A Deeper Kind of Thanksgiving

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We celebrated Thanksgiving today in our usual way of traveling to Nativity of the Virgin Mary Orthodox Church (OCA) in Chelsea, MA for their annual inter-Orthodox Thanksgiving Liturgy. What a tremendous occasion for inter-Orthodox activity, especially the celebration of the Eucharist which in Greek actually means “Thank You” or “Thanksgiving”. The Orthodox Church in America has written a wonderful service designed especially to honor this great American holiday. Continue reading →

Living History into the Present

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To celebrate Veteran’s Day, I chaperoned an annual field trip that my children’s school takes to Plimoth Plantation, in Plymouth, MA, a living history museum which seeks to recreate the atmosphere of the first permanent English settlement in the New World on a site very close to that of the original settlement. The school staff and I have an ongoing joke that we almost prefer to have real and deep conversations with these folks faking the seventeenth century over the usual trite and sometimes fake conversations we find ourselves having with the real (or at least living) people of the 21st century. What is it about our own sense of history which is so lacking that we have to pay actors to help us re-imagine the past? Continue reading →

Here’s to Finding a Path for Life

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Today we celebrate simultaneously the birthday of my father-in-law and the anniversary of the day he first met his future wife and our baba so many years ago. I hear a toast this evening at dinner that I have never heard before: “Here’s to finding or discovering a path/road for our life.” (za zheezin na darogu in Russian) Continue reading →

Redeeming Harvest Time

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Redeeming the times for the days are evil…

Such a redemption is the basis for our whole church life with its organization of time around the liturgical cycles of feasts and fasts, of saints and holy events, of celebrations and commemorations of deliverance by the hand of almighty God. While these liturgical cycles are more than adequate to feed and order the spiritual life, it is important similarly to feed the soul with an equally rich and diverse sustenance of cultural and seasonal celebrations. Continue reading →

The Word on the White Board

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From foreverdigital on flickr.com

“Mr. Friar, what does paradox mean?” In my many years of teaching, I have fielded a variety of questions from students with a relative thirst for knowledge. Some ask with a genuine desire to know; others out of an attempt to trick the teacher into an interesting but irrelevant tangent from the lesson at hand. But I sensed that today’s query into the meaning of a difficult theological word was coming from a need deeper than idle curiosity or a mere thirst to know. And as the day progressed and my second assignment as a 5th grade substitute for a local Catholic elementary school concluded, the need of this particular student for meaning was revealed. Continue reading →

A Never-Sleeping City & the Never-Ending Kingdom

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I went on a quick trip to New York City and back to meet with our bishops who reside at the Cathedral in Midtown Manhattan, southwest of Central Park. Is a quick trip to New York City really possible? The phrase “New York Minute” implies a shrinking of time in which one of chronology’s smallest measurements is made even smaller by a large community of urban dwellers seeking to speed it up. Faster… and yet it always takes me longer than expected to get to my destination. Continue reading →

The Calm of the Cape

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Our first family camping trip brings us to Cape Cod at a state park near Brewster. Everything here on this 65 mile long sand bar is measured by relative distance to exit numbers off of the one highway that runs end to end. “Oh, it’s near exit 10, but I live near exit 7.” This miniature paradise feels cozy and at the same time expansive. With ocean on either side of the arm, it does not take long to drive or even walk to the nearest stretch of sand and salt water. At low tide, a person can disappear on the horizon, walking out onto the wet sand and wading into shallow tidal pools. Continue reading →

Returning to the Fathers

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I listened today to an encouraging podcast on Ancient Faith Radio about Wheaton College’s inauguration of an Early Christian Studies program. I realize this is somewhat old news to some of you, but this podcast really made me think anew of the significance of this and how it points to a general trend among Evangelicals of turning to the Fathers to help them interpret the Bible.

This is how I and many others became Orthodox. I am so pleased to hear of this movement on an institutional level. Personally, I think it is through the prayers of C.S. Lewis, the patron saint of Evangelicals. May it continue…

Almost Home

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Funny on the day before taking a trip across the ocean, we already feel like we are in Boston even though physically we are still in Moscow. One really gets that feeling in the airport.

I personally spend the beginning of the day with a couple of friends walking in a large city park then having another tea with a very warm and lovely priest who speaks English like Charles Dickens. No, really, you wouldn’t believe how refined his speech is and how much he delights in our Mother tongue. He actually taught himself English by reading the Pickwick Papers by Dickens when he was a boy.

A very full and lovely way to say goodbye to Mother Russia!