The Orant

I will never forget the night my journey to understand the sacraments began. It was 1999 and I was meeting with a small with my Lutheran church. I had recently had a strong personal encounter with Jesus Christ and had begun going to meetings in the Church with a passion and fire to learn and share about Jesus.Then the leader, Byron, said something unexpected. He stated that we received the grace of God in the sacraments. This shocked and offended me. I was a good Lutheran and I knew that … [Read more...]

As pravoslavie.ru reports: The reason of the break-off is the dispute on the canonical jurisdiction of Qatar territories, to which both Local Churches have claims This break has been on the horizon for a couple of years now, and it breaks my heart. Antioch and Jerusalem are among the very earliest Churches and most ancient patriarchates. Although neither of these Churches are in communion with Rome, it's still very sad to see something, which appears to me as a glorified pissing match, turn in … [Read more...]

One of my pet peeves is going to a church where people pressure you to take your kids to a nursery to to children's church. This was actually a big issue when I was a protestant. It is less of an issue in the Catholic Church. The reason I was bothered by it was because I feared that separating kids from worship would be detrimental to both the spiritual life of the children as well as to the broader life of the community. I have nothing against those who take special care to teach and care for … [Read more...]

Recently Theologues asked me to contribute a few titles to their summer reading list. I thought I would include my selections here you you all. On top of these I have also been reading some Plato, Hume, and a few books by Michael Chabon (just finished this, and started this yesterday). There's also my comps list too.... which I won't put down in it's entirety here, but I'm sure you'll here about it soon. It's not really "summer reading" as much as it is a never ending sense of anxiety looming ov … [Read more...]

I’ve now had time to sink into Pope Francis’ new encyclical on “Care for our Common Home.” I hope to unpack more of it soon but there have been a few quotes from it that have been coming back to me over and over.  These are probably not the 10 things everyone needs to take away from the letter, but I think they might be the things I need to take seriously in my own life. Hopefully in the weeks to come I will be able to take some time to unpack the whole thing, but for now here are the highlights … [Read more...]

The primary season is now well underway here in the United States. Candidates from both parties are entering into the 'ring' and as they do so the direction of our political campaign is beginning to form.  Right now candidates are listening closely. In the political climate of the 21st century the next president is often the one is able to first articulate a vision of the future that strikes the heart of the nation. Obama did it in 2008 with his message that change could indeed happen, and new … [Read more...]

Yesterday I tried to turn on my computer. It wouldn’t boot. The windows logo just stayed there flashing over and over again.I tried a repair function: failureI tried a memory check: failureI tried to use a restore option: failureI tried to use a Windows 7 recovery disc: failureI put the hard drive in another machine to try recovery: failureI think we’ve all been in situations like this. The technology that we have come to rely on fails us. We come face to face with the fac … [Read more...]