A Sobering Christmas Ghost Story

leech-marleys-ghost-5Every year faithful Christians struggle with the rush and distraction of holiday preparations and long to take a moment to slow down and reflect on the real meaning of the season. It is an especially difficult struggle for Orthodox Christians as we are prescribed by Mother Church to fast in our preparation to meet the newborn King in his Nativity. The Lenten Fast by comparison is somewhat easier in the sense that the season is already more austere in the wider culture (everyone fasting in the springtime, if for no other religious reason, so that they can fit into summertime bathing suits). The weeks leading up to Christmas in America are anything but austere. Between Christmas parties at work, holiday concerts galore, and the extra latte at Starbucks to keep up our shopping stamina, few things in the broader culture give us pause to stop and reflect on our eternal destiny with one amazing exception, Charles Dicken’s classic Christmas ghost story, A Christmas Carol. Continue reading

Little House and Little Women

The following is a guest post from my oldest daughter. It represents a comparison contrast paper that I had her write as part of our Home School study of the literature of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Louisa May Alcott.

25522119Laura Ingalls and Jo March lived in different parts of America. Laura moved with her family to the big woods, the open prairie and the frontier towns. Jo March stayed in one town of New England most of her life. Both girls were troublemakers by getting into scrapes and starting fights. Continue reading

What C.S. Lewis Did For My Love Life

50th Anniversary of the Repose of C.S. Lewis
+ November 22, 1963 +

My first experience of the writing of C.S. Lewis was through his theological and cultural treatises. He made me a fan of theology when I was the ripe age of only 14. I still have yet to read any of his famous fictional work from start to finish. But the book which made the biggest difference in my life bridges those genres of fiction, culture, and theology. I picked up a copy of Lewis’ Four Loves when I was an undergraduate in college, and it changed my outlook on love and human relationships forever. Continue reading

Unlikely Disciples

I think I am on to a new personal favorite genre of spiritual literature: memoirs that tell the story of a person’s unlikely spiritual transformation in an environment very much unfamiliar and even inimical to the one in which he/she was raised. The market is flooded with conversion stories to Christ, but ones that tell the story in a grateful and truly humble way are few and far between. Eager new converts too often come across to their audience as, “I’ve got it, whatever ‘it’ is, and you need it, whoever ‘you’ are.” With hardly a note of personal connection, their plea for salvation falls flat as nothing more than a hawking of cheap furniture.

Two books that have come out in the last few years buck this trend, the first one by a man who remained a more informed non-believer and the second by a lesbian English professor whose transformation led her to become the wife of a Reformed Presbyterian pastor. Continue reading

The Dogma is the Drama

Just before the beginning of Great Lent, I was thumbing through my library wondering again what would be the best thing to read in this season of the fast. It is a good and pious practice during the forty days of fasting not only to increase prayers and attendance to church services but to practice some form of media fast and engage instead in one good spiritual book that will help one reflect on the life of Christ and repent of sinful habits. It was then that I came across an article which highlighted the book or rather set of plays that C.S. Lewis frequently read during Lent. This and the name Dorothy Sayers both caught my attention. Sayers is popular for her saying that “the dogma is the drama”; i.e., contrary to popular opinion that learning right doctrine is for dull and doltish people who like dusty libraries and don’t know how to have a good time, the dogma of the Church, relating first and foremost to the identity and work of Jesus Christ as He reveals the worship of the All-Holy Trinity, is rather for those who wish to engage in the greatest of all dramas.

Continue reading

God Taking out an Ad in the Paper

Besides having a compelling title, a new book I am poring  over is exceedingly engaging. The ho-hum geometric cover just does not do it justice, and had I not read this great review from World magazine, I might never have made it past the cover.

Now, rather than give you, dear reader, another overview that you might read at the book’s website, I prefer to dive in to one of the funniest bits so far. Continue reading

Being Told What to Read

No one, including yours truly, likes it very much, but without it, our respective worlds would become incredibly cramped and selfishly narrow. I am personally very grateful tonight for some Russian friends who have been telling me for years to read Russian books by Russian authors, even if I have to succumb [temporarily] to the English translations. For a long time, I fought every Dostevsky novel, every Gogol compendium, every maddening Chekov anthology. Even now that I am married to a Russian, I still resist. But little by little, by obeying the advice of my Russophile friends, my resistance is wearing thin. Continue reading