles, cousins and siblings you can’t stand.

It has been my experience with hundreds of converts in person and online for nearly thirty years that the faster and harder someone runs AT the church the more likely they will soon run THROUGH the church and out the other side, and not slow down to humbly engage in her life and get to know and love her flawed and imperfect people. Unless someone tackles them before they make it out the back door.

To the church and its leadership, whether ordained or lay persons, I’d say there is nothing new under the sun. People have flowed in and out of the church for over 2,000 years for various reasons and under various influences and in all cultures. Some stay and become saints and some do not. Do not be fooled by zeal, piety or knowledge. It is not the same thing as a truly humble spiritual life. If someone is pushing to “be saved” (especially by their preferred method) it is more a red flag that there’s more going on than just love for Christ and His church. EVERYONE needs to slow down. Everyone.

Someone recently asked me, “How are we going to keep all these young men in the church?”

I told them, “By love. If they have not been in your homes, at your tables, and know they can call you and trust you with anything and everything, they are a flight risk. There has to be a reason above knowledge for them to stay in the church. And that reason only comes through a personal relationship with people who love them.”

Now, go love some inquirers.

(A version of this appeared in Jacob’s Well Fall Issue, 2025).

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Even though I was baptized as an infant and considered myself a Christian, I received a “true, biblically correct, salvific, adult baptism” in the church of Christ. It wasn’t just because MY prior baptism was a non-rational, un-biblical, infant baptism done by the whore of Babylon. No matter who did it and where you were baptized prior, you pretty much were going to get dunked again. Unless… it was done in a baptistry (or lake, pond, pool, fountain etc.) by someone in OUR particular expression of the church of Christ, namely acapella, collaborative with other congregations, kitchen allowed in the church building, non-charismatic, Sunday school program, women allowed to verbally ask questions in Bible classes, multiple “cups” for communion, no “mixed swimming” or dancing, and Bible College or “School of Preaching” educated ministers. We baptized even church of Christ people from the other more liberal or conservative expressions of our own “Restoration Movement” history, and if you wanted to be “better safe than sorry” coming from another church of Christ we’d baptize you again just to be sure.

Our hermenuetic was: “We speak where the Bible speaks and we are silent where it is silent”, “we have no creed but the Bible”, and “we don’t follow the teachings of men” i.e., Bible scholars, heretical denominational teachers, etc.. BUT... as biblically, logically, and dogmatically air-tight as our arguments were, in Bible studies and classes there were ALWAYS vehement and heated discussions about “who is/can be saved according to this or that Bible verse and those teachers’ interpretation of them”. St. Dismas (The Thief on the Cross) does this duty in EVERY church.

It was clear that the Bible proved there was no “Catholic Pope”. There was a conservative publisher that put out a “study Bible”, a King James Bible with a concordance and Bible dictionary index added on. It had the basic standard entries of biblical names, topics, important words like “faith”, “salvation”, “church” etc. and gave a brief definition and a few passages to look up. Every so often there would be an entry like “Rosary: Not in Bible”. “Immaculate Conception: Not in Bible”. “Sacraments: Not in Bible”. “Perpetual Virginity of Mary: Not in Bible”. “Pope: Not in Bible”. You get the idea. There was no infallible Pope over the church except the one holding that Bible in his hands and interpreting it for his one true church: himself.

Even so, there was a baseline uniformity of beliefs and practices within our “brand” of Restoration Campbellite churches of Christ. Our teaching was that the Bible is so plain and clear that a person on a desert island with only a Bible would come up with OUR understanding of all things and, if that desert island had natives who converted to Christ, they would create a congregation of people doing exactly what WE were doing and believing in 20th Century American worship, ritual, ecclesial organization, and dogmatics.

But, in spite of our general uniformity of beliefs and practices, our own personal interpretations of the “plain teachings” of the texts were…. you guessed it, not quite as plain, personal, untainted by “doctrines of men”, and un-influenced by theological forces outside of our “fellowship” as we thought.

My bible college mentor once told me “a preacher’s biggest ego trip is his library”. And it was true. I had already begun amassing a “low whistle of awe” sized book case from the “Christian Book Distributor” (CBD as it was called back then). They put out a newspaper sized catalogue about every 3 months you could subscribe to. By my junior year I had full sets of the ISBE, Barclay’s Commentaries, Matthew Henry, The Expositor’s Bible, and a hardcover copy of Lidell and Scott’s Greek Lexicon that cost me 100.00, almost two weeks’ wages in 1974. This was about 1/4 of my library in about 2008. (When we had to move to a new house to take care of my parents in 2016 I didn’t want to pack and move 80 boxes of books so I sold most of it and donated all my Orthodox books to my parish as a lending library.)

So, the more preachers I knew and whose libraries I saw (which, by our hermeneutic should have been… well, just a Bible), I realized they were actually influenced by books written by denominational scholars, and by the teachings of certain men whose teachings they liked and followed in their preaching school or bible college. And those teachers were also influenced by denominational scholars and books by them. (One could almost guess which denominational theology was the common threads in certain theologies). And…. all of those were the men teaching us that we used ONLY the infallible Bible and our personal intellect and careful study as our source of all doctrine and practice.

Ehhhhhhh…..

In my Bible college program we had a class called “Denominational Doctrines”. One day I called it (in the Muppet-tone) “Denoma-doc” and it stuck for quite a while in the Bible Department.

“Denominational Doctrines” was a crash course of refuting the heresies and false doctrines of all the major Christian religions of our day. Our text book (which I had for 25 years until I sold my library) was a couple hundred pages and maybe five to ten pages dedicated to each denomination. The Orthodox Church got two pages as the bastard child of the Catholic church established by Constantine (of course). In general, the text basically cherry-picked quotes from the denomination’s founders or recognized scholars that, in the minds of the textbook writer, were both an accurate, succinct, AND a “self-condemnatory” exposition of their positions. Brevity sacrificed nuance and depth and the entries ended up, of course, as a caricature of the denomination’s actual teachings. If you went door-knocking with that course’s information as an authoritative representation of a church’s teaching and was invited into the house of a well-catechized Lutheran, Methodist, Baptist, 7th-Day Adventist, etc., you would be scripturally and theologically demolished with the same Bible you brought into their home to refute their errors (ask me how I know…).

Over the years, as I studied more Scripture and “our theologians” and other denominational theologians, I realized there was a common issue with all the Christian religions with more than ohhhh, say… 100 years of church history. The issue was how the denominations regarded the teachings of their “founding fathers” and the later teachings of their subsequent authoritative disciples and theologians who expanded, expounded, applied, questioned, or just flat contradicted the founding fathers’ teachings.

It seemed to me that the trajectory of a church’s history, whether it is 2000 years or 50 weeks old is the same: As the hermeneutics and doctrines become more examined and nuanced across their church history, it becomes the job of the current generation to reconcile apparent (and even blatant) irreconcilable differences among their own theologians. What is at stake is how to include the variants of the “founding fathers” and their later theologians to be in the same flock and not create a schism or regard them as heretics within their own church and by their own teachings.

One way to reconcile contradictory issues is to appeal to context and nuance. By this approach, a teaching may SEEM contradictory, but within the greater tradition it can be explained away a “difference that isn’t really a difference, but just a nuanced situational teaching that does not mean what it seems to mean if it were in OUR context”. This is basically the Protestant approach when defending “biblical inerrancy” against apparent internal scriptural, theological, and external current scientific, historical, philosophical, and cultural contradictions within the biblical texts. Ultimately what is at stake is the authority, reliability, truthfulness, and infallibility of our God-breathed, human mediated, foundational and guiding textual tradition. In the Protestant “sola scriptura” framework if ONE jot or tittle of Scripture can be shown to be false or in error, the entire scaffold of the authority, veracity, and yea verily, salvation, faith, the church, the very existence of God and Christ themselves is all up for grabs and challengable. Why our culture craves demonstrable, defendable, and evidence based infallibility of our spiritual texts as a basis of faith is another whole philosophical issue.

There are Orthodox people and teachers who approach the Church Fathers and monastic pastoral and doctrinal teachings in the same way. They assume (and require for their theological peace of mind), like Protestants, that the “witnesses” are ultimately infallible and therefore there are no, nor CAN there be, any REAL contradictions among them even if the teachings seem to say such. The problem is, if a church father contradicts the teachings of another church father whose teachings I like/agree with more, then the logical end of that road is for me is to believe the opposing teacher was a heretic and the Church was in error regarding him as a saint. Which places my interpretations of the Fathers and my theological opinions about their teachings above the church’s wisdom… and that is another whole can of worms.

It seems to me that the issue is not HOW to reconcile the disparate teachings. The issue is examining the unspoken assumptions we have that require that they MUST be reconciled. Why not simply just accept that the Church Fathers, Patriarchs, monastics, bishops, clergy and illumined saints are not individually infallible and are capable of and do, in fact, hold opinions and say things that are not in keeping with the universal witness of the Church? The church doesn’t care how many quotes one can mine from saints across church history to support an opinion that is not held as “dogma” nor enjoined on all Christians in all places at all times.

It is true that SOME quotes can be explained away by contextual and more “theological” nuances. Regardless, the Orthodox church has never been shackled by the assumption of, nor an out-right teaching that the saints are “personally infallible”. Ultimately the Church can (and does) discard and disregard even a saint’s teaching because they are not regarded as infallible expositors of every doctrinal and pastoral issue they speak about. Even if church history ultimately decides to disregard and censure a specific personal opinion of a saint (even if the opinion is informed by an Orthodox framework and a godly ascetical life), that does not “disqualify” them as a saint. Apart from out-right heresy, they can be and are still regarded as a saint, and there is still room for them with their non-universal opinions under the “Big Tent” of Orthodoxy. Just like us.

And I am fully aware that this is not a universally accepted attitude toward patristics in the Orthodox church and would be regarded as “blatant heresy” by some Orthodox people. But, it is one of those opinions that is permitted under the Big Tent regardless of whether I think it should be made universal by the Church. My experience has been that, no matter how passionate and reasoned and phronematized my opinions are, I have very little (mostly no) influence on very few people in the big picture of world Orthodoxy. Nor have any bishops, monks or patriarchs private messaged me to ask my theological opinion or guidance on how to properly interpret 2,000 years of aggregated church praxis, theology, history and teachings.

Big sigh… they don’t know what they are missing out on……

Anyway, the theological issues of “who is in and who is out”, the validity of our sacraments and praxis, the boundaries of our dogmatics, the degree of intellectual comprehension of church history/theology/hagiography, councils and canons required to be a member in good standing, is not unique to Orthodoxy. Some cast the net wide, some fish with a specific, hand-tied lure, and EVERY church has internal “denominations” of liberal and conservative expressions fishing from different sides of a common boat within the boundaries of its lake.

When we were being catechized our priest said, “The Orthodox Church is the one true church…”

“Father John”, I said, “I’ve been a member of the ‘One True Church’ three times already… you’ll have to do better than that.” He did. And over the decades I’ve been all over the boat, fishing with different lures, and sometimes bailing out of the clown car under one of the Big Tents of the Three Ring Circus of Orthodoxy and jumping into another clown car in another ring under another tent (to mix a bunch of metaphors), but I’m still here.

I think part of why I’m still here is because I have (often begrudgingly) accepted that the Church is Christ’s, not mine. He has worked through, around, over, and within all of the humanity, fallibility, error, impiety, power-grabs, ineptness, blatant sin, and lack of holiness of the men who have led it, beginning with the Apostles. If I stand up from the banquet table and walk out the door of His house (to which I was gracefully invited and handed a spotless garment) because I don’t like his servants, staff, process, timing, spicyness or blandness of His food, and because I don’t like the personalities and presence of His other guests, would be an ungracious affront to His hospitality which was demonstrated by His invitation extended to even me.

What does this mean?

Humble down. Look at your own plate. Eat the banquet no matter what it is, how it is served and by whom, and shared by whom. Consider yourself a guest by grace, just as is the loud, un-cultured, ignorant, talking with his mouth full, spilling on his shirt, and half-drunk, burping sinner sitting next to you.

Whether we like it or not, His is a guest list of imperfections: it is not the correct, righteous, cultured friends of the King, but the poor, crippled, homeless outcasts of the highways and by-ways invited to and sit at the King’s banquet table.

This is the Kingdom of God… done His way, not ours. We are not called to be the gate-keepers, guest-list checkers, inquisitors or bouncers.

You were called to be a guest. Stay in your seat, be a guest and enjoy the party.

If you’ve lost your joy, you’ve probably gotten out of your seat.

Grab a glass of wine off the buffet and try to find the way back to your seat and not out the door.

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This story is told of Abba Isaac. There are slight differences in some tellings, but all have the same essential elements. This is one of the variations I have heard, he is stopped by the angel from entering the church instead of his cell.

The original version is in "Give Me a Word”, The Popular Patristic Series, St. Vladimir’s Press, p. 161.

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I have read several versions of this story over the years but never with a specific name. The story is attributed to the life of Abba Ammonas in “Give Me a Word”: The Alphabetical Sayings of the Desert Fathers, Popular Patristic Series, St. Vladimir’s Press, p. 63

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I became a Bible church Protestant and our self-denial and spiritual disciplines were more a culturally handed down tradition than anything actually written as a “denominational directive”. In my denomination it ran the gamut from abstaining from “by words” (saying GOSH DARN instead of God d@mn, SON OF A GUN instead of sunnabubitch, WHAT THE HECK instead of what the hell, and some believed you could go to hell if you were in a car wreck and your last words were OH SH*T! and died before you repented of cussing), from dancing (standard joke: why don’t Baptists have sex standing up? Because it might lead to dancing…), from any form of alcoholic beverages (Jesus made grape juice at the Wedding of Cana), from playing card games, the lottery and gambling (it might lead to us thinking salvation is a random crap-shoot instead of trusting the “sure thing God”), and from movies (anything rated over PG). Fasting and prayer (quiet time) were totally idiosyncratic and self-directed (unless you had a “discipler” in some of our more culty expressions). Fasting was generally done more as a way to call God’s attention to an issue or need we wanted to see Him change than for personal transfomation.

When I became Orthodox the whole suffering thing got REALLY confusing. We have “mandatory” fasting times and rules that, if you follow them even at the bare minimum you’ll be abstaining from a lot of stuff for half the year between the weekly fasts, pre-Feast Day and communion fasting, and the forty day Lenten seasons, and extended fasting seasons. Fasting isn’t considered “voluntary” because in a sense by becoming Orthodox you volunteered, and many (not all) regard not keeping the bare minimum general “rule” as a sin or at least an occasion for some guilt. So… we must confess guilt for not suffering enough or with a correct attitude in order to be able to take communion… kind of. It’s complicated.

But beyond the normal, general, ordinary non-saint level “abstinence rules” for all Orthodox people there are distinct “cultures of suffering” which embrace, desire (even require), and aggrandizes suffering and the pious endurance of it in order to become spiritually advanced, truly holy, and Christ-like.

Now, I know there are readers at this very moment who have read the last few sentences and are tensing up somewhere inside because how I put it seems…. welllll… there’s not enough pious language and explication, it’s too “matter of fact”, or not theologically and pastorally nuanced enough. But, what I’m saying is: this is what it sounded like to me in the beginning (and for a long time) and even then I was not put off by it because it kind of resonated with my grade school Catholic concepts (and a lot of other stuff I picked up in life along my way to Orthodoxy).

Over the years I’ve read hagiographies about how saints have chosen, accepted and regarded suffering beyond just the normal lay-person level stuff. There’s a couple stories that are fairly ubiquitous and passed around on social media regularly. One is about a Russian woman who thought God had abandoned her because her life was going well and she was not suffering. Another is about a monk who was at peace in his monastic life, was troubled about it, and asked God for tribulation and temptation so he could struggle and be assured of his salvation. Suffering, by this framework, is considered a gift of God, orchestrated by Him and given to us individually tailored to address our personal spiritual state. It’s kind of like “the more I’m suffering the more I should consider myself blessed by God”. At the minimum, even if we don’t believe God sends specific tribulations, we should give glory to God for all things even if we don’t feel “blessed”.

But then I encountered Greeks and Serbs and Romanians and Arabs who seemed to be more focused on the celebratory and festal things about life rather than seeking out or focusing on the pain of existence. I think it was a Greek priest who, when I asked him about the seemingly different views of suffering in the Church said, “Well… the Greeks aren’t happy unless they are not suffering and the Russians are not happy unless they are suffering.” Put all that together with quotes from “The Holy Mountain” folks, 5th century monastic desert life hagiography, and internet “basement YouTube monkabee” influencers tapping into our current American cultural/religious dysphoria it makes for something like an “Orthodox round-a-bout” at the intersection of voluntary asceticism, happiness, and fallen world suffering that we keep going round and round and don’t know where or how to get off it.

If we mix all that in with spirits we’ve stocked in our bar of life experience baggage: a shot of scrupulosity or OCD, a jigger of co-dependence, a dash of guilt and shame, a pour of PTSD, and a couple cubes of bi-polar (on the rocks, shaken not stirred), and we have a top-shelf cocktail called “Spiritual Disaster” which goes down piously easy but then later you are falling down drunk.

So this is not an explication on “the Orthodox meaning of pain” and the “right way” to deal with it. I did a podcast about that already years ago when I had cancer, two dying parents and was locked down during COVID. For this discussion, the general reality is (no matter what your faith tradition and what you are taught by it about suffering) ALL religions believe that we as fallen human beings in an imperfect world (however you theologically/philosophically define that) are called to a spiritual life of self-sacrifice that involves accepting and embracing personal pain for the sake of others, taking on voluntary spiritual disciplines for personal growth, and being grateful to God (or, if not gratitude, at least maybe something like getting by with a resentful, despondently hopeful faith in God’s providences) for involuntary suffering. All these ways of dealing with suffering are exemplified in the lives of Biblical characters, the saints and martyrs, and all we have to do is do what they did.

But… we bring to these hagiographies the same things we bring to the Scriptures, theology, Canons, or “Of The Holy Mountain” wise teachings: ourselves. All of the great spiritual teachers (including Orthodox ones) warn us of falling into delusion, pride, despondency and spiritual ruin because we do not interpret the texts and teachings correctly and mis-apply them to ourselves whether it is the Scriptures, theology, or wisdom literature. So the issue is, what is spiritual reality and what is spiritual delusion when when we are faced with suffering and pain? How do we integrate prescribed suffering (fasting/services etc.) with involuntary suffering we are enduring? And on top of that, how do we choose or decline to take on “extra-curricular” voluntary suffering in the midst of trying to do the Church’s prescribed suffering and, at the same time, handle our personal involuntary suffering?

These are some maxims I’ve come to after many years of imbalance, lack of discernment, unwise choices, pride, delusions, zeal, laziness, despondency, independence and co-dependence.

We are called to self-giving, not self-harm.

We are called to self-lessness, not self-destruction.

We are called to spiritual disciplines, not spiritual masochism.

We are called to deny the flesh, not mutilate it.

We are called to lay aside all earthly cares, not all earthly necessities.

We are called to fasting, not starvation.

We are called to sacrifice our personal agendas, not our families and relationships.

We are called to give up our egos, not our mental health.

We are called to be godly, not God.

We are called to prayer, not a monastic rule and schedule.

We are called to be present for people, not omnipresent.

We are called to be strong, not omnipotent.

We are called to give our cloak if asked for a coat, but not to go naked.

We are called to step out on faith, not walk off a cliff.

We are called to not judge, not to be suckers.

We are called to walk the second mile with someone, not to carry them the entire distance.

We are called to help people, not support their lifestyle.

If you are doing the latter of these you are not being a saint, you are being a "martyr", but not for God.

There is dysfunctionally/neurotic self-martyrdom that is chosen or manufactured. There are people who cannot live without drama, a cause, controversy, or someone/something to "save" requiring great sacrifices. And there are legitimately un-self-orchestrated difficult circumstances that require sacrifice beyond what you thought you were capable of enduring by the grace of God.

If you don’t know which is which in your life, perhaps you should look at finding a spiritual director, or therapist, or even a trusted spiritual friend that you will accept them calling BS on your “stuff” and work it out. It won’t happen over-night and without its own kind of suffering. But the middle path of pain is wisdom: knowing that both an easy life and a painful life can kill us spiritually if we have no discernment. If you die from suffering try to make sure it’s redemptive for yourself and the world and not an indictment of your poor judgment, choices and spiritual discernment.

But… in the end, in general, our intentions for the choices we made were good, even in great obliviousness and at great expense. And no matter how we chose to die and from what, God raises the dead, no matter how dead we are and how dead-end our efforts were.

Thank you for reading my stuff. Nothing here is behind a paywall.

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