of people attempting to spread the news about Orthodoxy through a variety of media and along with them there have grown a wave of naysayers. For every effort there seems to be a person or two commenting about how this web page or this program isn’t really orthodox, or orthodox enough.  The worst thing of course is to call it “evangelical” or insinuate that somehow the whole thing is poisoned by worldly compromise (perhaps the ideas are interchangeable).

All I can say is this. We’re long overdue, as Orthodox, in attempting to engage this culture with the truths of our Faith in a way that they can understand. People out there on the streets are unfamiliar with our inside language, our buzzwords, and our foreign liturgies and while we protect ourselves inside these walls we are losing the battle both within and without the Church for the human soul. The people outside the walls of our parishes are just as much our responsibility as those within and when we refuse to engage them with media they understand and bombard them with terms they don’t care about we fail to fulfill our call to care for them Jesus did, the one who saw the multitudes as sheep without a shepherd and whose heart burned with love for them and their salvation.

Some of these new approaches to the world will work and some won’t. Yet before we criticize it would be good to remember that at least they, unlike the vast majority of Orthodox, are trying to reach out to people where they are in the hope they can become what God would have them to be. Instead of sitting back in pious distance and picking apart the effort it would be good to ask “What are we actually doing to reach out to our friends and neighbors with the Gospel?” If we doing nothing then we have no right to critique someone else’s efforts. If we are and we have a better way it behooves us to share it.

Regardless, almost anything would be better then the deafening silence.

Prayer, fasting, vigils, and all other Christian practices, however good they may be in themselves, certainly do not constitute the aim of our Christian life: they are but the indispensable means of attaining that aim. For the true aim of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God. As for fasts, vigils, prayer and almsgiving, and other good works done in the name of Christ, they are only the means of acquiring the Holy Spirit of God. Note well that it is only good works done in the name of Christ that bring us the fruits of the Spirit.
~St. Seraphim of Sarov

Despite its large size the double bass is a sensitive and complex instrument. Slight variations in its structure can dramatically change the sound and feel of the instrument and because of their unique construction no two basses ever sound exactly the same. Each instrument is a combination of wood, structure, strings and set up. So each part of the bass must be chosen carefully and individual elements of the instruments must be chosen carefully to produce the correct sound.

For the past months I’ve been researching strings for my double bass, weighing the pros and cons against the music I intend to play. Orchestral strings, for example have a different function then strings used for jazz or pizzicato techniques. Since they can last for years the whole process is like dating. In fact the world would probably be a better place if people did their homework for marriage with at least the same depth as they do for their instruments.

None the less, the process is coming to a close and it looks like the winner is Corelli 370 Bass Strings, $103 a set (4) with a solid bass response, warm tone, and sustain, the three things I needed for playing the roots and americana music I prefer.

I’ll report back when they come in and I get them set up.

researchers are once again confirming what people of faith have known since, well, the whole sabbath thing.

that we are distant from Christ we are distant from life. Perhaps this explains the nature of these times.

I think people sometimes over think Orthodoxy. There is so much depth and richness to it that it can become, by its sheer volume of content, an ocean of esoterica even to the point of distraction. Be, as best you can, like Jesus and you will be Orthodox even if you’ve never read “The Rudder”.

A Priest of the Orthodox Church and his wife lost their daughter today just weeks after they buried a granddaughter. I cannot imagine the depth of grief that must be within them. There are no words…

May God fill the anguished silence with Himself.

it’s January, the temperature is dropping, and night has already arrived before 6 pm.

Time to write

A Danish newspaper declares that President Obama is “greater then Jesus”. 

I guess 2009 can’t end soon enough…