Recently, some dear friends of mine have been suffering. This is hardly the first time I’ve had to watch people I care about suffer, nor will it be the last. However, the present case is hitting me especially hard, because of the people and the nature of the suffering involved. How are we to respond to the suffering of our friends and other loved ones? Continue reading
Today, July 20th, the Church celebrates the feast of my beloved patron, St Maria of Paris, as well as her associates who were canonized with her: her son, St Yuri, still a young man; the gentle, courageous priest St Dimitri (Klepinin); and St Ilya (Fondaminsky), a Jew by birth who refused an opportunity to escape while his kin were being murdered, wishing in his last days to “live with the Christians and die with Jews.” Continue reading
Note: The title of this post is playfully riffing on the title of the first book in a favorite young adult fantasy series by Diane Duane, So You Want to Be a Wizard. One could observe many points of similarity between monastics and wizards.
For the past year or so, I have been fairly open about my desire to go to the monastery, but it’s something that I’ve been seriously thinking about for quite a bit longer than that—very early into my time at seminary, in fact. The experience of seminary, of living in community according to the the rhythm of the liturgical cycles, was nothing short of a revelation for me. It was a homecoming, and the fact that I took to it so immediately and naturally sparked the idea of monastic life. Continue reading
The books I finished last month (minus a manuscript I proofread for the Press), with some brief notes on each: Continue reading
Loving the Word 