There seems to be a cottage industry that has developed in America surrounding the notion that modern life is lonely. It seems this sense of loneliness flows from the notion that we are to be "self-sufficient" and not "need" anybody to help us. We live in a society of radically autonomous people all insisting that…
Fr. Barnabas Powell
Recently, I was hearing one of my new convert's confession, and she admitted that she was having trouble figuring out what to say. I sympathized with her and told her that was very common in the early days of participating in this spiritual discipline of regular confession. Hey, I've known folks who've been Orthodox their…
I’ve heard this so many times: Why can’t I find love? What’s wrong with me? The expectations of some fairy tale notions wound us and wound our children. Add to that, the utter chaos in today's society where love is reduced to mere feelings or, worse, just physical desire, and you have the perfect recipe…
"How come you were able to find this and not Ann?" With that question, my friend's wife wondered at her husband's ability to fix some tech problems more than the 12-year-old in the house! And his answer made me laugh out loud! He told his perplexed wife that he was 60 and their daughter was…
"It's not a "what." It's a "Who." And with that caveat, my initial lesson in becoming Orthodox began.
You see, I always thought that the Christian Faith was about giving mental assent to certain doctrinal precepts and saying the "proper" words. I thought that I could argue and use "apologetics" to convince others that my version…
I remember the first time I heard the prayer "For our deliverance from all affliction, wrath, danger, and necessity, let us pray to the Lord." I thought "What a curious prayer?" Why would the Church have us pray this at every litany? What is really being asked for here?
It wasn't long until some reading of…
The Christian life is a marathon, not a sprint. That means endurance is key. But how do we build endurance in the spiritual life? How do we stick with it to the end? This is such an important aspect to embrace so that we aren't crushed when living the Faith gets hard or exhausting. Looking…
Do you know the difference between a barrier and a threshold? It's actually quite an important distinction.
There's actually some really important contemplation to be done here. Boundaries are necessary for healthy relationships BUT those boundaries need thresholds to stay healthy. I can't tell you how many people have sat in my office talking about…
Growing up in that sliver of Christian sub-culture of the American South in the 70s and 80s, that was the time of the Left Behind novels and constant speculation about who is the Anti-Christ and if Jesus' Second Coming was just around the corner. Was Russia going to invade Israel? Is the bar code the…
Christ is risen!
Paul Tillich once said, “Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith.” Interesting!
Real life is filled with moments of doubt and any honest person has to admit that doubt rears its ugly head in our lives from time to time. The mistake is two-fold - Either trying to ignore doubt…